Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Program: Final Impacts Evaluation

This report presents the long-term impacts of a unique housing mobility demonstration, Moving to Opportunity (MTO), on housing and neighborhood conditions, physical and mental health, economic self-sufficiency, risky and criminal behavior, and educational outcomes. The MTO demonstration was authorized by the U.S. Congress in section 152 of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1992. In 1994, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) launched MTO to test whether offering housing vouchers to families living in public housing projects in high-poverty neighborhoods of large inner cities could improve their lives and the lives of their children by allowing them to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods. The original authorizing legislation for MTO charged HUD with describing “the long-term housing, employment, and educational achievements of the families assisted under the demonstration program.”