do place based strategies improve residents’ lives?

[Ellen Lurie Hoffman]

A debate has emerged over the merits of mobility vs. a place based approach to affordable housing, with HUD coming out in favor of a balanced approach that both promotes access to other communities through mobility while simultaneously ensuring that residents who remain in neighborhoods experiencing distress and concentrated poverty benefit from investments that improve their housing and increase their access to opportunity. While proponents of a strict mobility approach often point to studies illustrating the ways in which low-income families benefit from relocating to so called “communities of opportunity,” few studies have examined if a place based approach improves low-income families’ lives. PD&R should conduct a longitudinal study on whether – and how – a place based approach improves people’s lives.