Nudging’ Section 8 Recipients Out of the Ghetto

Abstract

The nation’s largest housing assistance program, the Housing Choice Voucher Program (Section 8) annually provides housing vouchers to over 2 million eligible households for use in the private rental market.[1] While Congress intended for the program to “aid low-income families in obtaining a decent place to live and…promote economically mixed housing,”[2]in its almost forty year tenure, Section 8 has largely failed to improve locational outcomes or increase integration.[3] Voucher recipients remain concentrated in moderate to high poverty neighborhoods with predominantly minority populations.[4] This geographic distribution of vouchers perpetuates segregation, exacerbates the problems of poverty (joblessness, crime, delinquency, broken families, low educational attainment, etc.), and leads to poor individual outcomes.[5] It also contravenes the Section 8 program’s stated goal of improving locational outcomes,[6] the Fair Housing Act’s mandate to affirmatively further fair housing in the administration of all federal housing programs,[7] and finally the Fair Housing Act’s prohibition on even facially neutral housing practices that perpetuate segregation.[8] [1]Xavier de Souza Briggs, Susan J. Popkin & John Goering, Moving to Opportunity: The Story of an American Experiment to Fight Ghetto Poverty 42 (2010). [2]United States Housing Act of 1937, 42 U.S.C. § 1437f(a) (2006). [3]Alex F. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States 175 (2006). [4] Judith D. Feins & Rhiannon Patterson, Geographic Mobility in the Housing Choice Voucher Program, 8.2 Cityscape 21, 22 (2005). [5] See infra Section I.A(3). [6]Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, Pub. L. No. 93-383, § 101(c)(6), 88 Stat. 633 (codified as amended at 42 U.S.C. § 5301(c)(6) (2006)). [7]Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3608(e)(5) (2006). [8]Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3604 (2006) (as interpreted at Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program – Demonstration Project of Small Area Fair Market Rents in Certain Metropolitan Areas, Discussion of Comments, and Request for Participants, 76 Fed. Reg. 22122, 22124 (Apr. 20, 2011)).