As part of efforts to help selected public housing authorities experiment with different ways to provide decent, affordable housing to low-and moderate-income households, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) introduced the Moving to Work (MTW) demonstration program in 1996. MTW allows participating housing authorities to request waivers to suspend or modify certain HUD regulations and to merge various HUD disbursements into a single, flexible fund to advance three goals: (i) expand housing options; (ii) move families toward self-sufficiency; and (iii) provide services in more cost-effective ways. Existing MTW agreements will expire in 2018, and HUD is currently negotiating extensions with the 39 participating agencies. Housing advocacy organizations have weighed in on the terms of these extensions.
To better understand the activities that participating housing authorities have carried out under the MTW program and to inform our evaluation of the Charlotte Housing Authority’s Moving Forward program, the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill presents Innovation in Public Housing: The Moving to Work Demonstration. This report:
- Provides a history of MTW, including its policy context and a timeline of participating agencies;
- Catalogs the wide range of activities currently undertaken by the 39 participating agencies organized by MTW’s three statutory goals; and
- Offers concluding comments both to guide current debates about extension of MTW agreements and to set the stage for future evaluations.
To read the report click here.
This report was prepared under a contract with the Charlotte Housing Authority.