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Moving to Opportunity tackles one of America's most enduring dilemmas: the great, unresolved question of how to overcome persistent ghetto poverty. Launched in 1994, the MTO program took a largely untested approach: helping families move from high-poverty, inner-city public housing to low-poverty neighborhoods, some in the suburbs. The book's innovative methodology emphasizes the voices and choices of the program's participants but also rigorously analyzes the changing structures of regional opportunity and constraint that shaped the fortunes of those who "signed up." It shines a light on the hopes, surprises, achievements, and limitations of a major social experiment. As the authors make clear, for all its ambition, MTO is a uniquely American experiment, and this book brings home its powerful lessons for policymakers and advocates, scholars, students, journalists, and all who share a deep concern for opportunity and inequality in our country.
Xavier de Souza Briggs is Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget in The White House and Associate Professor of Sociology and Urban Planning (on leave) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A sociologist by training, his award-winning research focuses on leadership and democratic institutions, inequality, and racial and ethnic diversity in cities. A former faculty member at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, Susan J. Popkin is a senior fellow in the Urban Institute's Center on Metropolitan Housing and Communities. She is a nationally recognized expert on assisted housing, mobility, and the "hard to house." Dr. Popkin is the lead author of The Hidden War: Crime and the Tragedy of Public Housing in Chicago, has written numerous papers and book chapters on housing and poverty-related issues, and is co-author of the recent book, Public Housing and The Legacy of Segregation. Dr. Popkin received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University and previously was a researcher at Abt Associates Inc. and the University of Illinois Chicago. John Goering received his doctorate in demography and sociology from Brown University. He then designed, obtained funding for, and conducted research while a member of the faculty of several universities, lectured in both the US and Europe on this research, published over sixty articles and book-length studies, and helped manage a large evaluation office at a major Federal agency. At the Office of Policy Development and Research at US HUD, he directed evaluation and research on a variety of neighborhood change and civil rights issues. From 1997 through Spring 1999, he served on the staff of the White House Initiative on Race. He joined the faculty of the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College of the City University of New York as Professor in 1999. He was elected to the Doctoral faculty at the Graduate Center of CUNY in 2000.
Show moreMoving to Opportunity tackles one of America's most enduring dilemmas: the great, unresolved question of how to overcome persistent ghetto poverty. Launched in 1994, the MTO program took a largely untested approach: helping families move from high-poverty, inner-city public housing to low-poverty neighborhoods, some in the suburbs. The book's innovative methodology emphasizes the voices and choices of the program's participants but also rigorously analyzes the changing structures of regional opportunity and constraint that shaped the fortunes of those who "signed up." It shines a light on the hopes, surprises, achievements, and limitations of a major social experiment. As the authors make clear, for all its ambition, MTO is a uniquely American experiment, and this book brings home its powerful lessons for policymakers and advocates, scholars, students, journalists, and all who share a deep concern for opportunity and inequality in our country.
Xavier de Souza Briggs is Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget in The White House and Associate Professor of Sociology and Urban Planning (on leave) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A sociologist by training, his award-winning research focuses on leadership and democratic institutions, inequality, and racial and ethnic diversity in cities. A former faculty member at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, Susan J. Popkin is a senior fellow in the Urban Institute's Center on Metropolitan Housing and Communities. She is a nationally recognized expert on assisted housing, mobility, and the "hard to house." Dr. Popkin is the lead author of The Hidden War: Crime and the Tragedy of Public Housing in Chicago, has written numerous papers and book chapters on housing and poverty-related issues, and is co-author of the recent book, Public Housing and The Legacy of Segregation. Dr. Popkin received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University and previously was a researcher at Abt Associates Inc. and the University of Illinois Chicago. John Goering received his doctorate in demography and sociology from Brown University. He then designed, obtained funding for, and conducted research while a member of the faculty of several universities, lectured in both the US and Europe on this research, published over sixty articles and book-length studies, and helped manage a large evaluation office at a major Federal agency. At the Office of Policy Development and Research at US HUD, he directed evaluation and research on a variety of neighborhood change and civil rights issues. From 1997 through Spring 1999, he served on the staff of the White House Initiative on Race. He joined the faculty of the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College of the City University of New York as Professor in 1999. He was elected to the Doctoral faculty at the Graduate Center of CUNY in 2000.
Show morePreface
1. Places and Lives
2. Ghetto Poverty Before and After Katrina
3. Great Expectations and Muddling Through: Designing and Launching
the Experiment
4. The Unequal Geography of Opportunity
5. Moving to Security
6. When Your Neighborhood is Not Your Community
7. Struggling to Stay out of High Poverty Neighborhoods: Finding
Good Housing
8. Finding Good Schools
9. Finding Work
10. Lessons
Appendix: Studying Moving to Opportunity
Works Cited
Xavier de Souza Briggs is Associate Director of the Office of
Management and Budget in the White House and Associate Professor of
Sociology and Urban Planning (on leave) at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. A sociologist by training, his
award-winning research focuses on leadership and democratic
institutions, inequality, and racial and ethnic diversity in
cities. A former faculty member at Harvard University's Kennedy
School of
Government, his books include The Geography of Opportunity and
Democracy as Problem Solving. He is founder and director of The
Community Problem-Solving Project @ MIT and Working Smarter in
Community Development, two popular and
innovative online resources for people and institutions worldwide,
and his views have appeared in the New York Times, Salon.com,
National Public Radio, Boston Globe, and other major media.
Susan J. Popkin is Director of the Urban Institute's Program on
Neighborhoods and Youth Development. She is a nationally recognized
expert on assisted housing, mobility, and the "hard to house." Dr.
Popkin is the lead author of The Hidden War, has written numerous
papers and book chapters on housing and poverty-related issues, and
is co-author of the recent book, Public Housing and The Legacy of
Segregation.
John Goering is a Professor at the School of Public Affairs at
Baruch College and is on the doctoral faculty of the City
University of New York. He is the author or editor of seven books
on housing, race and public policy. While at the Office of Policy
Development and Research at HUD he helped design and implement MTO,
and co-edited the first collection of analyses, Choosing a Better
Life?, on this demonstration.
"A brilliant, highly readable book...Briggs, Popkin, and Goering
suggest a number of useful ideas for dealing with America's ghetto
problem including family-strengthening programs and supportive
housing for large numbers of ''hard-to-house'' families...a ''must
read'' book for scholars and policymakers on both sides of the
Atlantic."--Journal of Housing and Built Environment
"This book is not a purely academic tome filled with
incomprehensible statistics; rather, it is more an ethnography and
as such can be appreciated by students, faculty, and the general
public. Summing Up: Highly recommended."--CHOICE
"Moving to Opportunity insightfully reveals how the fight against
ghetto poverty is more than just overcoming economic deprivation.
It also involves improving safety and feelings of security and
therefore increasing freedom from fear. A number of questions
remain about the effects of the MTO experiment. However, the
striking reduction in anxiety and depression for women and girls is
not one of them. Briggs and his colleagues argue persuasively for
a
major national commitment to affordable rental housing in safe and
livable neighborhoods."--William Julius Wilson, Harvard
University
"This team of respected researchers has applied scientific rigor
and experience-based pragmatism to tackle one of the most difficult
subjects in the urban policy field: how to harness economic and
housing programs to reduce poverty and to create life opportunities
for America's poorest families. The result is analyses and
conclusions which are sobering but also promising and hopeful."
--Henry Cisneros, Executive Chairman, CityView and Former
Secretary, U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development
"[The authors'] extensive experience working in housing and
antipoverty policy making, implementation, and evaluation, and
their direct involvement with the Moving to Opportunity experiment
since it was begun in 1994, positioned them well to write a good
book on it. That experience and the high quality of their previous
scholarly works ... led me to have high expectations for this book.
When I finished reading it, those expectations were, in fact,
exceeded.
Moving to Opportunity is a 'must read' for anyone interested in
understanding the politics of policy making and implementation, the
difference between neighborhoods and communities, the harsh
realities of
living conditions for poor people in and out of inner-city
ghettoes, and the difficult trade-offs very-low-income parents must
make when faced with choices about where to locate."--Urban Affairs
Review
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