A Picture of Moving to Work Agencies’ Housing Assistance

Martha M. Galvez
Ruth Gourevitch
Benny Docter
Urban Institute

This article describes the 39 public housing authorities with Moving to Work (MTW) designation as of 2016 and the households they serve. Together, the MTW agencies served 12 percent of all households assisted by public housing agencies (PHAs) in that year. MTW agencies tend to be larger than traditional PHAs and in more densely populated urban housing markets. Compared with comparably sized traditional PHAs, MTW agencies provide a similar mix of housing assistance, serve similar populations, and assist households in neighborhoods with similar levels of poverty. MTW agencies provide more project-based housing choice voucher (HCV) assistance compared with traditional PHAs and added new households to their assistance portfolios between 2008 and 2016, whereas the traditional agencies did not. The MTW agencies also received increased funding over the 2008–2016 period, whereas traditional agencies did not.