Moving to Work Agencies’ Use of Funding Flexibility

Diane K. Levy
Leiha Edmonds
Urban Institute

David Long
Princeton Policy Associates

The Moving to Work (MTW) demonstration allows participating public housing agencies to implement innovative approaches to achieving three statutory objectives: cost-effectiveness, household self-sufficiency, and housing choice. MTW funding flexibility is a cornerstone of agencies’ ability to work toward federally required and locally determined objectives. This flexibility allows the current 39 MTW agencies to treat the separate funding streams of public housing operations, capital improvements, and Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) programs as fungible, moving funds among the separate streams and from them into local, non-traditional activities. This article examines how MTW agencies have used funding flexibility and includes a detailed examination of funding shifts from a sample of agencies.