Project Summary:
CoLab Funds Long-Term Study of Housing Mobility Program’s Impact on Children
Study Follows Families Who Move to High-Opportunity Neighborhoods to Measure Long-Term Impact on Children’s Education and Family Economic Stability
The Creating Moves to Opportunity (CMTO) demonstration in Seattle and King County, Wash., enrolled over 700 families offered housing vouchers into a research study that rigorously evaluated whether housing mobility services would support them in moving to neighborhoods with better schools, safer streets, and stronger job markets. After three years, results were promising: 57% of families offered CMTO services remained in high-opportunity neighborhoods, compared with just 22% of families receiving standard services. But do these moves translate into better lasting improvements in children’s education and families’ economic stability? CoLab awarded a research grant to MDRC to answer this critical question by assessing families’ outcomes 4–7 years after enrollment.
Partners
MDRC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to learning what works to improve programs and policies that affect the well-being of people with low incomes. For over 50 years, MDRC has conducted rigorous evaluations of social programs and has deep expertise in housing mobility research.
Key collaborators include the Seattle Housing Authority and the King County Housing Authority.
What they will do
MDRC is conducting a longitudinal impact evaluation leveraging the original, rigorous CMTO randomized controlled trial design. Between 2018 and 2020, 712 families with over 1,700 children were randomly assigned to receive either CMTO housing mobility services or standard voucher assistance. The study will use administrative records from multiple Washington State agencies and local housing authorities to measure program effects:
- Housing data to measure voucher receipt, residential addresses, continued residence in high-opportunity neighborhoods, and frequency of moves
- Education records covering K-12 attendance, grade advancement, standardized test scores, school quality measures, and postsecondary enrollment and completion
- Homelessness services data capturing shelter stays and transitional housing use to measure housing stability and any experiences with homelessness
- Employment and earnings data to track and assess employment patterns and earnings trajectories
The research team will measure outcomes for all families offered CMTO services, regardless of whether they used them, to understand real-world program effects. The research team will also seek to identify which families benefit most from mobility support.
Grant type:
- Long-term outcomes
Focus area:
- Affordable housing and homelessness prevention
population:
- Families with children
When it will happen
The project began in October 2025 and will continue through September 2028. Like most CoLab-funded evaluations, future potential CoLab funding could support continued follow-up over many years to track sustained outcomes and long-term impact on economic mobility.
Why it matters
Strengthening evidence on what works to facilitate neighborhood mobility represents a priority investment area for CoLab, and this study offers the best and most cost-efficient research opportunity identified to-date.
Although the Housing Choice Voucher program was designed to offer households with low incomes a wide range of choices in where they live, evidence suggests that most households with vouchers face significant barriers in accessing high-opportunity areas—neighborhoods that research demonstrates promote upward economic mobility for children. An original Moving to Opportunity demonstration from the 1990s showed that moving to low-poverty neighborhoods improved children’s earnings into adulthood when they moved before the children turned 13. However, research suggests that the earnings impact would have been twice as large if families had moved to high-opportunity neighborhoods rather than just low-poverty ones.
Previous housing mobility evaluations produce initial findings based on short follow-up periods that cannot capture the potential developmental and economic benefits of exposure to new neighborhoods. This study’s longer timeline permits researchers to truly understand the sustained effects on children’s academic achievement and family economic trajectories, which may take time to emerge.
This project also demonstrates the power of using existing administrative data to conduct rigorous, cost-effective long-term evaluations. This approach could be replicated to study other interventions aimed at expanding opportunity for families with low incomes.
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