Moving to Opportunity : The Story of an American Experiment to Fight Ghetto Poverty

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. Contents......Page 12 1 Places and Lives......Page 16 2 Ghetto Poverty Before and After Katrina......Page 38 3 Great Expectations and Muddling Through: Designing and Launching the Experiment......Page 57 4 The Unequal Geography of Opportunity......Page 80 5 Moving to Security......Page 99 6 When Your Neighborhood Is Not Your Community......Page 122 7 Struggling to Stay Out of High-Poverty Neighborhoods: Finding Good Housing......Page 148 8 Finding Good Schools......Page 183 9 Finding Work......Page 205 10 Lessons......Page 236 Appendix: Studying Moving to Opportunity......Page 252 Notes......Page 266 Works Cited......Page 282 B......Page 304 C......Page 305 D......Page 306 F......Page 307 H......Page 308 I......Page 309 L......Page 310 M......Page 311 N......Page 312 P......Page 313 R......Page 314 S......Page 315 V......Page 317 Z......Page 318 If "bad" neighborhoods are truly bad for children and families, especially the minority poor, can moving to better neighborhoods lead them to better lives? Might these families escape poverty altogether, beyond having a better quality of life to help them cope with being poor? Federal policymakers and planners thought so, on both counts, and in 1994, they launched Moving to Opportunity. The 80 million social experiment enrolled nearly 5,000 very low-income, mostly black and Hispanic families, many of them on welfare, who were living in public housing in the inner-city neighborhoods o Launched in 1994, the Moving to Opportunity program took a largely untested approach to poverty: helping families move from high-poverty, inner-city public housing to low-poverty neighborhoods. The book 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.-- From publisher's description Xavier De Souza Briggs, Susan J. Popkin, John Goering. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 269-290) And Index.