Reports On HUD's Moving To Work Demonstration Raise Serious Questions
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
A series of reports by HUD's Inspector General have found serious flaws in the implementation of the Moving to Work (MTW) housing demonstration, including ineffective oversight by HUD and poor use of funds by some local housing agencies.
These findings, considered together with other risks posed by MTW, suggest that sharply expanding MTW's size and scope --- as some members of Congress are seeking to do --- would be unwise.
Established by Congress in 1996, MTW permits HUD to grant broad waivers to up to 30 state and local housing agencies allowing them to experiment for a fixed (but extendable) time period with different policies in their voucher and public housing programs, not only to promote work but also simply to achieve "greater cost effectiveness."
Several proposals to expand HUD's authority to grant MTW waivers have been introduced in Congress in recent months.
According to OIG, the Philadelphia Housing Agency sought to justify the diversion of voucher funds into development activities by arguing that blight and a lack of affordable housing made it difficult to use the funds for vouchers.
OIG, however, argues that the authority struggled to use funds for vouchers because of poor program administration rather than lack of adequate housing.
It cites earlier OIG audits of the housing authority, Census data on housing vacancies, and a 2003 study by University of Pennsylvania researchers to support that conclusion.
OIG did not criticize the HUD-sponsored Urban Institute MTW evaluation, which in the absence of adequate quantitative data used other, primarily qualitative, sources of information to assess the activities of the first cohort of MTW agencies.
