A recent Cityscape article, “Porting to Opportunity: An Analysis of Portability in the Housing Choice Voucher Program,” examines the association between porting and neighborhood-based opportunity outcomes for Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) recipients. “Porting” is the process through which voucher recipients transfer their rental housing subsidy to another public housing authority (PHA) when they move to a location outside of their initial PHA’s jurisdiction. The researchers found that nearly 10% of voucher tenants ported and one-third of these tenants ported more than 250 miles away from their initial PHA. They also found that porting moves were generally to higher-opportunity neighborhoods.
The researchers relied on HUD’s administrative data to create a database of over 150,000 households who were admitted to the voucher program in 2012 and tracked program exits and moves for each household through 2022. The researchers used American Community Survey (ACS) data to identify changes in neighborhood opportunity, measured at the census tract-level, for porting households as well as households who moved within their initial PHA’s jurisdiction.
The researchers found that 38% of tenants moved to different neighborhoods and nearly 10% of tenants ported. Both moves and porting were most common in the first couple of years of a voucher’s being issued and generally declined overtime. Most porting moves were to rental homes more than 50 miles away, with about 9.6% of tenants moving to a new residence within five miles of their original residence, 35.8% moving five to 50 miles, 22.5% moving 50 to 250 miles, and 32.2% moving more than 250 miles. The researchers also measured the likelihood of porting based on household demographic characteristics. The likelihood of porting increases by 12.5% for households with children and 22% for households with a member with a disability. Households that are lower-income, younger, and larger are more likely to port than households that are higher-income, older, or smaller, respectively. Black and Hispanic households are more likely to port compared to white households.
The researchers also found that porting moves tended to be from census tracts with lower opportunity to census tracts with higher opportunity and generally provided greater neighborhood opportunity than within-PHA moves. On average, porting moves were to census tracts with median household incomes that were $3,174 higher and had a 1.6 percentage point lower poverty rate compared to the initial tract. Porting moves were also to census tracts that had greater high school and college education rates and decreased income inequality. However, households that originated from tracts in higher-opportunity neighborhoods tended to move to lower-opportunity neighborhoods. For example, households that originated from tracts where poverty rates were less than 20% generally moved to tracts where poverty rates were higher than the original tract. The researchers found that porting moves were still associated with increased neighborhood opportunities compared to within-PHA moves even after controlling for other factors.
The researchers conclude that porting is an important mechanism for increasing neighborhood opportunity for voucher recipients and can particularly benefit their children through access to higher education and economic opportunities. They discuss the importance of increasing tenant awareness about their right to port and steps needed. For example, they recommend targeted outreach by PHAs to tenants; a plain-language, user-friendly webpage that explains the right to port and needed steps; and housing mobility services to help voucher recipients navigate the process and housing market. They also recommend regionalizing PHAs to facilitate access to a larger geographical area without the need to port.
Read the report at: https://bit.ly/4f5fBIG