Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Housing mobility programs, which help low-income housing choice voucher holders move to areas of increased economic opportunity, operate in contested political environments. These programs often involve city governments operating at a regional scale by presenting residents with options to move outside of their cities, creating political tensions both in suburban areas and within cities themselves. Yet there has been relatively little examination of how these programs have played out politically. In this paper, I examine the political dynamics of housing mobility programs, and identify a new form of institutional change I call spatial layering to describe how city authorities layer policy changes at a regional scale. I document the jurisdictional configurations of current housing mobility programs in the United States, and seek to explain variation in resistance to these programs through in-depth interviews with government officials, activists, and residents involved in the largest housing mobility programs across the country. I argue that by understanding the role of city agencies operating at a regional scale, we can not only better understand other policy areas operating in similarly complex cross-jurisdictional environments, but also better design public policy.