Study Pinpoints Cincinnati s Hot Spots for Housing Vouchers

University of Cincinnati planners David Varady, a nationally respected housing researcher, and Xinhao Wang, an expert in geographical information systems (GIS),  recently published research regarding which Cincinnati neighborhoods are most likely to attract residents using Section 8 Housing vouchers.  (These housing vouchers, provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, provide rental assistance to low-income residents who are free to use the vouchers with any landlord – who passes HUD housing-quality standards – willing to accept them in lieu of cash.)

By applying a very precise technique – called “hot-spot analysis” – to a HUD database containing 6,000 Section 8 participants in Hamilton County, the researchers examined Cincinnati’s neighborhoods street-by-street rather than relying on broad census-tract information. They found that the areas most likely to attract Section 8 residents begin near downtown and then extend west and north, especially along the I-75 corridor and along the Mill Creek Valley. 

Their findings show that the eight communities with the highest hot-spot density of voucher recipients are

• Mt. Airy
• Westwood
• Columbia Township
• Springdale
• Avondale
• Roselawn
• Bond Hill
• East Price Hill

Secondary hot spots, clusters that may become more problematic in the future, are located in

• Springfield Township
• Northside
• Forest Park

According to Varady, professor of planning, and Wang, associate professor of planning in UC’s top-ranked College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, the distribution patterns of precisely where voucher recipients live within the above neighborhoods varies.  In some neighborhoods, voucher use is widespread while in others, there are high levels of concentration on a few streets or in a handful of apartment complexes.

“Residents in some of these areas complain about the threats that concentrations of voucher use pose to neighborhood health due to higher crime and lower property values,” stated Varady, adding, “Recent research, including a sophisticated study in Baltimore County, Md., seems to confirm that, sometimes, these fears are realistic.”

That’s one reason that Varady and Wang set out to study just where Cincinnati’s Section 8 voucher recipients reside, recently publishing the work in the British journal, Housing Studies.  Public officials, in Cincinnati and elsewhere, could respond to Section 8 clustering by developing programs to disperse voucher recipients as widely as possible and by developing programs to assist voucher families at new locations.

As it stands now, if residents are choosing to settle in already vulnerable neighborhoods or in areas experiencing increasing poverty, then they are not experiencing all the benefits envisioned by the program, explained Wang.  “It may mean,” he said, “that other support for low-income families such as additional school programs or other poverty-fighting programs should be offered in order to make the housing-voucher program effective.”

“It’s important to know where voucher recipients are choosing to settle.  If they choose to settle where there are already concentrations of poverty or in older suburbs where demographic changes are only beginning to occur, it may prove a precipitating factor for decline for an already fragile neighborhood,” explained Varady.

Both researchers are certain that the use of vouchers will continue both locally and nationally as demand for vouchers is very strong.  Stated Varady, “When Oakland, Calif., announced that it would accept applications for housing vouchers from residents, the local municipality had to rent out a stadium for the day.  That’s how keen the demand was.”

In addition, both said they hope to continue their hot-spot analysis of Section 8 housing vouchers in the future.  Explained Wang, “This method tells what is happening inside neighborhoods, street by street.  This is a complicated subject, and the difference in voucher use and neighborhood perceptions on one street can be very different from the next one.  We’d like to look more closely at the tax incentives and rental practices that promote voucher use and how they might affect voucher diffusion vs. concentration of use.”