The Voucher Promise - by Eva Rosen

About the Book

"This book examines the Housing Voucher Choice Program, colloquially known as "Section 8," and the effect of the program on low-income families living in Park Heights in Baltimore. In a new era of housing policy that hopes to solve poverty with opportunity in the form of jobs, social networks, education, and safety, the program offers the poor access to a new world: safe streets, good schools, and well-paying jobs through housing vouchers. The system should, in theory, give recipients access to housing in a wide range of neighborhoods, but in The Voucher Promise, Rosen examines how the housing policy, while showing great promise, faces critical limitations. Rosen spent over a year living in a Park Heights neighborhood, getting to know families, accompanying them on housing searches, spending time on front stoops, and learning about the history of the neighborhood and the homeowners who had settled there decades ago. She examines why, when low-income renters are given the opportunity to afford a home in a more resource-rich neighborhood, they do not relocate to one, observing where they instead end up and other opportunities housing vouchers may offer them"--

Book Synopsis

"A must-read for anyone interested in solutions to America's housing crisis."--Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
An in-depth look at America's largest rental assistance program and how it shapes the lives of residents in one low-income Baltimore neighborhood

Housing vouchers are a cornerstone of US federal housing policy, offering aid to more than two million households. Vouchers are meant to provide the poor with increased choice in the private rental marketplace, enabling access to safe neighborhoods with good schools and higher-paying jobs. But do they?

The Voucher Promise examines the Housing Choice Voucher Program, colloquially known as "Section 8," and how it shapes the lives of families living in a Baltimore neighborhood called Park Heights. Eva Rosen tells stories about the daily lives of homeowners, voucher holders, renters who receive no housing assistance, and the landlords who provide housing. While vouchers are a powerful tool with great promise, she demonstrates how the housing policy can replicate the very inequalities it has the power to solve.

Rosen spent more than a year living in Park Heights, sitting on front stoops, getting to know families, accompanying them on housing searches, speaking to landlords, and learning about the neighborhood's history. Voucher holders disproportionately end up in this area despite rampant unemployment, drugs, crime, and abandoned housing. Exploring why they are unable to relocate to other neighborhoods, Rosen illustrates the challenges in obtaining vouchers and the difficulties faced by recipients in using them when and where they want to. Yet, despite the program's real shortcomings, she argues that vouchers offer basic stability for families and should remain integral to solutions for the nation's housing crisis.

Delving into the connections between safe, affordable housing and social mobility, The Voucher Promise investigates the profound benefits and formidable obstacles involved in housing America's poor.

Review Quotes

"The Voucher Promise provides an informative, in-depth, and necessary look into the policy and practice of the HCV program clearly identifying a need to reassess the way it currently operates. . . . [A]n essential read for policymakers, urban sociologists, and scholars."---Jeanne Kimpel, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

"[Rosen] bring[s] to the table workable and much needed suggestions for changes to a flawed policy."---Lisa Lucile Owens, Critical Sociology

"A fine study with important insights for scholars and practitioners, regardless of their disciplinary leanings. Readers may find themselves comparing [The Voucher Promise] favorably to the highly acclaimed Evicted: Poverty and Poverty in the American City by Matthew Desmond."---Dennis E. Gale, Journal of Planning Education and Research

"An engaging read. Most compellingly, Rosen offers a moving psychological portrait of her interlocutors, revealing how people cope with neighborhood change and reconcile limited opportunities and chronic disappointments."---Maya Dukmasova, Chicago Reader

"Rosen's ethnographic study helps to correct a weak point in the literature on the HCV program. . . . The Voucher Promise provides a look at the HCV program from many perspectives including the participating voucher households and the renter households not lucky enough to receive a voucher. The book studies the landlords who choose to participate as well as those who do not. Finally, the book explores the households, especially long-term homeowners, who populate the neighborhoods where the HCV voucher households locate. This mix of perspectives is the strength of the book."---Kirk McClure, Social Forces

"This work, although a valuable contribution to the sociology literature, is also an important book for urban planners and policy scholars and practitioners. Rosen has managed the difficult task of creating rigorous research that is highly critical of an important federal program but at the same time recognized how vital the program is to the lives of so many economically fragile families. . . . a must read for anyone interested in housing markets and housing policy. It is refreshingly well written and at the same time highly substantive."---Dan Immergluck, Journal of the American Planning Association

"Winner of the Outstanding Book Award, Inequality, Poverty, and Social Mobility Section of the American Sociological Association"

"Winner of the Paul Davidoff Book Award, Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning"

About the Author

Eva Rosen is assistant professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. She lives in Washington, DC. Twitter @eva_rosen