Community Choice Demonstration

Eight public housing agency (PHA) sites are currently providing comprehensive housing mobility-related services to housing choice voucher (HCV) families with children as part of the Community Choice Demonstration (CCD). Through October 2028, these PHA sites will provide housing mobility-related services to approximately 9,400 families.

This is an image of a map of the United States with dot representing each CCD site’s location.

What is the Community Choice Demonstration?

The CCD is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build rigorous evidence on how to advance the long-held goals of expanding residential choice and facilitating moves to opportunity areas by households participating in the HCV program. Through a rigorous evaluation that includes a process study, an impact study based on a randomized controlled trial (RCT), and a cost study, HUD intends to learn whether and to what extent housing mobility-related services facilitate moves to opportunity areas by families with children. The evaluation also will assess the contextual factors that affect the extent to which outcomes of the CCD were achieved.

The CCD has two phases. Phase 1 will test comprehensive mobility-related services (CMRS), and Phase 2 will test selected mobility-related services (SMRS) and compare them with CMRS. The cost study will document the costs of these services and their components, and identify the most cost-effective model.

HUD has selected an Evaluation Team for Phase 1 led by Abt Associates, and supported by evaluation partners, outside consultants, and an Expert Panel.

More information on the evaluation is available on HUD’s Policy Development and Research website.

Comprehensive Housing Mobility-Related Services

Each PHA site participating in the CCD is implementing substantially the same set of CMRS. These include:

Pre-Move Services: individualized coaching for families to remove barriers in accessing opportunity neighborhoods
Search Assistance: assistance identifying available units in opportunity areas
Flexible Family Financial Assistance: funding to cover security deposits and flexible assistance to cover application fees, transportation costs and other costs that could pose a barrier to moving to an opportunity area
Owner Incentives: a holding fee that compensates owners if voucher-holders fail to complete the lease, a lease-up bonus, and a damage mitigation fund
Post-Move Services: check-ins with the family and owner following the move to ensure things are going smoothly and troubleshoot challenges

PHAs also made administrative policy changes to facilitate moves to opportunity areas, including changes to voucher payment standards to ensure they are adequate to enable families to be able to afford units in opportunity areas and expedited unit inspections.

A visual description of the CMRS is included below:

This shows the activities in the 7 different phases for the Comprehensive Mobility-related Services in the CCD.

Leveraging the CCD Experiences for all PHAs

A wide range of materials have been developed for the CCD implementation. HUD’s technical assistance provider modified these materials and have made them available for use by any PHA interested in implementing a housing mobility program. On the HUD Exchange, PHAs can find:

Program Set-Up Guide: A starting point for PHAs interested in developing a housing mobility program
Program Manual: A detailed housing mobility program services implementation guide
Client Binder: A sample set of materials for use by the housing mobility program clients
Sample workshops: A sample set of workshops and guides

HUD conducted a webinar series (see links below) on the CCD to share information on the early stages of implementation.

HUD also maintains a separate housing mobility webpage with more general information.

History of the CCD

The CCD was authorized and funded through the 2019 and 2020 Appropriations Acts, which made available a total of $50 million: up to $40 million for housing mobility-related services and up to $10 million for new vouchers for families with children. The 2019 Appropriations Act also makes available $3 million for a research evaluation.

In July 2020, HUD released FR-6191-N-01, Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers: Implementation of the Housing Choice Voucher Mobility Demonstration which described how PHAs could apply to participate in the Demonstration.

Applications for the CCD were due in February 2021. In late April 2021, 9 PHA sites were selected for the CCD. One site withdrew from the CCD in late 2022, leaving 8 participating PHA sites as seen in the map at the top of this website.

HUD also released additional Federal Register notices related to the CCD:

To assist PHAs with completing their applications, HUD made the following information available: