Back in the 90s, the federal government ran a bold experiment, giving people vouchers to move out of high-poverty neighborhoods into low-poverty ones. They wanted to test if housing policy could be hope – whether an address change alone could improve jobs, earnings and education.
The answer to that seems obvious. But it did not at all turn out as they expected.
Years later, when new researchers went back to the data on this experiment, they stumbled on something big. Something that is changing housing policy across the country today.
Today's episode was originally hosted by Karen Duffin, produced by Aviva DeKornfeld, and edited by Bryant Urstadt. The update was hosted by Amanda Aronczyk, produced by Sean Saldana and fact checked by Sierra Juarez. Our supervising executive producer is Alex Goldmark.
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