The Section 8 tenant-based housing assistance program provides subsidies that allow low-income families to live in higher-quality private-market rental housing. This approach aims to more closely match housing preference to provision, and to increase opportunity beyond what is typically available near public housing, which is frequently located in high-poverty neighborhoods. Current research shows that some Section 8 families live in poorer and racially segregated neighborhoods (Turner et al., 1999). One possible cause of this concentration is the lack of sufficient counseling about rental housing. A recent study presented a prototype application, the Housing Relocation Assistant (HRA), which uses GIS to display neighborhood characteristics for the selection of Section 8 rentals based on user preferences. The prototype uses seven categories of objective indicators across the metropolitan area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for multi-criteria analysis. These include:

• Availability of high-level entry-level employment

• Availability of affordable housing

• Public transit accessibility to jobs ocial services support

• Quality of education

• Public safety

• Local amenities and demographic characteristics

• Quality of life

The HRA prototype contains more specific indicators of these seven broad categories. Most of these data were already widely available from local, state, and federal sources. The role of the housing counselor would be key to bringing such a prototype into practice and to assisting the Section 8 family to determine the best indicators for their decision. When the criteria are entered into this system, the local areas are correlated to these criteria based on user preference, and alternative destinations can be ranked by these preferences. GIS allows the information to be displayed visually and functions as a decision-support tool. (See Figure 4.2.)

SOURCE: Johnson, 2002.