Q&A with Raj Chetty

At the 2026 Summer Symposium in Nashville, NAHRO hosted Harvard economist and Opportunity Insights Director Raj Chetty for a captivating keynote on his latest research on upward mobility. For more than a decade, he has explored a powerful question: how we can give children from all backgrounds better chances of succeeding?

Through meticulous data analysis and multiple longitudinal studies, Chetty offers housers a variety of tools to consider. NAHRO is pleased to share Chetty’s presentation slides, and present his answers to additional questions below.

Place-Based Investment vs. Mobility Strategies

Q: Your earlier work demonstrated that helping families move to high-opportunity neighborhoods significantly improves children’s long-term outcomes, while your new HOPE VI research suggests that it is also possible to create opportunity where families already live. If Congress could only substantially expand one approach over the next decade — mobility counseling or neighborhood transformation — which would you prioritize, and why?

A: My view of the evidence is that we should not choose one approach over the other. The lesson from the research is that both mobility and place-based investment can be powerful tools for improving economic opportunity, and they solve different problems.

The HOPE VI findings show that it is possible to create opportunity in places where it has historically been lacking. That’s important because most families want to remain connected to their jobs, families, social networks, and communities. Place-based investments can improve opportunity for those families while strengthening the communities they already call home.

At the same time, revitalizing communities often involves redevelopment and, in some cases, displacement. Mobility programs and housing vouchers can play an important role in helping affected families access higher-opportunity neighborhoods and maintain housing stability during those transitions. More broadly, the Creating Moves to Opportunity experiment showed that many families want the option to move to higher-opportunity areas and can do so successfully when provided the right support.

The common theme is expanding choice. We should invest in creating opportunity within communities while also ensuring families have the ability to move to opportunity when they choose. The evidence suggests these are complementary, not competing, approaches.

What Made HOPE VI Work?

Q: Your research finds that HOPE VI did not improve adult earnings but produced meaningful gains for children. What do you believe were the two or three most important ingredients that transformed these neighborhoods from low-opportunity places into high-opportunity environments?Which of those ingredients are realistically within a housing authority’s control?

A: One of the clearest findings was that the benefits were concentrated among children, not the adult generation. That suggests what mattered most was not simply improving housing conditions, but changing the environments in which children grew up.

From that perspective, HOPE VI appears to have worked through a combination of changes. The redevelopments reduced social isolation by connecting residents to the broader community, and children formed more friendships and relationships across class lines. They also improved the physical environment, giving families access to safer, higher-quality housing and neighborhoods. And they replaced concentrated poverty with more economically integrated communities, exposing children to a wider range of networks and opportunities.

For housing authorities, the practical implication is that they have considerable influence over how communities are designed and how connected they are to the neighborhoods around them. This research suggests those decisions can have lasting effects on children’s futures.

Lessons for Today’s Public Housing

Q: Many housing authorities manage aging public housing developments that resemble pre-HOPE VI sites but lack billions of dollars in redevelopment funding. Based on your findings, what lower-cost interventions would generate the greatest improvement in children’s life outcomes?

A: As you note, not every community has the financial resources, the physical conditions, or the need for a full HOPE VI-style redevelopment. Rather than asking whether every community should replicate HOPE VI, a more useful question is what made it successful. The value of the research is that it helps identify lessons that can be applied in many different contexts.

That points to a range of potentially lower-cost investments. Housing authorities can improve how developments connect to surrounding neighborhoods through thoughtful urban design, opening up developments that may have been physically isolated, improving walkability, and creating shared spaces that encourage interaction with the broader community. They can also invest in after-school programs, mentoring initiatives, and partnerships with schools and community organizations that help children build broader networks and access new opportunities. The question for future research is which of these approaches generate the largest gains, but the evidence suggests there are many ways to strengthen connections to opportunity that do not require rebuilding an entire neighborhood.

The key takeaway is that expanding opportunity does not necessarily require comprehensive redevelopment. Even when large-scale transformation isn’t feasible, there are often practical ways to help connect residents, especially children, to the people, institutions, and opportunities around them.

Social Connection as Infrastructure

Q: One of the most intriguing findings in your HOPE VI paper is that increased interaction with higher-income neighbors appears to have driven much of the improvement in children’s outcomes. How should housing authorities think differently about “social infrastructure” alongside physical infrastructure?

A: Traditionally, when we think about infrastructure, we think about housing, roads, parks, or transit. This research suggests that the social fabric of a community matters too.

In HOPE VI, children benefited not only from improvements to the physical environment, but also from growing up in communities that were more connected to the broader community. Those connections created opportunities for new friendships, exposure to different experiences, and access to information and networks that can shape a child’s future.

For housing authorities, the implication is that success is not just about the quality of the housing itself. It’s also about how communities are designed. Are residents connected to the broader neighborhood? Are there shared spaces, institutions, and activities that bring people together?

Physical infrastructure and social infrastructure go hand in hand. How we design communities can shape the relationships people build, and in turn, opportunity for the next generation.

Mixed-Income Communities

Q: Mixed-income development has been debated for decades. Your research provides new evidence that it can improve economic mobility for children under the right conditions. What distinguishes mixed-income communities that truly create opportunity from those that simply place different income groups next to each other?

A: While HOPE VI improved opportunity for children on average, we found that the program did not have the same impact everywhere. The largest gains occurred in sites that connected residents to surrounding neighborhoods with greater opportunity. In places that remained surrounded by concentrated poverty, the effects were much smaller and, in some cases, we saw no effect.

That shows that successful mixed-income communities are about more than who lives within a development. The strongest results came when redevelopment helped connect families to the opportunities, institutions, and social networks beyond the development itself.

It also suggests that simply mixing income groups is not enough. Design matters. The goal is not just to place people from different backgrounds near one another, but to create opportunities for meaningful interaction through shared spaces, schools, activities, and community institutions. Opportunity is created when mixed-income communities foster connection, not just proximity.

The Biggest Barrier Isn’t Money?

Q: The CMTO experiment found that customized housing search assistance was substantially more effective than simply providing information or financial incentives. Does this suggest that housing policy has historically underestimated the importance of human relationships and navigation support?

A: Historically, one of the primary tools in housing policy was the voucher itself, based on the idea that providing families with financial supports would give them the resources to pursue the neighborhoods and opportunities that best fit their needs. In practice, however, many families across the country were using vouchers to lease-up in higher-poverty, lower-opportunity neighborhoods, even when higher-opportunity options were available.

CMTO showed that a relatively simple set of navigation supports, helping families search for housing, engage with landlords, and navigate the leasing process, can dramatically increase access to higher-opportunity neighborhoods. In many ways, that support functions as a form of social capital.

I wouldn’t take that to mean that social supports are more important than financial resources, or vice versa. The two work much better together. A voucher creates the ability to access opportunity, and navigation support helps families realize it. When paired together, they can be far more effective than either approach on their own.

Measuring Housing Authority Success

Q: HUD traditionally measures housing authorities using occupancy, inspections, voucher utilization, and financial performance. Based on your research, should we begin evaluating housing authorities using long-term child outcomes and economic mobility measures as well?

A: The traditional measures used by HUD and housing authorities, things like occupancy, housing quality, voucher utilization, and financial performance, are important and have real value. They tell us whether housing authorities are delivering on their core mission of providing safe, stable, and affordable housing.

But our research suggests there may be an opportunity to broaden how we define success. Ultimately, the goal is not just to provide housing. It’s to expand opportunity. We now have much better data on the factors that shape economic mobility, which means we can begin tracking not only whether families are housed, but whether they have access to the kinds of environments that improve children’s long-term outcomes.

I think of it the same way we think about education. We care not only about whether students are seated in classrooms, but whether they’re learning and thriving. Similarly, we should care not only about whether families are housed, but whether housing is helping create pathways to opportunity for the next generation.

Opportunity Beyond Housing

Q: Your work consistently suggests that housing alone is not enough—it is access to schools, jobs, social networks, and neighborhood institutions that matters. What partnerships should housing authorities prioritize if they want to maximize opportunity for children?

Examples might include: school districts; workforce agencies; employers; health providers; parks; nonprofit organizations.

A: One of the clearest lessons from our research is that housing creates opportunity through the connections it provides to other institutions. If the goal is to maximize opportunity for children, I’d start with partnerships that shape children’s daily environments.

Schools are perhaps at the top of that list because they influence both learning and social networks. Youth-serving organizations, parks and recreation programs, health providers, and community nonprofits can also play important roles in helping children build relationships and access new opportunities.

It’s also important to think about families as a whole. Mixed-income communities appear to benefit children in part through the social connections they develop while growing up. At the same time, partnerships with workforce agencies, employers, and training programs can help parents increase their earnings and build greater economic stability.

In that sense, the most effective approach may be a two-generation strategy: creating opportunities for children while also helping parents access the resources they need to thrive and remain part of revitalizing communities over time.

Q: If you had the opportunity to redesign HUD’s public housing and Housing Choice Voucher programs based solely on the evidence from these two studies, what are the first three policy changes you would recommend?

A: The evidence from CMTO and HOPE VI suggests that housing policy works best when it helps families 1) access opportunity, 2) creates opportunity where families already live, and 3) connects people to the opportunities around them.

Based on that, I would suggest first making mobility supports more broadly available as part of the Housing Choice Voucher program. Navigation assistance can substantially increase access to higher-opportunity neighborhoods.

Second, I would place greater emphasis on opportunity when making housing investments. Where housing is located, and how well it connects residents to the broader community, can have lasting effects on children’s outcomes.

Third, I would make reducing social and economic isolation a more explicit objective of housing policy. The evidence increasingly suggests that helping families build connections to opportunity can be just as important as improving housing itself.

Looking Twenty Years Ahead

Q: Looking ahead, what research question about affordable housing and economic mobility do you believe is most important for housing authorities to answer over the next decade?

A: The evidence is now quite clear that neighborhoods shape children’s long-term outcomes. The next question is how to create opportunity at scale.

A key priority for the next decade is understanding which policies and interventions have the largest impact on economic mobility. Understanding how to strengthen cross-class connections and reduce social isolation is especially important. The evidence suggests that social connectedness plays an important role in economic mobility, but there is still much to learn about the most effective ways to foster those connections.

Impact on PHA Mission

Q: For decades, public housing policy has often been evaluated by the number of units built or preserved. Your research suggests that the ultimate measure of success may instead be whether children growing up in those homes have greater opportunities as adults. How should that insight change the mission of America’s public housing authorities?

A: Providing safe, stable, and affordable housing will always be at the core of the mission of public housing authorities. Nothing in our research changes that.

What the evidence does suggest is that housing should be viewed not only as an end in itself, but also as a platform for expanding opportunity. The environments in which children grow up can have lasting effects on their education, earnings, and chances of upward mobility as adults. That perspective shifts the question from simply “how many units are we preserving?” to “how much opportunity are we creating for the families who live in them?”