By J.B. Wogan, Governing Magazine
In the past few years, states and cities have sought new sources of funding to try promising programs without taxpayer dollars. Social impact bonds, one of the trendier financing tools for this purpose, has already helped state and local governments leverage private and philanthropic funds to pay for early childhood education, prisoner re-entry programs and homeless services. Now a group of researchers believe the same mechanism could fund housing mobility services — where a housing authority helps poor families on rental vouchers move from a high-poverty, high-crime neighborhood to a low-poverty, low-crime one with better public schools.
