Ž . Journal of Urban Economics 51, 315338 2002 doi:10.1006 juec.2001.2247, available online at http:www.idealibrary.com on Locational Constraint, Housing Counseling, and Successful Lease-up in a Randomized Housing Voucher Experiment 1 Mark Shroder Office of Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Washington, DC 20410-6000 E-mail: Mark D. Shroder@HUD.gov   Received January 10, 2001; revised June 15, 2001; published online September 3, 2001 Federal policy tools that could affect the concentration of poverty in metropolitan areas have been much advocated but seldom implemented, and their impacts have never been properly measured. This paper estimates the impact of locational constraint and intensity of counseling services on participation by low-income families in the housing voucher program, using data from the Moving to Opportunity experiment. I find that constraining the voucher to low-poverty neighborhoods reduces lease-up by at least 14 percentage points. More intense counseling services raise the lease-up rate, but not Ž . enough to overcome the effect of constraint.  2001 Elsevier Science USA 1. INTRODUCTION In sheer number of U.S. households supported, tenant-based housing assis- tance has come to surpass both public housing and project-based private housing assistance. By April 2001, the Department of Housing and Urban Ž . Development HUD had funded more than 1.8 million voucher units under Ž  . contracts with public housing authorities HUD 29, L-7 . Vouchers have grown for several reasons. They offer the assisted household locational choice. They generally cost substantially less than project-based Ž   alternatives Shroder and Reiger 27 ; HUD Office of Policy Development and  . Research 30 . Vouchers allow continued assistance to tenants of projects Ž where project-based subsidies are no longer tenable e.g., buildings are crime- ridden or impossible to rehabilitate at reasonable cost; owners refuse to renew their subsidy agreements or have allowed deterioration below minimum stan- . dards . Finally, vouchers do not artificially concentrate poverty. Voucher 1 I gratefully acknowledge the receipt of data from Todd Richardson and Judith Feins, and the comments of Todd Richardson, Larry Orr, Steven Kennedy, John Goering, Jeff Kling, Jeff Lubell, and two referees. Statements in this paper do not necessarily reflect the policy of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. 315 0094-1190 01 $35.00 Ž .  2001 Elsevier Science USA All rights reserved.