Creating Moves to Opportunity (CMTO)
This large-scale demonstration project evaluates how additional services can improve access to high-opportunity neighborhoods for low-income families in the Seattle metropolitan area. The project combines a randomized controlled trial with qualitative interviews and administrative data to understand the barriers low-income families with Housing Choice Vouchers face and what additional services effectively help families move to high-opportunity neighborhoods with their vouchers.
As a member of the research team at the Poverty and Inequality Research Lab for several years, I contributed to qualitative data collection and analysis for phase I and phase II of the experiment, with a focus on understanding voucher holders’ experiences and mobility decision-making processes. I participated in multiple in-person fieldwork trips in addition to conducting remote interviews.
Publications, presentations, and works in progress:
Co-author on a peer-reviewed article published in Cityscape (2024).
Working paper: DeLuca, Stefanie, Jacqueline Groccia and Gorana Ilic. “Developing a More Comprehensive Measure of Housing Insecurity: Insights from the Residential Histories of Housing Voucher Recipients.”
DeLuca, Stefanie and Jacqueline Groccia. “‘When Someone Cares about You, It’s Priceless’: Reducing Administrative Burdens and Boosting Housing Search Confidence to Increase
Opportunity Moves for Voucher Holders.” The Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management, 2024, Washington, DC.
DeLuca, Stefanie and Jacqueline Groccia. “Using Navigators to Increase Access and Decrease Administrative Burden: A Cross-System and Government Perspective.” The Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management, 2024, Washington, DC.
Groccia, Jacqueline. “Increasing Residential Opportunity for Housing Choice Voucher Holders.” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Baltimore Field Office, 2024, Staff Meeting.
Groccia, Jacqueline and Gorana Ilic. “Measuring Housing Instability: Insights from Residential Histories of Housing Voucher Recipients.” British Sociological Association Panel, Solutions to Homelessness: Research, Policy, and Practice, 2024, Hybrid Event – University of Oxford and Virtual.
DeLuca, Stefanie, Jacqueline Groccia, and Gorana Ilic. “Developing a More Comprehensive Measure of Housing Insecurity: Insights from Residential Histories of Housing Voucher Recipients.” The American Sociological Association, 2022, Los Angeles, CA.
This research was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Surgo Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, and Harvard University.
Navigating Uncertainty: Understanding Housing Insecurity Among Low-Income Families
My dissertation examined how low-income families navigate and respond to housing insecurity. Drawing on 160 in-depth interviews with Housing Choice Voucher recipients in the Seattle metropolitan area, I explored three central questions:
What are the common drivers of housing insecurity?
What factors shape the stability of doubling up arrangements used in response to housing insecurity?
How do low-income families navigate the decision-making process of seeking shelter during a housing crisis?
This research contributes to our sociological understanding of how housing insecurity is typically a dynamic and cyclical process, rather than a point-in-time event and is shaped by structural limitations and constrained choice sets. These findings reveal the limitations of conventional measures, the precarity of social network-based housing solutions, and the compromises families must navigate when seeking shelter.
Awards received: 2024 Candace Rogers Student Paper Award, Eastern Sociological Society and 2023 PSI Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award, Johns Hopkins University
Publications, presentations, and works in progress:
Dissertation available upon request.
Groccia, Jacqueline. “Navigating Uncertainty: Understanding Housing Insecurity Among Low-Income Families.” National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) Homelessness Research Network, Virtual Meeting, 2025, Doctoral Candidate Research Symposium.
Groccia, Jacqueline. “Bridging the Gap: Analyzing Families’ Experiences with Institutional and Policy Responses to Homelessness and Housing Insecurity.” The American Sociological Association, 2024, Montreal, QC.
Groccia, Jacqueline. “We were in a rush to get out”: How Low-Income Families Navigate and Prevent Episodes of Homelessness.” Urban Affairs Association, 2023, Nashville, TN.
Groccia, Jacqueline. ““We were in a rush to get out”: How Families Navigate and Prevent Episodes of Homelessness While Waiting for the Housing Choice Voucher.” Eastern Sociological Society, 2023, Baltimore, MD.
Groccia, Jacqueline. “Supportive versus Destabilizing Ties: Understanding the Role of Social Ties in Perpetuating Housing Instability.” The American Sociological Association, 2022, Los Angeles, CA.