Counseling alone can sometimes enable poor households to move into more desirable neighborhoods by demonstrating options to them that they did not know existed. Counseling is also important when households are making a move into a dramatically new environment that breaches long established local conventions. But in some cities specialized counseling may not be necessary. For example, many more families are moving out of concentrated poverty areas of Oakland, California, into a racially mixed middle-income area of Alameda County, not as the result of court settlement or special mobility programs but as a consequence of the public housing authorities decisions to support such moves under Section 8 and informal information networks. Landlord participation .
Landlords frequently are reluctant to participate in mobility programs.
They fear that, under current HUD regulations, they cannot evict problem tenants and cannot turn down additional Section 8 households once they accept any Section 8 families. They also often resist racial mixing in their buildings. The researchers suggest that, besides enforcing fair housing law, providing bonuses, or waivers of standard HUD requirements for participating landlords, can be effective in increasing the number of suburban landlords who participate in mobility programs. Court-ordered housing mobility programs have a limited reach. They tend to serve African-Americans but not other minorities, because they grew out of civil rights litigation attacking racial discrimination.