When the Baltimore Regional Housing Partnership launched in 2012, it aimed to increase diversity in neighborhoods by spreading out on the map where low-income housing voucher recipients could live.

The organization appears to be doing just that, according to an article in Cityscape — a peer-reviewed journal sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The paper found that nationally, the concentration of voucher holders in neighborhoods has increased over the last decade, while the greatest decrease in voucher concentration by metropolitan area occurred in the Baltimore area.

For years, housing researchers have studied whether housing choice vouchers are being used as intended — to move to better-resourced and more prosperous neighborhoods. It’s believed that high voucher concentration in high-poverty areas reinforces segregation by clustering and isolating low-income households to the same areas.

Based in the city, the Baltimore Regional Housing Partnership subcontracts with the Housing Authority of Baltimore City to run its housing mobility program. That means providing rental assistance, counseling services and other kinds of support to voucher-supported households who want to move into higher-income communities. The organization might help connect people with transportation, for example, or with budgeting or housing unit referrals.

The more than 50-person team is effectively helping people prepare to move to low-poverty communities and then remain there, said Pete Cimbolic, BRHP’s managing director of research and innovation.

“It’s surprising and exciting to see,” said Cimbolic, who co-authored a white paper about BRHP’s relative success. “This is more in line with the promise of the voucher program and what it was meant to do.”

When HUD began using housing vouchers in 1974, it aimed to prevent the segregation of low-income households in certain geographical areas and provide more pathways to better-resourced neighborhoods. Under the guidelines of the voucher program, the program’s 2 million households pay about 30% of the rent while the voucher covers the balance.

BRHP is the result of a 1995 lawsuit that alleged public housing residents had their fair housing rights violated by being unfairly isolated in the most impoverished areas of Baltimore. Federal District Court Judge Marvin J. Garbis in 2005 ruled that HUD had to take “affirmative” steps to reverse the damage.

The following year, Garbis ordered additional proceedings to determine whether Baltimore public housing tenants had their U.S. Constitutional rights violated by being segregated. The court approved a settlement in 2012 that established HUD’s continued involvement with BRHP.

In the years since, the organization has nearly doubled the number of voucher households it serves, from just under 1,800 families in 2012 to roughly 4,400 now. The housing mobility team has helped families secure housing throughout the metro area, which includes Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Harford, Howard and Carroll counties, in addition to Baltimore City.

The Cityscape paper and BRHP white paper build off previous research about the effectiveness of high-quality counseling services for people seeking to move into high-opportunity areas. Cimbolic said good counselors, coupled with specific BRHP policies, are key to reducing housing voucher concentration.

For example, Cimbolic said, the organization will spend more money on rent in specific neighborhoods — a trade-off that other organizations forego so they can serve a greater number of voucher households. BRHP also said some programs give households only 60 days to apply their vouchers; the organization affords its recipients 120 days instead.

According to data from HUD and BRHP, the concentration of voucher households in the Baltimore region would be 20 percentage points higher if not for BRHP’s existence. Of its roughly 4,400 housing choice voucher recipients, about three-quarters live in areas where less than 5% of residents are voucher holders, according to BHRP’s research, compared to roughly half of all voucher recipients in the region and nationally.

The paper also examined how many of BRHP’s households lived in areas deemed “low-poverty.” According to BHRP, 69% of its households lived in neighborhoods with poverty concentrations lower than 10% — below the U.S. poverty rate. That’s twice the rate of voucher recipients in the region and three times the rate of the voucher recipients nationally.

While housing choice vouchers should provide recipients flexibility in where they live, Cimbolic said they too often are overly prohibitive and prevent neighborhoods from diversifying as designed. That makes it more challenging for voucher recipients to have access to good jobs, schools and transit, and keeps communities stratified.

“If your goal is deconcentration,” he said, “this is a proven way of doing it.”