In April 2015, amidst the unrest following the death of Freddie Gray, national and local media were quick to cast the youth in Baltimore as “thugs” and troublemakers. However, these media accounts were nearly devoid of the voices of youth themselves. To discover these voices, the Hearing Their Voices team at the Poverty and Inequality Research Lab at Johns Hopkins University conducted in-depth interviews with 58 young people between the ages of 15 and 24 from some of Baltimore’s most impoverished neighborhoods.

This qualitative study conducts interviews with youth aged 15-24 who moved with the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program. These interviews focus on education, employment, risky behavior, family formation, and mental health, delving into the rich array of social processes and contextual factors that may underlie differing outcomes for youth and their transition to early adulthood.