New Reports and Data from PD&R

Worst Case Housing Needs: 2023 Report to Congress - Executive Summary

Worst-case need is a longstanding metric for evaluating the extent of unfulfilled requirements concerning affordable rental housing of acceptable quality. This Executive Summary provides an overview of the forthcoming Worst Case Housing Needs: 2023 Report to Congress, which draws extensively from the 2021 American Housing Survey. The report reveals that, since 2019, worst case housing needs have escalated across diverse demographics, household structures, and geographic regions within the United States. The demand for suitable, secure, and reasonably priced rental housing continues to surpass income growth and the capacity of federal, state, and local governments to provide housing assistance and promote the creation of affordable housing. This has resulted in a notable outcome — the number of low-income families facing worst case housing needs in 2021 has exceeded prior records set during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. The report's scope encompasses housing needs in mid-2021, around eighteen months after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated brief recession in early 2020.

Supporting Aging in Place Through IWISH: Results from the First Phase of the Supportive Services Demonstration

The Supportive Services Demonstration evaluation is a cluster-randomized controlled trial that examines the effectiveness of the Integrated Wellness in Supportive Housing (IWISH) model. This model focuses on coordinated service delivery to meet health and supportive needs among elderly residents in HUD-assisted properties, aiming to reduce hospitalizations, increase primary care use, extend housing stays, and decrease transitions to long-term care. The IWISH model includes a Resident Wellness Director and a Wellness Nurse to manage services and implement key components, such as proactive engagement, health assessments, wellness plans, data tracking, partnerships with service providers, and evidence-based programming. The report presents a quantitative analysis of IWISH's impact on healthcare use and housing stability after three years. Congress extended the evaluation for two more years and a final comprehensive report is expected at the study's completion.

Measuring Housing Insecurity: Index Development Using American Housing Survey Data

Affordable and suitable housing enhances individual and societal well-being, along with positive health, education, and employment outcomes. However, inconsistent measurement of housing insecurity has hindered accurate tracking. To address this, HUD created a Housing Insecurity Research Module in the 2019 American Housing Survey to standardize questions for measuring housing insecurity. Researchers used this data to create an index factoring in affordability, stable occupancy, and safety and decency dimensions. They also developed measurement models, validated them to create "gold standard" classifications and six housing insecurity profiles, and established practical, transferable measures. These models were confirmed against the 2019 AHS data and statistically tested. Latent Class Analysis (LCA) revealed six validated profiles spanning the housing insecurity continuum, correlated with external indicators. Reduced dimensions and profiles were derived, showing promise in accurately measuring housing insecurity, though consistency across diverse samples requires further investigation.

Designing for Natural Hazards Series Volumes 1 - 5

HUD requested Home Innovation Research Labs to develop a set of practical, actionable guidelines to assist builders and developers in designing and constructing residential buildings, neighborhoods, and accessory structures to improve resilience to natural hazards. The resilience guides provide straightforward, technical content and provide references for design professionals, builders, developers, and public officials to obtain full details. The guide consists of five volumes. Each volume focuses on a major category of hazard that may pertain to a given project: wind, water, fire, earth (seismic, earthslides, sinkholes), and auxiliary (other hazards such as volcanoes, hail, and temperature extremes). These resilience guides are not intended to substitute for engineering or architectural project design work. Rather, the technical guidance identifies components that can be enhanced or improved to achieve above-code performance to make residential buildings and other community assets more resilient.

Evaluating MTW Flexibility for Smaller PHAs: Baseline Report

This report evaluates the first cohort of agencies participating in the Moving to Work (MTW) expansion. In particular, it focuses on how smaller public housing agencies (PHAs) use the flexibility offered by their new MTW designation to achieve the statutory objectives of the MTW program and what the consequences of that flexibility are for housing authority operations and tenants. The study compares the outcomes of the first cohort of MTW expansion applicants that were randomly selected to apply for MTW designation (treatment group) to the outcomes of the MTW expansion applicants that were not randomly selected to apply for MTW designation (control group). This baseline report is the first of five annual reports that will be generated under this evaluation. Using data from PHA applications and telephone interviews, the report finds that improving cost-effectiveness is the most important objective motivating PHAs to apply for MTW. Many of the PHAs have ambitious plans, including altering the (income and eligibility) reexamination process and using their MTW flexibility to add landlord incentives, implement work requirements, add local non-traditional programs, make changes to their self-sufficiency programs, or use funding fungibility to address programmatic outcomes. Finally, the report documents the characteristics of the PHAs in the evaluation and their tenants prior to MTW designation.

Overcoming Barriers to Innovation in the Home Building Industry

This study seeks to understand the impediments to development and diffusion of innovative technologies in the homebuilding industry. The research builds on a 2005 HUD-sponsored study, “Overcoming Barriers to Innovation in the Home Building Industry.” To gather information about the changing situation for housing innovation, in the summer of 2021, HUD sponsored four expert panels that focused on how education needs, risk, industry fragmentation, and behavioral factors and biases affect housing innovation. Participating experts discussed the current landscape of innovation in housing technology and process, identified barriers that continue to thwart innovation, and explored opportunities for collaboration and future research. A major focus was identifying strategies already working and opportunities to disseminate those strategies, such as Federal incentives that support the adoption of new technologies. The report presents findings from a literature review and the expert panels and concludes by listing challenges from the 2005 report that remain unresolved today.

Picture of Subsidized Households: 2022 Data Based on 2020 Census

State of the Cities Data Systems: Building Permits June 2023

State of the Cities Data Systems: Building Permits May 2023

FY 2023 HOME Homeownership Value Limits Effective July 1, 2023

FY 2023 Housing Trust Fund Homeownership Value Limits Effective July 1, 2023

State of the Cities Data Systems: Building Permits April 2023

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