Housing and Children’s Healthy Development (HCHD) is a longitudinal study of families with children aged 3 to 10 years of age at the study’s inception that tests the impact of offering the families rental assistance through HUD’s Housing Choice Voucher program on their housing choices, housing and neighborhood quality, and children’s development. The study intends to reveal how being offered the housing choice voucher affects parents’ housing choices and children’s development. It includes a voucher sample of 895 households (1,231 children) randomly selected to receive or not receive the offer of a housing choice voucher in Cleveland, OH and Dallas, TX. It also includes a sample of 894 (1,194 children) households from the general population of families with children from a range of income levels. The Baseline Report describes the research questions, the contribution of the research, and research methods, including sites, sampling, and data collection. This research was funded by the MacArthur Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and HUD.

HCHD is designed to address four policy research questions:

1. What are the effects of housing on children net of the other important influences on children’s lives, including their families, neighborhoods, and schools?
2. What features of housing matter most?
3. For whom and in what circumstances does housing matter?
4. How do families with young children make housing, neighborhood, and school choices; what are the effects of these choices; and how would these effects change if their choices changed?

For more information on the Housing and Children's Healthy Development (HCHD), please visit the study landing page.