Effects of Housing Vouchers on Welfare Families

From: HUD USER News
 
The Effects of Housing Choice Vouchers on Welfare
Families presents the final analysis of a study
conducted over several years to measure the impact of
Housing Choice Vouchers on the housing mobility of low-
income families, the characteristics of their
neighborhoods, the composition of their households,
their employment, earnings, participation in education
and training, their receipt of public assistance, their
poverty and material hardship, and the well-being of
their children. This research evaluates the Welfare to
Work Voucher program, initiated in Fiscal Year 1999 when
Congress appropriated $283 million for tenant-based
rental assistance to help families make the transition
from welfare to work.
 
Effects of Housing Choice Vouchers on Welfare Families
examines the longer-term impact on families some three
and a half years after they received a housing voucher.
This report shows that for welfare families, vouchers
are an effective housing program but not an effective
anti-poverty program. The report finds that access to
vouchers essentially eliminated homelessness, greatly
reduced crowding and doubling up, and somewhat improved
the neighborhoods in which extremely low-income families
lived. The voucher had no impact on employment,
earnings, adult educational attainment, food security,
marriage, or cohabitation.
 
The report is available as a download
at www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/commdevl/hsgvouchers.html
and can be ordered for a nominal fee by calling HUD USER
at 1-800-245-2691.
 
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