Cityscape Examines Outcomes of Rental Assistance Programs

April 25, 2018  

Cityscape Examines Outcomes of Rental Assistance Programs

The latest issue of Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research titled "Selected Outcomes of Housing Assistance" features a research symposium on outcomes of various federal housing programs.

Guest editors Meena Bavan and David Hardiman introduce four studies by the Multi-Disciplinary Research Team (MDRT), which is a public-private research delivery vehicle created by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of Policy Development and Research. They describe the growing body of evidence on the importance and effectiveness of federal rental assistance programs, linking housing to health, child development, and upward mobility. They summarize the symposium articles, touching on findings and discussions of the articles, and how the research can contribute to improving federal programs for affordable housing and economic development.

The symposium articles present empirical findings and discuss policy implications.

Kirk McClure explores the length of time that households remain in HUD-assisted housing. He finds that the typical household in assisted housing stays about 6 years. While nonelderly families with children stay an average of 4 years, the elderly stay an average of 9 years. The average length of stay in HUD-assisted housing is also affected by market conditions and household characteristics such as race and ethnicity.

Casey Dawkins and Jae Sik Jeon examine trends in housing cost burdens in the Housing Choice Voucher program. They find that many housing voucher households experienced moderate to severe cost burdens during 2003–15, particularly those renting a unit priced above the payment standard. In addition, tracking a cohort of voucher recipients who entered the program in 2003, those initially leasing a unit above the payment standard were more likely to decrease their cost burden upon mobility.

Anne Ray, Jeongseob Kim, Diep Nguyen, Jongwon Choi, Kelly McElwain, and Keely Jones Stater address the loss of affordable housing inventory in various assisted housing programs. Updating a previous report published in 2006, they find that more owners made active decisions to opt into Section 8 assistance for the period 2005 to 2014, while HUD's older subsidized mortgage programs were largely phased out. In particular, properties with low rents compared to the applicable Fair Market Rent and properties owned by for-profit corporations were at higher risk for losing affordability.

Sandra Newman and Scott Holupka explore the quality of housing units assisted by HUD housing subsidy programs. The authors use two different methods to compare HUD assisted housing quality to quality of units in the private rental market — a "consumer rating index" and a "normative standards index" — that consider physical conditions and factors closely tied to resident satisfaction. The authors find that the quality of assisted housing in HUD programs is comparable to that of unassisted housing in the private rental market. Assisted unit quality compared favorably to both the overall private market and to the portion of the market renting below the Fair Market Rent. The findings also held true across different HUD programs, including both Public Housing and Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers. The findings demonstrate that physically adequate housing for subsidized households results from government inspection and quality control systems. The article also contains a section assessing different methods of comparing housing quality that will be of interest to researchers on this topic in the future.

Kwan Ok Lee responds to the four symposium articles by discussing universal implications and cross-country lessons. She offers future research suggestions on comparative analyses of different housing programs in different countries.

In addition to the symposium, the issue features three refereed papers: Halil Toros and Daniel Flaming's demonstration of predictive algorithms for homeless assistance, Matthew Palm's case study of Small Area Fair Market Rents, and Jenny Schuetz, Genevieve Giuliano, and Eun Jin Shin's analysis of employment and urban built environment in Los Angeles.

Articles in this issue's regularly appearing departments include "First-Time Homebuyers: Toward a New Measure," by Arthur Acolin, Paul Calem, Julapa Jagtiani, and Susan Wachter, and "Do It Yourself: Obtaining Updated Transit Stop and Route Shapefiles in Urban and Nonurban Areas," by Seva Rodnyansky in Data shop; "Calculating Varying Scales of Clustering Among Locations," by Ron Wilson and Alexander Din in SpAM; and "Household Survey on Tribal Lands: Frame Building Through Rural Address-Based Sampling and Traditional Enumeration," by Carol Hafford, Steven Pedlow, and Nancy Pindus in Evaluation Tradecraft.

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