Research Partnership Reports

Research Partnerships

Research Partnership Reports:

Reports
An Evaluation of the New York City Housing Authority’s Family Reentry Pilot Program: Final Report to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development In 2014 the Vera Institute of Justice entered into a research partnership with PD&R to evaluate a pilot program to test the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) new tenant selection criteria allowing 150 formerly incarcerated individuals to return to NYCHA housing and move in with their families. The two-year evaluation had two main goals: (1) to describe pilot participants’ characteristics, including their needs, experiences, and short-term program outcomes (outcome study); and (2) to assess the pilot’s design, implementation, and feasibility for scaling-up and replicating it in other jurisdictions (implementation and process study). Data collection included in-person semi-structured interviews with program participants, non-participating applicants, family members, and service providers; review of program reports; analysis of administrative data from New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) and New York City Department of Homeless Services (DHS).
Encouraging Residential Moves to Opportunity Neighborhoods: An Experiment Testing Incentives Offered to Housing Voucher Recipients This study tests whether mobility counseling and cash incentives will affect a Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) recipient’s move to an opportunity area. Opportunity areas are defined as tracks rated 6-10 on a HUD-created index—factoring in poverty, housing stability, job and transit access, school quality, and employment. This move from a non-opportunity neighborhood (ranked 1-5) to an opportunity neighborhood (ranked 6-10) is considered an “opportunity move.” When a HCV recipient requests to move to a new housing unit, they must work with their Public Housing Authority (PHA).
Childhood Housing and Adult Earnings: A Between-Siblings Analysis of Housing Vouchers and Public Housing This study estimates the effect of residence in voucher-supported and public housing as a teenager on earnings and incarceration as a young adult. Receiving HUD rental assistance as a teenager yields substantial positive effects on later income from earnings as a young adult. Both living in public housing and living in a housing voucher-subsidized unit lead to positive and significant effects on later earnings for both male and female teenagers. The study found corresponding reductions in the likelihood of adult incarceration with lower mean incarceration rates for both males and females.
HOPE VI Data Compilation and Analysis This report relies on performance measurement data that HOPE VI grantees report to HUD. Those performance measurement data summarize activities of HOPE VI grantees, with particular emphasis on demolition and production of housing units, and also supportive services provided to residents. The Case Western University research team has analyzed those performance measurement data to create an overall assessment of the HOPE VI program. Their report reinforces many well-understood aspects of the HOPE VI program: that it resulted in a net loss of public housing units; that a low proportion of baseline residents returned to completed developments; and that the program produced new units of different types, including other forms of affordable housing, market rate housing, and both rental and homeownership units. Research on HOPE VI tailed off substantially after 2004, so this report is perhaps the most comprehensive accounting of the program’s outputs.
The Impacts of Self-Sufficiency Interventions on Recipients of Rental Housing Subsidies: An Exploratory Analysis of Data from Selected Randomized Controlled Trials This working paper explores the effects of various employment-advancement or antipoverty initiatives on labor market outcomes for participants in those programs who were also recipients of government rental subsidies. The findings are based on exploratory secondary analyses of data from a collection of randomized trials for which MDRC served as the evaluator. The purpose of these secondary analyses was to produce evidence that could help guide planning for future programs aiming to help housing-assistance recipients obtain, sustain, and advance in employment.
What Happens to Housing Assistance Leavers? Despite the large body of research on housing assistance programs, few researchers have attempted to study what happens to recipients when they leave assisted housing. This paper uses data tracking HUD’s Moving to Opportunity demonstration participants over time, including after they leave housing assistance, to study the factors that cause households to leave assistance and how the experiences of leavers compare with households that remain on assistance. This paper also explores how the Great Recession may have influenced the lives of housing assistance leavers, especially those who had attempted to become homeowners.
The Bridge to Family Self-Sufficiency (BridgeFSS) Demonstration Housing subsidies, which help low-income families pay their rent and utilities in public housing developments or in the private rental market, are a vital component of the national social safety net. For many very low-income families, they stand directly between decent, stable housing and homelessness. They are also sometimes viewed as a “work support,” with the expectation that stable housing makes it easier to find a job and remain employed. Yet, several rigorous studies have found that housing subsidies by themselves (i.e., in the absence of a work-focused intervention) may not improve average employment rates and earnings for low-income adults, and may even worsen them somewhat under some conditions. More encouragingly, a number of other studies show that housing subsidies can be used effectively as a “platform” for employment, in that certain work-focused interventions can improve labor market outcomes for individuals already receiving housing subsidies. Still, such evidence is limited, and little proof exists of any interventions producing “transformative” effects – that is, helping large proportions and a diverse mix of participating tenants achieve earnings gains that are large enough to help them exit the housing subsidy system and other government transfer programs.
The Second Generation Of Jobs-Plus Programs: Implementation Lessons from San Antonio and the Bronx The report includes findings on the process, methods and organizational approach used in the implementation of the Jobs Plus work incentive and services program at two public housing authorities (San Antonio and New York City) using a Social Innovation Fund (SIF) grant. While the report does not include outcome effects for assisted housing residents, it does include findings on the very limited take-up rate of Earned Income Disregard (EID) incentives, pointing to a major obstacle to the overall potential success of the initiative at these two sites. The EID reached only approximately 1 percent of working-age adults in the Bronx and 3 percent in San Antonio.

An Evaluation of the New York City Housing Authority’s Family Reentry Pilot Program: Final Report to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

In 2014 the Vera Institute of Justice entered into a research partnership with PD&R to evaluate a pilot program to test the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) new tenant selection criteria allowing 150 formerly incarcerated individuals to return to NYCHA housing and move in with their families. The two-year evaluation had two main goals: (1) to describe pilot participants’ characteristics, including their needs, experiences, and short-term program outcomes (outcome study); and (2) to assess the pilot’s design, implementation, and feasibility for scaling-up and replicating it in other jurisdictions (implementation and process study). Data collection included in-person semi-structured interviews with program participants, non-participating applicants, family members, and service providers; review of program reports; analysis of administrative data from New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) and New York City Department of Homeless Services (DHS).

Encouraging Residential Moves to Opportunity Neighborhoods: An Experiment Testing Incentives Offered to Housing Voucher Recipients

This study tests whether mobility counseling and cash incentives will affect a Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) recipient’s move to an opportunity area. Opportunity areas are defined as tracks rated 6-10 on a HUD-created index—factoring in poverty, housing stability, job and transit access, school quality, and employment. This move from a non-opportunity neighborhood (ranked 1-5) to an opportunity neighborhood (ranked 6-10) is considered an “opportunity move.” When a HCV recipient requests to move to a new housing unit, they must work with their Public Housing Authority (PHA).

Childhood Housing and Adult Earnings: A Between-Siblings Analysis of Housing Vouchers and Public Housing

This study estimates the effect of residence in voucher-supported and public housing as a teenager on earnings and incarceration as a young adult. Receiving HUD rental assistance as a teenager yields substantial positive effects on later income from earnings as a young adult. Both living in public housing and living in a housing voucher-subsidized unit lead to positive and significant effects on later earnings for both male and female teenagers. The study found corresponding reductions in the likelihood of adult incarceration with lower mean incarceration rates for both males and females.

HOPE VI Data Compilation and Analysis

This report relies on performance measurement data that HOPE VI grantees report to HUD. Those performance measurement data summarize activities of HOPE VI grantees, with particular emphasis on demolition and production of housing units, and also supportive services provided to residents. The Case Western University research team has analyzed those performance measurement data to create an overall assessment of the HOPE VI program. Their report reinforces many well-understood aspects of the HOPE VI program: that it resulted in a net loss of public housing units; that a low proportion of baseline residents returned to completed developments; and that the program produced new units of different types, including other forms of affordable housing, market rate housing, and both rental and homeownership units. Research on HOPE VI tailed off substantially after 2004, so this report is perhaps the most comprehensive accounting of the program’s outputs.

The Impacts of Self-Sufficiency Interventions on Recipients of Rental Housing Subsidies: An Exploratory Analysis of Data from Selected Randomized Controlled Trials

This working paper explores the effects of various employment-advancement or antipoverty initiatives on labor market outcomes for participants in those programs who were also recipients of government rental subsidies. The findings are based on exploratory secondary analyses of data from a collection of randomized trials for which MDRC served as the evaluator. The purpose of these secondary analyses was to produce evidence that could help guide planning for future programs aiming to help housing-assistance recipients obtain, sustain, and advance in employment.

What Happens to Housing Assistance Leavers?

Despite the large body of research on housing assistance programs, few researchers have attempted to study what happens to recipients when they leave assisted housing. This paper uses data tracking HUD’s Moving to Opportunity demonstration participants over time, including after they leave housing assistance, to study the factors that cause households to leave assistance and how the experiences of leavers compare with households that remain on assistance. This paper also explores how the Great Recession may have influenced the lives of housing assistance leavers, especially those who had attempted to become homeowners.

The Bridge to Family Self-Sufficiency (BridgeFSS) Demonstration

Housing subsidies, which help low-income families pay their rent and utilities in public housing developments or in the private rental market, are a vital component of the national social safety net. For many very low-income families, they stand directly between decent, stable housing and homelessness. They are also sometimes viewed as a “work support,” with the expectation that stable housing makes it easier to find a job and remain employed. Yet, several rigorous studies have found that housing subsidies by themselves (i.e., in the absence of a work-focused intervention) may not improve average employment rates and earnings for low-income adults, and may even worsen them somewhat under some conditions. More encouragingly, a number of other studies show that housing subsidies can be used effectively as a “platform” for employment, in that certain work-focused interventions can improve labor market outcomes for individuals already receiving housing subsidies. Still, such evidence is limited, and little proof exists of any interventions producing “transformative” effects – that is, helping large proportions and a diverse mix of participating tenants achieve earnings gains that are large enough to help them exit the housing subsidy system and other government transfer programs.

The Second Generation Of Jobs-Plus Programs: Implementation Lessons from San Antonio and the Bronx

The report includes findings on the process, methods and organizational approach used in the implementation of the Jobs Plus work incentive and services program at two public housing authorities (San Antonio and New York City) using a Social Innovation Fund (SIF) grant. While the report does not include outcome effects for assisted housing residents, it does include findings on the very limited take-up rate of Earned Income Disregard (EID) incentives, pointing to a major obstacle to the overall potential success of the initiative at these two sites. The EID reached only approximately 1 percent of working-age adults in the Bronx and 3 percent in San Antonio.

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