Research Shows Housing Vouchers Reduce Hardship and Provide Platform for Long-Term Gains Among Children
End Notes
[1] For an overview of the voucher program, see “Policy Basics: The Housing Voucher Program, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, January 25, 2013, https://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=279.
[2] Data are from a follow-up survey conducted four and a half to five years after random assignment. Data show the percentage of families that were homeless and without homes of their own during the 12 months preceding the survey, the percentage in overcrowded housing at the time of the survey, and the total number of moves during the period after random assignment. This study targeted families who received, had recently received, or were eligible for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and 80 percent of participants received TANF benefits at the start of the evaluation. By the end of the study period, however, only about 30 percent of participants received TANF benefits. By comparison, 19 percent of all voucher holders with children received TANF benefits in 2010 according to HUD data. Michelle Wood, Jennifer Turnham, and Gregory Mills, “Housing Affordability and Family Well-Being: Results from the Housing Voucher Evaluation,” Housing Policy Debate, Vol. 19, issue 2, pp. 367-412, 2008; Gregory Mills et al., “Effects of Housing Vouchers on Welfare Families,” prepared for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Policy Development and Research, September 2006.
[3] Gubits et al., Family Options Study: Short-Term Impacts of Housing and Services Interventions for Homeless Families, prepared for Department of Housing and Urban Development, July 2015, http://www.huduser.org/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/FamilyOptionsStudy_final.pdf.
[4] Marybeth Shinn et al., “Long-Term Associations of Homelessness with Children’s Well-Being,” American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 51, No. 6, February 2008; Linda C. Berti et al., “Comparison of Health Status of Children Using a School-Based Health Center for Comprehensive Care,” Journal of Pediatric Health Care, Vol. 15, pp. 244-250, September/October 2001.
[5] Berti et al, note 4.
[6] Stanley K. Frencher et al., “A Comparative Analysis of Serious Injury among Homeless and Housed Low Income Residents of New York City,” Trauma, Vol. 69, No. 4, October 2010.
[7] Frencher et al., note 6.
[8] Jelena Obradovic et al., “Academic Achievement of Homeless and Highly Mobile Children in an Urban School District,” Development and Psychopathology, 2009.
[9] Lorraine E. Maxwell, “Home and School Density Effects on Elementary School Children: The Role of Spatial Density,” Environment and Behavior, Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 566-578, 2003.
[10] Frank Braconi, “Housing and Schooling,” The Urban Prospect, Citizens Housing and Planning Council, 2001; Dalton Conley, “A Room with a View or a Room of One’s Own? Housing and Social Stratification,” Sociological Forum, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 263-280, 2001. Maxwell, note 9.
[11] Maxwell, note 9.
[12] Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest and Claire C. McKenna, “Early Childhood Housing Instability and School Readiness,” Child Development, 2013.
[13] David T. Burkam et al., “School Mobility in the Early Elementary Grades: Frequency and Impact from Nationally Representative Data,” prepared for workshop on Impact of Mobility and Change on the Lives of Young Children, Schools, and Neighborhoods, June 4, 2009; Arthur J. Reynolds, Chin-Chih Chen, and Janette Herbers, “School Mobility and Educational Success: A Research Synthesis and Evidence on Prevention,” prepared for workshop on Impact of Mobility and Change on the Lives of Young Children, Schools, and Neighborhoods, June 22, 2009.
[14] Janette Herbers et al., “School Mobility and Developmental Outcomes in Young Adulthood,” Development and Psychopathology, Vol. 25, pp. 501-515, 2013.
[15] David Kerbow, “Patterns of Urban Student Mobility and Local School Reform: Technical Report,” Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk, October 1996.
[16] Stephen W. Raudenbush, Marshall Jean, and Emily Art, “Year-by-Year and Cumulative Impacts of Attending a High-Mobility Elementary School on Children's Mathematics Achievement in Chicago, 1995-2005,” in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances, eds. Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane, Russell Sage Foundation and Spencer Foundation, pp. 359-375; Eric A. Hanushek et al., “Disruption versus Tiebout Improvement: the Costs and Benefits of Switching Schools,” Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 88, pp. 1721-1746, 2004.
[17] Michael S. Hurlburt, Patricia A. Wood, and Richard L. Hough, “Providing Independent Housing for the Homeless Mentally Ill: A Novel Approach to Evaluating Long-Term Housing Patterns,” Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 291-310, 1996.
[18] Robert Rosenheck et al., “Cost-effectiveness of Supported Housing for Homeless Persons with Mental Illness,” Archives of General Psychiatry, September 2003; Maria J. O’Connell, Wesley Kasprow, and Robert A. Rosenheck, “Rates and Risk Factors in a Sample of Formerly Homeless Veterans,” Psychiatric Services, Vol. 59, No. 3, March 2008.
[19] CBPP calculations from Kathleen Short, The Supplemental Poverty Measure 2014, Census Bureau Series P60-254, September 2015, http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p60-254.pdf. The Current Population Survey data used to produce these estimates do not reliably distinguish between the effects of vouchers and other forms of rental assistance, such as public housing and project-based rental assistance. However, vouchers assist approximately half of the people with rental assistance and target a larger share of assistance on the poorest families than other forms of rental assistance do. Thus, vouchers likely account for at least half of rental assistance recipients lifted out of poverty.
[20] Jack P. Shonkoff, et al., “The Lifelong Effects of Early Childhood Adversity and Toxic Stress,” PEDIATRICS, Vol. 129, No. 1, pp. e232 -e246, 2012, http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/129/1/e232; Nicole L. Hair, et al., “Association of Child Poverty, Brain Development, and Academic Achievement,” JAMA Pediatrics,169(9), pp. 822-829, 2015; Mark M. Kishiyama et al., “Socioeconomic Disparities Affect Prefrontal Function in Children,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21(6), pp. 1106–15, 2009.
[21] Greg J. Duncan and Katherine Magnuson, “The Long Reach of Early Childhood Poverty,” Pathways, Winter 2011,
http://www.stanford.edu/group/scspi/_media/pdf/pathways/winter_2011/PathwaysWinter11_Duncan.pdf. There has been little rigorous research regarding the long-term impact on children’s well-being of vouchers generally (although vouchers used in low-poverty neighborhoods have major long-term benefits). One study found that vouchers issued to families in Chicago had no significant effect on several measures of child well-being over a 14-year period, but that finding may not be applicable elsewhere. The study uses an experimental design and has a large sample size, making the findings highly reliable for the population it studies, but it only assesses families issued vouchers in 1997-98 and 2000-03 in Chicago. Chicago had a far greater degree of racial segregation and a far higher share of vouchers concentrated in high-poverty areas than was (or is) typical nationally. Moreover, the city at that time was undertaking the nation’s largest public housing transformation — a process that resulted in many public housing residents being displaced, issued vouchers, and placed in competition with other voucher holders for apartments, and may have made it harder for families to use their vouchers in stable, well-located housing of adequate quality that they could rent with their vouchers. These conditions may have muted vouchers’ positive effects, making it unclear whether the study’s findings can be generalized to voucher holders in other places and times. Brian Jacob, Max Kapustin, and Jens Ludwig, “Human Capital Effects of Anti-Poverty Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Housing Voucher Lottery,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 20164, May 2014, http://www.nber.org/papers/w20164.
[22] Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, “America’s Rental Housing: Evolving Markets and Needs,” December 2013, p. 32, http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/jchs_americas_rental_housing_2013_1_0.pdf.
[23] Sandra Newman and Scott Holupka, “Housing Affordability and Child Well-Being,” Housing Policy Debate, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp 116-151, 2015.
[24] Sandra J. Newman and C. Scott Holupka, “Housing Affordability and Investments in Children,” Journal of Housing Economics, December 2013.
[25] Elizabeth March et al., “Behind Closed Doors: The Hidden Health Impacts of Being Behind on Rent,” Children’s HealthWatch, January 2011, http://www.childrenshealthwatch.org/upload/resource/behindcloseddoors_report_jan11.pdf.
[26] Barbara Sard, “Most Rental Assistance Recipients Work, Are Elderly, or Have Disabilities,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, July 17, 2013, https://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3992.
[27] For assessments of the research, see James A. Riccio, “Subsidized Housing and Employment: Building Evidence of What Works,” in Nicolas P. Retsinas and Eric S. Belsky, eds., Revisiting Rental Housing, Joint Center for Housing Studies and Brookings Institution Press, 2008; Sandra Newman, C. Scott Holupka, and Joseph Harkness, “The Long-Term Effects of Housing Assistance on Work and Welfare,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, volume 28, number 1, 81-101, 2009; and Jeff Lubell, “Rental Assistance: A Drag on Work or a Platform for Opportunity?,” Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, December 12, 2011, http://www.spotlightonpoverty.org/ExclusiveCommentary.aspx?id=8f1764fe-5e54-4e1d-aee1-71e51f8bbc2e. While these assessments were published before the final version of the most rigorous study (Jacob and Ludwig, note 28) finding that vouchers reduce work, they were able to consider the central findings of that study — along with other research — because those findings had been published in working papers as early as 2006.
[28] Wood et al, note 2. As discussed above, this study examined families with children that received, had recently received, or were eligible for TANF benefits at the start of the study (although fewer than a third actually received TANF benefits by the end of the study). This may limit the applicability of the findings to other groups, particularly households without children. Two recent non-experimental studies that examined the effects of rental assistance on work among broader populations also found early negative effects on work but found that those effects were not sustained over the course of the study period. See Deven Carlson et al., “Long-Term Effects of Public Low-Income Housing Vouchers on Labor Market Outcomes,” Institute for Research on Poverty discussion paper no. 1363-09, April 2009; and Newman et al., note 27. The ongoing study of vouchers for homeless families discussed above found lower employment among families issued vouchers, but results are only available for the first 18 months so it is not yet clear whether they will disappear over time like the employment effects in the national study of TANF-eligible families or persist like those in the Chicago study. See Gubits et al., note 3.
[29] Brian A. Jacob and Jens Ludwig, “The Effects of Housing Assistance on Labor Supply: Evidence from a Voucher Lottery,” American Economic Review, Vol. 101, No. 1, pp. 272-304, 2012. This study used the same sample as the study of child well-being discussed in note 21, and may not be generalizable for the same reasons.
[30] Riccio, note 27.
[31] Lalith de Silva et al, “Evaluation of the Family Self-Sufficiency Program: Prospective Study,” prepared for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Policy Development and Research, February 2011; Nandita Verma et al, “Working Toward Self-Sufficiency: Early Findings from a Program for Housing Voucher Recipients in New York City,” Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, December 2012.
[32] Michael Lens et al, “Do Vouchers Help Low-Income Households Live in Safer Neighborhoods? Evidence on the Housing Choice Voucher Program,” Cityscape, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2011; Wood et al., note 2.
[33] Barbara Sard and Douglas Rice, “Realizing the Housing Voucher Program’s Potential to Enable Families to Move to Better Neighborhoods,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, updated January 12, 2016, https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/11-9-15hous.pdf.
[34] For example, early research shows that a “small area fair market rent” policy that sets voucher subsidy caps in particular neighborhoods based on market rents for that neighborhood (as opposed to rents for the entire metropolitan area, as under the current policy) is more effective at enabling families to live in neighborhoods with better schools, more college graduates, and less violent crime, poverty, and unemployment. Robert A. Collinson and Peter Ganong, “The Incidence of Housing Voucher Generosity,” May 2015, p. 16, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=2255799.
[35] Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence F. Katz, “The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment,” May 2015, http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/lkatz/files/mto_manuscript_may2015.pdf.
[36] Lisa Sanbonmatsu et al., “Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Final Demonstration Program: Final Impacts Evaluation,” prepared for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, 2011, http://www.huduser.org/portal/publications/pubasst/MTOFHD.html.
[37] Ingrid Gould Ellen, Michael E. Lens, and Katherine O’Regan, “American Murder Mystery Revisited: Do Housing Vouchers Cause Crime?” Housing Policy Debate, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 551-572, 2012.
[38] Corporation for Supportive Housing, “Is Supportive Housing a Cost-Effective Means of Preserving Families and Increasing Child Safety? Cost Analysis of CSH’s Keeping Families Together Pilot,” 2011; Donna Tapper, “Keeping Families Together: An Evaluation of the Implementation and Outcomes of a Pilot Supportive Housing Model for Families Involved in the Child Welfare System,” Metis Associates, November 2010. The Department of Health and Human Services is currently carrying out a broader demonstration testing this approach.
[39] Gubits el al., 2015.
[40] Michael Nardone, Richard Cho, and Kathy Moses, “Medicaid-Financed Services in Supportive Housing for High-Need Homeless Beneficiaries: The Business Case,” Center for Health Care Strategies, Inc., June 2012, http://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2012/06/medicaid-financed-services-in-supportive-housing-for-high-need-h.html; Mary E. Larimer et al., “Health Care and Public Service Use and Costs Before and After Provision of Housing for Chronically Homeless Persons with Severe Alcohol Problems,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 301:1349-1357, 2009; Dennis P. Culhane, Stephen Metraux, and Trevor Hadley, “Public Service Reductions Associated with Placement of Homeless Persons with Severe Mental Illness in Supportive Housing,” Housing Policy Debate, Vol. 13, issue 1, 2002.
[41] Roger J. Stancliffe and K. Charlie Lakin, “Analysis of Expenditures and Outcomes of Residential Alternatives for Persons with Developmental Disabilities,” American Journal on Mental Retardation, Vol. 102, No. 6, pp. 552–68, 1998; Barbara A. Haley and Robert W. Gray, “Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly: Program Status and Performance Measurement,” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, June 2008.