Harvard Joint Center Study on HUD Voucher Impact for TANF Families.

Thanks to NLIHC M2M item HERE, a link to a follow up Harvard Joint Center study on the impact of HUD housing vouchers and TANF families is HERE.

From the Executive Summary:

The voucher program has some effect on reducing the percentage of families with children that live in highly concentrated poverty and for permitting particular families to move away from the neighborhoods with the greatest poverty concentrations. However, the effects are modest in size, and further analysis of data from the Housing Voucher Evaluation finds that the effects are concentrated among families who lived in the most concentrated poverty to begin with—in particular, in public housing.
...we cannot rely on vouchers by themselves and as currently implemented to reduce racial concentrations and increase access to high opportunity neighborhoods. Other “mobility” efforts are needed and might include changes to the way the voucher program is administered, counseling programs to help families use their vouchers to move to better neighborhoods, or use of vouchers in combination with supply-side rental subsidy programs.
Programs designed to prevent homelessness should be concentrated—explicitly or indirectly—on communities with high proportions of African Americans.
The best predictor of homelessness as revealed by this study is previous housing instability: not having a place of one’s own or moving frequently. Those who are living with friends or relatives at baseline are at risk of being homeless at a later point, particularly of having to stay with friends or relatives in the future. Programs that attempt to target families at highest risk of homelessness should look for these patterns in screening interviews.
We also find that those who continue to hold vouchers at follow-up are faring better than those who have relinquished them. These patterns point toward the effectiveness of vouchers as a source of income support for poor families for children. However, families with vouchers often give them up because of the program’s administrative failures or because of lack of information, and families who give vouchers up end up in worse circumstances that those who go on using vouchers. The program’s rules do need to be redesigned to help families keep their assistance….those who use vouchers to become independent remain in precarious circumstances—for example, they have more food insecurity.
We also find, by looking at what happens to families after they relinquish their vouchers, that vouchers do not seem to create a platform on which families with children can build to a point at which they can afford to rent on their own without an excessive rent burden. These findings imply that additional work supports (perhaps an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit) are needed. They also imply that time limiting vouchers or creating a voucher subsidy that “steps down” or phases out would leave formerly assisted voucher families in precarious economic circumstances.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.