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.

Oregon and Portland Metro Area Profiles of Taxpayers Eligible for the Federal Earned Income Tax Credit.

With earned income credits likely to be included in an Obama stimulus package, I thought this would be a good time to post a profile of Oregon and Portland Metro area taxpayers eligible for the federal earned income tax credit.

(People who know me know that I have said for more than a decade that, given the size of the EITC, it is as important as any rental housing subsidy program in increasing housing affordability by rewarding work and providing additional income to families with children).

[CASH Oregon is the Portland Metro group formed several years ago to help coordinate EITC outreach efforts. Their website is HERE.]

Data is from Brookings Institution, which made estimates using data from the 2007 American Community Survey.

I compiled a side by side PDF file with a table HERE showing Oregon and the Portland metro area; file also includes the Brookings profiles for Oregon and the Portland metro that I used to construct the side by side table. [Table comes first in the download, then the profiles].

Variables include number of children, adjusted gross income, education level, top 5 industry and jobs, race and ethnicity, amount of the EITC, age of tax filer, tenure of tax filer, and food stamp use of filer.

Oregon Highlights:

1. 298,000+ EITC eligible filers have a total household population of more than 816,000.
2. 57% of EITC eligible filers have an adjusted gross income of less than $15,000.
3. 32% of EITC eligible filers receive food stamps.
4. 38% of EITC eligible filers have two or more children.
5. 12% of EITC eligible filers are in the military.
6. 41% of EITC eligible filers would receive a credit of $2,000 or more.
7. Top 5 industry employers of EITC eligible filers are retail, health care, manufacturing, food service/accommodations, and construction.
8. 43% of EITC eligible filers have at least some college; 19% have an associate degree or higher.

Oregon Example: Postive Family Income Impacts of Mainstream Programs.

With the annual Oregon poverty conference coming up soon and my recent stories about SCHIP and the Healthy Kids Ballot measure, I thought it would be interesting to develop an example showing the impact of mainstream programs on family incomes and the variable share of costs paid for by those programs. The programs I chose for this example were health insurance, food stamps, rent assistance, and earned income tax credits.

Using a variety of data sources, I estimated the share of costs for these items paid for by the government, and the resulting family savings, for a working family with two adults and one child, with one adult working at 110% of the 2008 Oregon minimum wage.

The details are found in the PDF HERE. The summary is that these four support programs:

• Increased income by 56%, more than $10,000 a year.

• Moved the family from 104% of the poverty level to 162% of the poverty level.