What Interventions Work Best for Families Who Experience Homelessness? Impact Estimates from the Family Options Study

Abstract

What housing and service interventions work best to reduce homelessness for families in the United States? The FamilyOptions Study randomly assigned 2,282 families recruited in homeless shelters across 12 sites to priority access to one of three active interventions or to usual care in their communities. The interventions were long-term rent subsidies, short-term rent subsidies, and transitional housing in supervised programs with intensive psychosocial services. In two waves of follow-up data collected 20 and 37 months later, priority access to long-term rent subsidies reduced homelessness and food insecurity and improved other aspects of adult and child well-being relative to usual care, at a cost 9 percent higher. The other interventions had little effect. The study provides support for the view that homelessness for most families is an economic problem that long-term rent subsidies resolve and does not support the view that families must address psychosocial problems to succeed in housing. It has implications for focusing government resources on this important social problem. C 2018 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

No Place Called Home: Student Homelessness and Structural Correlates

“…We argue that student homelessness is similarly a consequence of conscious policy choices. The negative relationship we found between housing vouchers and literal homelessness contributes to a growing body of research finding that housing and cash assistance programs are indeed an effective means for combating homelessness (Gubits et al 2018;Shaefer et al 2019). Moreover, we found that an increase in rental costs was associated with an increase in doubling up.…”

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