Housing Assistance, Poverty, and Material Hardships

Abstract

This article documents the antipoverty effects of housing assistance programs and their relationships with other life circumstances. Using a novel sample of urban households, we examine how participation trajectories in housing programs (including Section 8/public housing and rent regulation) affect households’ housing deprivation, income poverty, and other forms of material hardships. Employing a propensity score matching technique, we find evidence that individuals who remain in subsidized units are significantly less likely to experience rent burden, become homeless, or live in overcrowded environments. They also face lower odds of poverty than their eligible non-/past-assisted counterparts. However, we find that living in subsidized housing has almost no impact on material hardship. Also, we find no relationship between living in rent-stabilized housing and low-income households’ material or housing hardship.