Rental Assistance Program Research Articles

The new informality? The financialization of informal housing as a parasitic relation (2023) Plenary Commentary

ABSTRACT This paper responds to Raquel Rolnik's Urban Geography Plenary Lecture, delivered at the 2023 American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, titled “The Empire Strikes Back.” Rolnik's essay introduces the idea that a “new informality” has begun in Latin American cities. She uses this concept to understand how financial innovations like digital platforms and state-backed rental assistance programs draw informal housing into bankable debt relations without needing to convert them into cadastral property. This paper uses Marx's distinction between formal and real subsumption, and Gidwani's theorization of the parasitism of capital, to reframe Rolnik's provocative argument via the noncapital–capital relation. It then raises three questions about the empirical “next steps” of research into the financialization of informal housing that need to be explored to understand the novelty of financialization in the global South. These pertain to (i) the normative logics governing racialized and other forms of difference upon which financialization feeds and depends, (ii) the scale at which financial innovations should be studied and the presumed coherence “high finance” should be granted as an analytical category, and (iii) the fictions used to generate and sustain political buy-in for financial capital's attempt to subsume/consume informal lifeworlds.

Preventing Eviction-Caused Homelessness through ML-Informed Distribution of Rental Assistance

Rental assistance programs provide individuals with financial assistance to prevent housing instabilities caused by evictions and avert homelessness. Since these programs operate under resource constraints, they must decide who to prioritize. Typically, funding is distributed by a reactive allocation process that does not systematically consider risk of future homelessness. We partnered with Anonymous County (PA) to explore a proactive and preventative allocation approach that prioritizes individuals facing eviction based on their risk of future homelessness. Our ML models, trained on state and county administrative data accurately identify at-risk individuals, outperforming simpler prioritization approaches by at least 20% while meeting our equity and fairness goals across race and gender. Furthermore, our approach would reach 28% of individuals who are overlooked by the current process and end up homeless. Beyond improvements to the rental assistance program in Anonymous County, this study can inform the development of evidence-based decision support tools in similar contexts, including lessons about data needs, model design, evaluation, and field validation.

Association Between Rental Assistance Programs and Undiagnosed Diabetes Among U.S.

Rental assistance programs have been linked to better housing quality, stability, healthcare access, and reduced likelihood of uncontrolled diabetes. However, its direct association with diabetes screening is uncertain. To determine whether federal rental assistance programs are associated with lower odds of undiagnosed diabetes. We used a quasi-experimental approach, comparing outcomes among adults receiving rental assistance to those who entered assisted housing within 2 years after their health data were collected. We test the a priori hypothesis that rental assistance will be associated with decreased odds of undiagnosed diabetes. Participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2018 who received rental assistance and who had diabetes. Current rental assistance participation, including specific housing programs. Undiagnosed diabetes based on having hemoglobin A1c ≥ 6.5% but answering no to the survey question of being diagnosed with diabetes. Among 435 eligible adults (median age 54.5 years, female 68.5%, non-Hispanic white 32.5%), 80.7% were receiving rental assistance programs at the time of the interview, and 19.3% went on to receive rental assistance within 2 years. The rates of undiagnosed diabetes were 15.0% and 25.3% among those receiving rental assistance programs vs. those in the future assistance group (p-value = 0.07). In an adjusted logistic regression model, adults receiving rental assistance had lower odds of undiagnosed diabetes (OR 0.52, 95% CI 0.28-0.94) than those in future assistance groups. Sex, race and ethnic group, educational level, and poverty ratio were not significantly associated with having undiagnosed diabetes, but individuals aged 45-64 years had significantly lower odds of undiagnosed diabetes (OR 0.21, 95% CI 0.08-0.53) compared with those aged 18-44. Rental assistance was linked to lower odds of undiagnosed diabetes, suggesting that affordable housing programs can aid in early recognition and diagnosis, which may improve long-term outcomes.

Assessing the Durability of COVID-Era Capacity Gains Among Community-Based Organizations: Lessons from the Emergency Rental Assistance Program

To better understand the impact of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program’s conclusion on community-based organizations and on their scope and scale of work after ERAP, this brief draws on interviews conducted with practitioners involved with nearly two dozen ERA programs across the country. These interviews help shed light on how the dwindling and, in many cases, cessation of ERAP funds is affecting organizations’ capacity along multiple dimensions as they scale back, reorient, and move on post ERAP.

Exposing Pittsburgh Landlords To Asset-Framing Narratives: An Experiment To Increase Housing Voucher Participation.

Landlords are essential actors within the rental housing market, and there is much to be learned about their willingness to participate in rental assistance programs that improve access to stable housing. Because the success of these programs, such as the Mobility (Location-Based) Voucher program in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, can be derailed by landlord opposition, it is important to test strategies that increase landlords' participation. Using data from a unique survey of Pittsburgh landlords, we found that exposing landlords to an asset-framing narrative that highlighted the social, economic, and health benefits of receiving a mobility voucher increased landlords' reported willingness to rent to a mobility voucher recipient by 21percentage points. Reported willingness was also higher among landlords who believed that housing affordability was connected to health. Our findings offer insight into how to increase landlords' participation in affordable housing programs that require their engagement to succeed.

Leveraging accessibility modeling to improve housing equity for low-income assisted renters: A case study in Bridgeport, Connecticut

The Housing Choice Voucher Program (HCVP) in the United States assists low-income households with a rent voucher to be redeemed in the private rental market. However, public housing authorities in certain states, such as Connecticut, may impose geographic restrictions that we coin as the “same-jurisdiction rule,” when implementing the HCVP. In practice, this constraint is translated to the requirement that assisted households must lease up within the same jurisdiction, which may eventually restrict access to high-quality housing or prevent relocation to higher-opportunity neighborhoods. To identify ways for policy improvement, we adopt the two-step floating catchment area method to evaluate the accessibility to HCVP-eligible housing in Bridgeport, Connecticut with and without the same-jurisdiction rule. The results indicate that when the geographic restrictions are lifted, there is a 9.23 % increase in median accessibility, and the increase is more significant in low-accessibility areas, which are often lower-opportunity neighborhoods. The results suggest that removing the same-jurisdiction rule can result in more housing options and thus improve housing equity for assisted renters. Since the HCVP and other rental assistance programs are spatial-driven, we call for establishing an operational workflow to corroborate the rigor of these programs to improve housing equity for low-income households.

Local Variation in Emergency Rental Assistance Program Design and Implementation

Local Variation in Emergency Rental Assistance Program Design and Implementation

Trusted residents and housing assistance to decrease violence exposure in New Haven (TRUE HAVEN): a strengths-based and community-driven stepped-wedge intervention to reduce gun violence

BackgroundWe describe the rationale and study design for “TRUsted rEsidents and Housing Assistance to decrease Violence Exposure in New Haven (TRUE HAVEN),” a prospective type 1 hybrid effectiveness/implementation study of a multi-level intervention using a stepped wedge design. TRUE HAVEN aims to lower rates of community gun violence by fostering the stability, wealth, and well-being of individuals and families directly impacted by incarceration through the provision of stable housing and by breaking the cycle of trauma.DesignTRUE HAVEN is an ongoing, multi-level intervention with three primary components: financial education paired with housing support (individual level), trauma-informed counseling (neighborhood level), and policy changes to address structural racism (city/state level). Six neighborhoods with among the highest rates of gun violence in New Haven, Connecticut, will receive the individual and neighborhood level intervention components sequentially beginning at staggered 6-month steps. Residents of these neighborhoods will be eligible to participate in the housing stability and financial education component if they were recently incarcerated or are family members of currently incarcerated people; participants will receive intense financial education and follow-up for six months and be eligible for special down payment and rental assistance programs. In addition, trusted community members and organization leaders within each target neighborhood will participate in trauma-informed care training sessions to then be able to recognize when their peers are suffering from trauma symptoms, to support these affected peers, and to destigmatize accessing professional mental health services and connect them to these services when needed. Finally, a multi-stakeholder coalition will be convened to address policies that act as barriers to housing stability or accessing mental healthcare. Interventions will be delivered through existing partnerships with community-based organizations and networks. The primary outcome is neighborhood rate of incident gun violence. To inform future implementation and optimize the intervention package as the study progresses, we will use the Learn As You Go approach to optimize and assess the effectiveness of the intervention package on the primary study outcome.DiscussionResults from this protocol will yield novel evidence for whether and how addressing structural racism citywide leads to a reduction in gun violence.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT05723614. Registration date: February 01, 2023. Please refer to https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05723614 for public and scientific inquiries.

Administrative Burdens in Emergency Rental Assistance Programs

Administrative Burdens in Emergency Rental Assistance Programs

JUE Insight: The Effect of Relaxing Local Housing Market Regulations on Federal Rental Assistance Programs

The majority of U.S. households that qualify for federal rental housing assistance do not receive it. In the absence of an entitlement to housing assistance, an underexplored cause of the shortfall is that higher rents in some areas driven by supply-constraining local regulations increase program costs, leaving fewer funds available to serve additional families. In this paper, we simulate the effect of increasing housing supply on the cost of Section 8 housing assistance programs in Los Angeles, as well as all 11 metropolitan areas most constrained by local regulations. If Los Angeles (all 11 metropolitan areas) produced new housing units at the same rate as the 90th percentile metropolitan area for a decade, market rents would fall by 18.1 percent (2.0 to 24.0 percent), and federal cost savings would equal $353 million ($1.8 billion), enough to increase the number of assisted families by 23.8 percent (18.6 percent). For comparison, doubling the number of units placed in service through the Low Income Housing Tax Credit for a decade—an alternative method for increasing housing supply—would lead to much lower cost savings of $18 million in Los Angeles, and $231 million across all 11 metropolitan areas.

COVID-19 and Emergency Rental Assistance: Impact on Rent Arrears, Debt, and the Well-Being of Renters in Philadelphia

The federal government allocated an unprecedented level of funding to develop emergency rental assistance programs to help vulnerable low-income renter households remain housed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using panel data from two waves of applicant surveys joined with administrative data, this article analyzes the impact of Phase 1 of the City of Philadelphia’s COVID-19 Emergency Rental Assistance Program and asks how emergency rental assistance affected households in their rent arrears, rent-related debt, and mental health. Analysis shows that receiving emergency rental assistance was associated with lower arrears, a lower probability of rent-related debt, and a lower probability of experiencing frequent debilitating anxiety. The findings suggest that the initial rent relief provided crucial support for households in terms of financial and mental well-being but also underscore that housing affordability challenges that predated the pandemic cannot be addressed by an emergency rental assistance program created in response to a pandemic.

Contributing Factors to the Housing Cost Burden of Female-Headed Households

While the United States housing cost burden has reached historically high levels for all households in recent years, female-headed households with children tend to bear a significant portion this burden. This study uses data from the 2015 and 2019 American Housing Survey to explore the disparities in housing cost burdens among female-headed households. In general, the results from the fixed effect model reveal that housing assistance significantly decreases the female-headed household's housing cost burden, while renting tends to increase the female householders’ housing burden compared to owning. The fixed effect parameters suggest that single Black mothers experienced a high housing cost burden in 2015 and 2019, more than any other category of Black female-headed households for both years. Likewise, single Hispanic mothers also face large housing cost burdens, which increased from 2015 to 2019. This finding should guide inquiries into the impact of changes in federal policies on the immigrant status on the rising housing cost burden of the Hispanic female cohort. The study's findings suggest an increase in public housing and rental assistance programs that benefit single black mothers with children and other vulnerable households.

Ready to Rent: Administrative Decisions and Poverty Governance in the Housing Choice Voucher Program

Sociological studies of poverty governance investigate how state actors manage marginalized populations, regulate their participation in social institutions, and reform their behavior through systems of punishment and rewards. Research in this area considers a range of institutions involved in managing poverty, but it has largely ignored an institution omnipresent in the lives of the poor—public housing agencies (PHAs). Focusing on the Housing Choice Voucher program, the largest rental assistance program in the country, I examine discretionary choices made by PHAs that affect who gets access to rental assistance, how long clients have to wait, and what they must do to maintain their benefits. I ask how these administrative decisions create successive opportunities for state agencies to govern the poor. Drawing on interviews with agency officials, I describe a tripartite process of selecting market-ready households, engaging them in rituals of market formation, and utilizing market nudges to remind them of their responsibilities as market actors. This framework deepens sociological understandings of how local state agencies utilize discretionary choices in a resource-scarce, highly decentralized policy environment to evaluate, reform, and discipline the poor.

Race, housing policy, and the demographic and spatial structure of modern housing programs: Who receives rental assistance and where do they live?

ABSTRACT Housing policy in the United States has long been characterized by unequal investment in homeownership and low-income rental assistance, with implications for racial (and ethnic) inequality in access to stable housing. In this study, I examine socioeconomic status and neighborhood characteristics of non-Hispanic White and non-Hispanic Black adults with children receiving HUD rental assistance using a nationally representative linked survey-administrative dataset. Results show that Black and White adults who receive rental assistance tend to have similar (low) incomes, yet Black adults experience significantly higher levels of neighborhood disadvantage than White adults. Furthermore, living in poverty is a substantially stronger predictor of receiving HUD rental assistance for White than Black adults. The results support the notion that rental assistance programs are a last resort for White households, many of whom may benefit from historical federal government support for homeownership. Rental assistance serves as an important safety net for Black families but fails to provide significant improvement in the neighborhood environment. The results contribute to a comprehensive understanding of racial inequality in the impacts of U.S. rental housing policy and the historical legacy of racial exclusion in U.S. homeownership programs.

Making sense of eviction trends during the pandemic

Eviction filings have largely returned to their prepandemic levels in 2022 after a long period of being below trend. In this Economic Commentary, I describe the trends in eviction filings collected so far during the pandemic and pandemic-era policies aimed at mitigating the damage of the pandemic on housing stability. I show that restrictions on evictions, common early in the pandemic, are associated with lower levels of eviction filings; that recent rent-price growth is associated with higher levels of eviction filings; and that the timing of eviction trends varies in response to the federal emergency rental assistance program in a way that is consistent with the program’s design.

Association Between Rental Assistance Programs and Hemoglobin A1c Levels Among US Adults

Programs that provide affordable and stable housing, such as federal rental assistance, may be associated with improved mean blood glucose levels and related diabetes outcomes. To assess whether 2 different types of federal rental assistance programs are associated with glycated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels among middle-aged and older US adults. This cohort study used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) linked with US Department of Housing and Urban Development records of rental assistance participation. Adults aged 45 years or older who were receiving 2 types of rental assistance (project-based housing or housing vouchers) at the time of the NHANES interview and those who would receive rental assistance within the subsequent 2 years (waitlist group) were included. Data were collected from January 1999 to December 2016 and analyzed in October 2021. Rental assistance participation, including project-based housing (subsidized housing developments including public housing) and housing vouchers (tenant-based subsidies for private market housing). The primary outcome was continuous HbA1c level, a common measure of blood glucose reflecting diabetes control. Linear regression was used to estimate the association between the 2 rental assistance programs and HbA1c level. Logistic regression was used to assess the association between rental assistance programs and HbA1c cut points (prediabetes: 5.7% to ≤6.5%; diabetes: >6.5%; uncontrolled diabetes: ≥9% [to convert to proportion of total Hb, multiply by 0.01]). Analyses used weights created by the National Center for Health Statistics that adjust for linkage eligibility. Among 1050 adults in the study (41.6% aged ≥65 years; 70.1% female), 795 were receiving rental assistance at time of the NHANES interview (450 lived in project-based housing, and 345 had housing vouchers), and 255 received rental assistance within 2 years after the interview. Participants in project-based housing had lower HbA1c levels compared with individuals in the waitlist group (β, -0.290; 95% CI, -0.599 to 0.020), but the difference was not significant. No significant differences in HbA1c levels were found between those receiving housing vouchers and those in the waitlist group (β, 0.051; 95% CI, -0.182 to 0.284). Receiving project-based housing was associated with a reduced likelihood of uncontrolled diabetes (-3.7 percentage points; 95% CI, -7.0 to -0.0 percentage points) compared with being in the waitlist group. In this cohort study of a nationally representative sample of US adults, living in project-based, federally subsidized housing was associated with a reduced likelihood of uncontrolled diabetes. The findings suggest that affordable housing programs may be associated with improved diabetes outcomes.

Can Emergency Rental Assistance Be Designed to Prevent Homelessness? Learning from Emergency Rental Assistance Programs

Homelessness prevention efforts face an overarching challenge: how to target limited resources far enough downstream to capture those at greatest risk of homelessness, but far enough upstream to stabilize households before they experience a cascade of negative outcomes. How did the COVID-19 emergency rental assistance programs launched in hundreds of localities across the United States respond to this challenge? This paper draws on two waves of a national survey of emergency rental assistance program administrators, as well as in-depth interviews with 15 administrators, to answer this question. Results show that although the vast majority of program administrators considered homelessness prevention to be a key program goal, their programs tended to target rental assistance far upstream of tenants at immediate risk.

The Effects of Rental Assistance Programs on Neighborhood Outcomes for U.S. Children: Nationwide Evidence by Program and Race/Ethnicity

Project-based housing programs and tenant-based housing programs (vouchers) may have differential effects on neighborhood outcomes for residents. Theoretically, vouchers should enhance access to low-poverty neighborhoods for low-income families thereby promoting economic mobility for children, though vouchers’ success may vary by race and ethnicity. Drawing on a national survey-administrative data linkage and a quasi-experimental approach, we examine the impact of project-based housing and vouchers on an index of socioeconomic neighborhood disadvantage among children. We find that living in project-based housing leads to greater exposure to neighborhood disadvantage while receiving vouchers leads to reduced exposure. Reductions in neighborhood disadvantage for children receiving vouchers are found only for non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic/Latino children. For non-White families, vouchers are associated with a reduced likelihood of living in high-poverty neighborhoods and increased likelihood of living in low-poverty neighborhoods, presenting an opportunity to narrow racial and ethnic differences in children's neighborhood attainment.

Early Effects of the COVID Emergency Rental Assistance Programs: A Case Study

Early Effects of the COVID Emergency Rental Assistance Programs: A Case Study

Association of Childhood Asthma With Federal Rental Assistance

To assess the relationship between type of participation in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rental assistance programs with childhood asthma outcomes, such as emergency department (ED) or urgent care center (UC) use, diagnosis, and asthma exacerbations.The population studied includes 2992 children, representative of the US population, between 0 and 17 years old who were receiving rental assistance (HUD) or who had not yet applied (WLG) to receive rental assistance between January 1, 1999, and December 31, 2014. These records were linked to the National Health Interview Survey. HUD assists children through 3 programs: public housing, multifamily housing, and housing choice vouchers.This was a retrospective survey study of linked data from the National Health Interview Survey and the National Center for Health Statistics. Deidentified data were used.In the HUD and WLG groups, some asthma outcomes were higher than those seen in the general low-income population. For HUD and WLG children, 23.2 and 24.1%, had an asthma diagnosis, 43.6 and 45.6% of those had an asthma exacerbation in the past year, and 45.4 and 60.7% of those children visited the ED for asthma, respectively. In the general population with incomes <150% of the federal poverty level, without an HUD history, percentages were 12.8, 44.3, and 38.7, respectively. Participation in any rental assistance program was associated with an 18.2% (25% relative reduction) lower use of ED or UC for asthma in children who had an asthma attack in the past year. This association for ED and UC visits was significant in children participating in public or multifamily housing (decreased by 36.6%; 95% confidence interval: −54.8 to −18.4) but not housing choice vouchers (decreased by 7.2%; 95% confidence interval: −24.6 to −10.3). No significant differences were noted in asthma attack or diagnosis rates.There was an 18.2% decrease in ED use for asthma among children who received rental assistance, when compared with children waiting to enter a housing program. Differences were not explained by demographic factors, neighborhood characteristics, or primary care access.In this publication, the authors highlight important structural factors, like housing stability and affordability, that may affect health outcomes in pediatric allergic patients. In previous studies, authors have noted mixed associations between pediatric asthma outcomes and voucher assistance given to public housing residents, with some variation by sex. The underlying factors that lead to differences in health outcomes on the basis of housing access and stress are poorly understood but may be affected by housing codes and percent of income spent on rent, which vary by housing assistance subgroups. Additional studies are necessary to understand whether these differences have any impact on clinical practice. One important limitation of this study is that only 36.8% of subscribers were eligible for health and housing data linkage (did not refuse and answered demographic and rental questions relevant to linkage); this may represent a selection bias for certain characteristics.