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Housing Patterns of Low Income Families with Children: This publication, supported by the MacArthur Foundation, is a detailed empirical study of the effects of housing vouchers on welfare families. Using a rich set of data from the Housing Voucher Evaluation - an experimental evaluation of the Welfare to Work Voucher program completed in 2006 - the study takes a controlled look into several outcomes related to housing, homelessness, employment, education, and neighborhood quality of participating welfare families under a number of baseline scenarios in order to show the differential effects of the voucher according to initial physical, social, and economic differences in personal, family, household, and neighborhood characteristics of the participants. Read the executive summary (PDF) Among a wide range of findings, the study shows vouchers had the strongest effect on improving neighborhood quality for those initially in the poorest neighborhoods, especially for those in public housing in such neighborhoods. It also found that vouchers have a very strong effect on reducing homelessness, and those in the most tenuous housing positions were most likely to use their voucher. In addition, those who relinquish their vouchers often do so inadvertently and have particularly poor outcomes, and although vouchers may help doubled-up families form independent households, they do not make families any more able to afford rents without assistance within 4-5 years. These and other findings detailed in this study have strong implications for the use and design of future housing assistance programs. |