Housing Assistance as a Work Support for Households Experiencing Homelessness

Author: Jamie Taylor

Dissertation School: The New School

Abstract:

This dissertation will examine the employment effects of subgroups of formerly homeless, public assistance households in New York City. Though an extensive body of research has assessed the effects of housing assistance on labor, human capital, child development, and health outcomes, there is little research on the relationship between ending homelessness with time-limited housing assistance and its effect on employment outcomes. This research on households in homelessness and on public assistance who receive two years of rental subsidy from New York City will support knowledge and understanding of time-limited housing assistance as a policymaking tool and its impacts on labor market participation for work capable households. These findings may assist policymakers in their efforts to maximize housing stability and the attainment of self-sufficiency for vulnerable households.

Cities and communities across the country continue to face the multiple challenges of high unemployment and, for the second consecutive year, a rise in family homelessness. Given that robust studies in this field have not adequately examined time-limited housing assistance effects on employment by initial risk subgroups, and the natural opportunity to exam the impacts of an innovative housing subsidy program now being implemented in New York City, the primary objective of this dissertation is to examine the effects of time-limited housing assistance as a work support by differences in subgroups of disadvantaged households.

The dissertation will utilize New York City's Human Resources Administration (HRA) data representing work-capable public assistance clients who experience at least 60 consecutive days of homelessness and are employed at least 20 hours a week. The treatment group will be enrollees of the Work Advantage Program and the comparison group will be comparable households not enrolled in Advantage on public assistance. A propensity score matching methodology will be applied to create comparison sampling groups and a difference indifference analysis will assess the effects housing assistance has on earnings, total employment, housing stability and self-efficacy by risk subgroups. A client survey tool will be utilized to capture experiences and outcomes through the eyes of participants for qualitative evidence supporting quantitative outcomes. This examination seeks to explain the effects of welfare and housing assistance policies on subpopulations of high, moderate, and low levels of disadvantage in the three domains of employment, housing and self-efficacy.

This research will assess difference in earnings and employment and rates of return to homelessness for public assistance clients receiving housing assistance compared to earnings and employment attained by comparable, non-housing assisted Public Assistance households. It will also distinguish if there an interaction between risk subgroups, housing assistance, and impacts on quarterly employment outcomes, quarterly earnings and total earnings and which policy program interventions may have helped households attain self-sufficiency. This dissertation may assist policymakers in their efforts to re-target the distribution of limited housing assistance resources by matching time-limited housing subsidies with households that most benefit, increasing the growing number of households that are best assisted with cost-effective, time-limited housing assistance.

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