The Impact of Homeless Prevention on Residential Instability: Evidence From the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program

ABSTRACT

Millions of individuals and families in the United States do not have access to stable housing. Recent policies in the United States and the rest of the developed world emphasize programs intended to prevent homelessness through temporary financial assistance. This article explores the impact of the largest homelessness prevention program in U.S. history, the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing Program (HPRP), on residential instability, using a national sample of families with children enrolled in school. The identification strategy exploits variations on the location of HPRP providers. Using data on the ratio of K–12 students experiencing homelessness in school districts, we find that HPRP is associated with reductions in the percentage of homeless students for districts closer to an HPRP provider. However, the impacts of HPRP fade out when program benefits end, bringing into question whether homeless prevention can help families achieve self-sufficiency in the long run.

KEYWORDS:

• Homeless prevention
• rapid rehousing
• homelessness
• residential instability

Acknowledgments

We appreciate the help from many government officials in helping us to obtain the data from each state. Special thanks to Susan Ziff and Elizabeth Rudd from HUD for providing guidance about the program and sources of data for this study.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. One state HPRP administrator interviewed by the authors explained that the population eligible for HPRP was not the typical population served through housing programs, and hence it was hard to reach them through announcements in shelters or social security administration offices.

2. See U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Homeless Emergency Assistance and

Rapid Transition to Housing: Defining Homeless,” RIN 2506–AC26.

3. A continuous measure of the amount of funding may also be relevant. Unfortunately, the quality of the data does not allow us to compute an accurate estimate of the amount of money spent in each community.

4. Results are not sensitive to changing the calendar year used for these two variables.

5. One program allocated using the CDBG formula is the CoC program. Unfortunately, for this program data are aggregated by CoC, which could include many counties or the whole balance of state. Despite this, we do not think we are missing a relevant omitted variable: CoC program expenditures were mostly renewals during HPRP years; about 88% of the expenditures were renewals of previous programs in 2009 according to HUD’s grant reporting system. Hence, the county fixed effects should capture most of the influence of these two programs. Similarly, the ESG grant follows a similar formula to that for HPRP, but since it is a formula grant, the allocation barely changed during HPRP years, according to HUD’s grant-reporting system.

6. The average school district in the sample has around 6,000 students, with approximately 120 of them being homeless.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gabriel Piña

Gabriel Piña is a Research Scientist at Child Trends. His research agenda focuses on Social Policy, with an emphasis on impact evaluations of housing policies and early childhood programs.  He received a PhD in Public Affairs from Indiana University.

Maureen Pirog

Maureen Pirog is the Rudy Professor of Policy Analysis Emeritus at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington. She was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management for ten years. Professor Pirog holds honorary appointments in Russia, South Africa and China and is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Her research focuses on the effectiveness of social welfare programs for low-income families and households.