Homelessness Interventions in Georgia: Rapid Re-Housing, Transitional Housing, and the Likelihood of Returning to Shelter

Abstract

Since 1987, billions of dollars in homeless assistance have been allocated annually by the U.S. federal government. Yet few evaluations of homelessness interventions exist. This study analyzes the likelihood that households in Georgia returned to shelter within two years of leaving one of three interventions: rapid re-housing (RRH), transitional housing (TH), and emergency shelter (ES), with the latter serving as a reference. Using propensity scores, RRH households were matched to comparable TH and ES households. Generalized linear mixed modeling then controlled for household characteristics as well as variation between intervention implementations. We find that the likelihood of returning to shelter did not seem to be affected by whether study households were gradually transitioned or rapidly placed into housing. Additionally, the effect of TH for households without children seems highly dependent on the intervention’s implementation, which deserves further study. Our findings are generalizable to a small, better resourced segment of the general homeless population.

Keywords:

• Homeless
• rapid re-housing
• transitional housing

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge Dr. Marybeth Shinn, Dr. David Diehl, officials at the Georgia Department of Community Affairs (especially Katherine Arce), and our anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts.

Notes

1. Calculated under the assumption that discretionary spending on the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program in fiscal year 2015 ($374 million) will remain roughly the same in fiscal year 2016.

2. RRH programs are distinct from Housing First supportive housing programs, which rapidly move households into housing but offer intensive services and target chronically homeless persons with disabilities (Cunningham et al., 2015).

3. These were dichotomous indicators of previous shelter enrollment, exiting to a temporary destination, being unaccompanied, having no teenage male in the household, being male, being nonwhite, being non-Hispanic, having a disabling condition, and exiting from a program not in a rural county.

4. In Gubits et al. (2015), not every family was eligible for every pairwise comparison. Hence, the number of UC families in the CBRR vs. UC comparison differs from the number of UC families in the PBTH vs. UC comparison, and so on.

5. What counted as a “moderate barrier” varied among RRH providers. For example, some providers considered “having a low-paying or part-time job” a moderate barrier, whereas others considered “long-term unemployment” a moderate barrier (Burt et al., 2016).