Does public housing reduce housing cost burden among low-income families with children?

ABSTRACT

About half of all renter households and over three-quarters of very low-income households in the United States experience a housing cost burden, with higher rates among families with children. Public housing may be an important tool for reducing families’ housing cost burdens. The current study uses nearly four decades of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Assisted Housing Database to explore the relationship between public housing and housing cost burden among children in low-income families. Results from fixed effects models suggest that public housing is associated with a greatly reduced risk of experiencing housing cost burden when housing assistance receipt is measured a year before housing cost burden. These findings highlight the importance of public housing for reducing low-income families’ housing cost burdens.

KEYWORDS:

• Public housing
• housing
• housing assistance
• low-income families
• rental cost burden

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Sarah Gold, MSW, PhD, is a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University's Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing. Her research focuses broadly on understanding how policies impact poverty and inequality among children and families in the United States.

Notes

1 Rent is calculated as the highest of: 30% of the family's monthly adjusted income (pretax income minus allowable income deductions), 10% of the family's monthly income, welfare rent (in states where applicable), or minimum rent ($0–$50, as set by the public housing authority). For more detail on calculations, see Department of Housing and Urban Development (2002).

2 HOPE VI aimed to address severely distressed public housing and resulted in the demolition of much of the high-rise public housing stock in favor of low-rise, mixed-income redevelopment.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for Sarah Gold's postdoctoral research position was provided by the Woodrow Wilson School. Research reported in this publication was supported by The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P2CHD047879. The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.