Elsevier

Evaluation and Program Planning

Volume 52, October 2015, Pages 85-95
Evaluation and Program Planning

Home for now: A mixed-methods evaluation of a short-term housing support program for homeless families

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2015.03.009Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We evaluate a pilot short-term rapid rehousing program for homeless families.

  • We assess program implementation and short-term economic and well-being outcomes.

  • Families are mostly headed by low-income single mothers with one or two children.

  • On exit, 9% returned to shelter and 25% are able stay housed without a subsidy.

  • The program is insufficient due to high rents and few employment opportunities.

Abstract

The use of short-term rental subsidy vouchers offers a new approach to addressing the housing needs of families facing homelessness. In Massachusetts, the Family Home pilot program placed homeless families in housing instead of shelter, providing two years of rental subsidy plus support services with the goal of enabling families to maintain market rate housing. This mixed-method case study complements staff and participant interview data with participant survey and administrative data to evaluate the implementation and short-term outcomes of Family Home in one region. Data point to improved family well-being in housing but also persistent barriers to achieving longer-term housing and economic stability. Of the families who had exited the program at the end of the study, one quarter were able to retain their housing at market rate, only 9% returned to shelter, and one in five moved in with families/friends. Lack of affordable housing in a high rental cost region and jobs that pay living wages were among the major reasons that families struggled to maintain housing. This research points to the need for integrating supportive services from the program's start, including targeted workforce development, to plan for the end of the short-term rental subsidy.

Introduction

The number of homeless families1 has been growing and becoming increasingly visible since the early 1980s, when families first began to appear on the streets of U.S. cities (Burt, 1991, Rog and Buckner, 2007, Schön and Rein, 1995). Nationally, family homelessness increased sharply since the early '80s, and has only leveled off and begun to decrease slightly since 2005 (Berg, 2012, Office of Community Planning and Development, 2013b). In contrast to this recent national trend, the number of homeless families in Massachusetts has continued to grow, increasing by 71% between 2007 and 2012 (Office of Community Planning and Development, 2013a). In Massachusetts and nationally, while a Housing First approach has gained more traction in the recent decade, the predominant approach to addressing family homelessness (as for other homeless groups) continues to be the Treatment First model utilizing emergency shelter and other programs that address service needs when individuals and families become homeless.

Families who lose their homes in Massachusetts, a right-to-shelter state2, need to qualify for shelter assistance based on family income and assets, unlike single homeless persons (US Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2011). In Massachusetts, this assistance is called Emergency Assistance (EA), a package of services that includes shelter and case management directed at finding a permanent housing solution. In shelter, families are expected to access the resources they need to transition to market-rate housing. Research has demonstrated that exit from shelter into stable housing is mostly determined by access to permanent housing subsidies plus support services (Rog & Buckner, 2007). However, the number of permanent housing subsidies for low-income people has decreased in recent years (Curnan, 2010, Rice, 2014). In response to these trends, the state turned to a new approach to supporting homeless families in accessing stable housing: the use of short-term housing supports.

Massachusetts piloted a short-term housing support program in the summer of 2009, referred to in this text as Family Home3. Family Home provided rental vouchers plus case management support for up to two years to families that qualified for EA in Massachusetts, a state known for its high rents and housing affordability challenges. Case management services were provided by housing stabilization workers, a new position created for Family Home. Services were minimal: monthly contact in person or by phone that mostly focused on filling out applications for permanent housing subsidies. The program's goal, according to the state, was for Family Home participants to increase their incomes so that they could maintain housing at market rate, and to support these families during the two years in Family Home in achieving housing stability as a first step in their journey toward self-sufficiency. Family Home ran for two years, from August 1, 2009 to the fall of 2011.

This new short-term housing support approach was loosely based on the Housing First model for chronically homeless individuals that originated in the late 1990s (Bassuk and Geller, 2006, Padgett et al., 2006). Reversing the Treatment First model ingrained in the emergency shelter approach, which focuses on providing services first (i.e., before housing,) the Housing First model focuses on placing people in stable housing first and then providing them with the intensive services they need to be able to sustain this housing. This model has proven extremely effective with chronically homeless individuals (Meschede, 2007) and, in particular, with those struggling with psychiatric disabilities (Padgett et al., 2006). However, Family Home differed from the Housing First model in three important ways. First, the Family Home rental subsidy was limited to two years; second, the case management services provided once they were in housing were very limited; and third, the program was for families, not individuals.

This study provides a critical evaluation of one region's participation in Family Home, including both program implementation and participants’ short-term outcomes. Using several data sources examining multiple perspectives, this research aims at providing empirical evidence in three areas: (1) life in Family Home, including access to and quality of housing, and finding and maintaining employment; (2) assessment of the pilot model by multiple stakeholders; and (3) expected and actual housing outcomes at program exit. This study adds to prior research (e.g., Davis & Lane, 2012) by using a mixed methods research design to incorporate many perspectives to this new approach of addressing family homelessness. Data collection for this evaluation was funded by the largest homeless service provider in the region. The funder had no role in the study design or analysis and had no part in writing this article or in the decision to publish it.

Section snippets

Homeless families and access to housing

Family homelessness has many negative impacts for parents themselves and poses substantial challenges for raising their children without housing. Nationally and locally, homeless families are predominately female-headed households with young children (Rog & Buckner, 2007). Homelessness affects these mothers’ ability to parent, as well as their own and their children's health and well-being (Cutts et al., 2011). Life in shelter is often characterized by a lack of privacy, rigid rules, and

Family Home: The Massachusetts short-term rental voucher pilot program

Facing rapidly rising costs for shelters and motels as well as increasingly long shelter stays, Massachusetts committed to reforming its Emergency Assistance programs in 2009 to reduce shelter use and promote flexible responses to homelessness (Curnan, 2010). In the summer of 2009, as part of this reform, the state piloted Family Home, a short-term housing support program for eligible families facing homelessness. The families in this pilot were on waiting lists for permanent subsidies (Housing

Mixed methods evaluation research

This evaluation employs a mixed-methods case study research design. Evaluation studies need to attend to the complex relationships between many factors both within and external to the program under consideration, requiring many indicators to make judgments about the program (Rallis & Rossman, 2003). Therefore, both quantitative and in-depth qualitative data are required. The mixed method study design offers a comprehensive view of both program outcomes and the mechanisms through which families

Research questions

This evaluation was guided by the following research questions:

  • 1.

    What was participants’ experience in Family Home? How did they find housing and employment, and what types of housing and employment did they find?

  • 2.

    How did participants and program staff evaluate Family Home?

  • 3.

    What happened to participants at the end of their subsidies?

Data and methods

Data were collected from a range of sources crucial to Family Home program activities and operations; data collection methods and study design were approved by an Institutional Review Board. All Family Home family heads of household who entered the program between August 1, 2009 and May 31, 2010 (N = 155) are included in this study, as well as all program staff who worked with these families. Data sources include (a) six in-person interviews and three focus groups with program staff (N = 13 staff

The families

Overall, Family Home families resembled homeless families at state (Davis & Lane, 2012) and national levels (US Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2011). Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) data on these families reveal that most (94%) were female-headed families, whose heads of household ranged in age from 19 to 55, with an average age of 29.5, and 43% age 24 and under (see Table 1). Just over one-third of the Family Home heads of household were African American (36%), just

Discussion

Living in their own apartments and in the community provided Family Home homeless families in this study with a secure environment that supported family well-being in many different ways: it provided stability and a sense of normalcy for family members, and it improved individual health, employment outcomes, and family stability. Compared to living in the shelter, having private apartments provided families with independence, privacy, security and a sense of achievement. However, the lack of

Limitations

This evaluation has some important limitations. Most importantly, the possibility of selection bias may have skewed the results. First, Family Home vouchers were optional, so it is possible that some families in shelters and motels in the August 2009 to May 2010 time frame were offered vouchers and refused them, and that those who accepted the vouchers were more motivated to succeed on them. Second, shelter and motel caseworkers had discretion to choose which families they would refer to the

Lessons learned

This research reveals important programmatic and policy lessons. The data show that Family Home's short-term voucher model may have helped prevent homelessness for all program participants for the time they received these subsidies. In addition, only 9% of participants returned to shelter at program end, and a quarter of all families in the program were able to move off these subsidies and maintain their apartments through their own resources. Through the access to a short-term rental voucher,

Acknowledgements

Foremost, the authors would like to thank the participants who shared their stories with us. Their voices are critical to this research, and we are grateful for their generosity. We also thank the program staff for their participation in data collection and for taking the time to share their experiences with the program. Finally, we owe thanks to the funders of this research for supporting this evaluation, and to Alexis R. Mann for her invaluable assistance in data analysis.

Tatjana Meschede, PhD is a Scientist and Senior Lecturer at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management and the Research Director at the Heller School's Institute on Assets and Social Policy. Her research on homelessness span more than 15 years, including projects on homeless shelter users, evaluating housing homeless mentally ill individuals, investigating bridges and barriers to housing for homeless street dwellers, and evaluations of Housing First Models.

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    Tatjana Meschede, PhD is a Scientist and Senior Lecturer at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management and the Research Director at the Heller School's Institute on Assets and Social Policy. Her research on homelessness span more than 15 years, including projects on homeless shelter users, evaluating housing homeless mentally ill individuals, investigating bridges and barriers to housing for homeless street dwellers, and evaluations of Housing First Models.

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