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Subgroups
After a family with at least one child age 15 or younger had remained in an emergency homeless shelter for seven days, the evaluation team randomly assigned them to one of four possible intervention conditions. This review focuses on assignment to SUB versus usual care. Although the evaluation team intended to randomly assign families to all intervention conditions with an equal probability, availability of slots, site-level implementation limitations, and unique eligibility requirements for families resulted in most families being randomly assigned to a restricted set of intervention conditions (474 of 2,282 families were randomly assigned across all four intervention options; most families—1,544—had three options available to them). This resulted in differing probabilities of assignment, depending on which set of interventions was available to each family. Before random assignment, the evaluation team gathered informed consent, determined eligibility for available intervention slots, and conducted a baseline survey. Pairwise contrasts (in this review, SUB relative to usual care) were only estimated on the sample of families who were eligible for both intervention conditions and randomized to one of them.
September 2010 to December 2014
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Policy Development and Research
The following characteristics applied to participants who were eligible for both the SUB and usual care intervention conditions, and who were assigned to either: the average age of the head of household was about 31 at baseline, and 93 percent were female. About 37 percent were Black, 24 percent were Hispanic or Latino, 21 percent were White, non-Hispanic, and 18 percent were another race or multiple races or ethnicities. Twenty-eight percent of eligible families were headed by married parents, and all families had at least one child younger than 15 at baseline. Thirty-seven percent of the baseline sample heads of household had no high school diploma or GED, and only 13 percent were employed at baseline.
State or local public housing agencies (PHAs)
Nearly all PHAs participating in the SUB intervention provided permanent housing assistance through housing choice vouchers (HCVs). The Section 8 HCV Program was enacted in 1974 as Section 8 of the United States Housing Act.
After spending at least seven days in an emergency homeless shelter, families with at least one child age 15 or younger were selected to receive SUB and housing search assistance. The SUB intervention provided permanent assistance with housing rental costs through state or local PHAs. As long as families remained eligible (for example, met low-income criteria and had no drug-related convictions) and compliant (for example, paid rent on time), they could continue to receive the housing subsidy indefinitely. Housing subsidies were typically provided as an HCV, which intervention participants could use to rent housing that met HUD's Housing Quality Standards and had a rent that was deemed reasonable based on rental costs for comparable homes in a given housing market. The local PHA set HCV amounts, and if rental costs exceeded this limit, families were required to pay 30 percent of their unadjusted monthly income toward rental costs. In addition to receiving a housing subsidy, intervention participants at a minority of sites (serving about 20 percent of SUB participants) were eligible to receive supportive services to help locate housing. An even smaller percentage of SUB participants received assistance through the PHA to address topics such as learning how to maintain their home or resolve conflicts with landlords.
After spending at least seven days in an emergency homeless shelter, families who had at least one child age 15 or younger and were assigned to the usual care comparison condition did not receive special referrals to any housing assistance or supportive services programs and did not receive any additional assistance beyond what was typically provided at emergency homeless shelters. The evaluation team asked emergency shelter staff not to intentionally guide usual care condition families to the intervention programs (including SUB), but if usual care families found their way into the intervention conditions, they were not denied services. Because emergency shelters are not uniformly regulated, the experiences of UC participants in the shelters after random assignment was highly variable.
None
Participants in the SUB intervention condition typically used SUBs for 31 months between random assignment and the 37-month follow-up survey. Housing assistance was not time limited.
PHAs received funding from the HCV Program funded through HUD. Emergency homeless shelters are typically funded by a variety of local private and public funding sources but are generally not federally funded.
The Family Options Study took place in 12 sites across the United States: Alameda County, CA; Atlanta, GA; Baltimore, MD; Boston, MA; Connecticut; Denver, CO; Honolulu, HI; Kansas City, MO; Louisville, KY; Minneapolis, MN; Phoenix, AZ; and Salt Lake City, UT. Eighteen PHAs provided SUBs and housing assistance across these 12 locations.
Program use, housing stability, family preservation, and adult well-being