Chapter 13. Conclusions
13.8 Questions for Longer Term Followup
The Family Options Study is continuing to follow families through 36 months after study enrollment. This additional wave of data collection will provide information on a num-ber of important questions.
The 36-month analysis will address whether the types of outcomes that are improved by random assignment to SUB are dependent on contemporaneous receipt of the housing assistance. Could effects fade if assistance ends? During the followup period, 84 percent of SUB families had used SUB.
At the end of this period SUB use had fallen to 75 percent, although 77 percent received some form of permanent subsidy at that point. The 36-month analysis will examine whether families retain different forms of permanent hous-ing assistance and their benefits durhous-ing a longer interval.
It is also possible that the reduced stress and greater stability observed for SUB families at 20 months will yield additional benefits for adult and child-well-being during the longer term that are not yet evident. Reductions in work effort in the short term could persist or—as observed in the Effects of Housing Vouchers on Welfare Families study (Mills et al., 2006)—may fade during the longer term.
The 36-month analysis will also examine whether the focus of PBTH on addressing psychosocial challenges and enhancing skills leads to benefits during the longer term that are not evident after 20 months. The challenges to adult well-being relative to CBRR may be temporary, reflecting anxiety on the part of PBTH families that benefits are coming to an end (or have recently ended). When all families have left the PBTH programs to which they were given priority access, they may return to emergency shelter or experience other forms of housing instability.
As of 20 months after random assignment of families who had been in emergency shelter for at least a week, the two major advantages of CBRR over other interventions are greater work effort relative to SUB and, considering the cost of all program use during the followup period, lower cost relative to PBTH, UC, and SUB. Work effort could lead families to better economic outcomes in the future with radiating benefits for other outcomes. In any case, if CBRR continues to have similar outcomes to UC in most domains, but at lower cost, that finding will be important.
The relative costs of homeless assistance in the different interventions are likely to change over time. Participation in SUB often lasts beyond the period for which the study team
measured impacts and costs in this report. The continuing costs of SUB programs may or may not be offset by cost sav ings through reductions in use of shelter and other pro-grams. These future costs will be addressed in the 36-month analysis in conjunction with impacts measured during the longer term.
13.9 Summary
The Family Options Study’s random assignment design for measuring intervention impacts is a stronger design than that of other studies of interventions for homeless families.
As a result, the Family Options Study provides important new information about what happens to families who expe-rience homelessness in the absence of any special offers of assistance and about the impact of priority access to three particular interventions, SUB, PBTH, and CBRR. The expe-rimental design of the study and the contrasts in program use during the followup period provide a solid foundation for estimating the impacts of enhancing access to different kinds of assistance. The study provides the first clear evidence about these effects and thus can serve as a solid basis for future policy decisionmaking.
Approximately 20 months after entry into shelter and random assignment, families assigned to SUB appear to be doing better than the families assigned to CBRR, PBTH, and UC.
The benefits of priority access to SUB have been achieved at cost comparable with that of UC, slightly higher costs than CBRR, and at substantially lower cost than PBTH. Compared with those assigned to UC, the families randomly assigned to SUB on average have had fewer negative experiences (stays in shelters or places not meant for human habitation, doubling up, child separations, and intimate partner violence).
SUB families are also somewhat more likely to live in their own place. Moreover, children in SUB families move among schools less, and families experience greater food security and less economic stress. On the negative side, heads of these families exert less work effort. Families given priority access to CBRR do about as well as families assigned to UC but have substantially lower cost, mainly because CBRR low-ers the rate at which families use costly transitional housing programs. PBTH is more costly and at this point has few advantages over other programs. Furthermore, no evidence indicates that intervention impacts differ according to families’
psychosocial challenges or housing barriers whatever form of active assistance is prioritized. The 36-month followup analysis will examine whether these differences among in -terventions continue to hold and whether new differences emerge after another 16 months elapse.
Short-Term Impacts of Housing and Services Interventions for Homeless Families 162
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