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1 1 (August 2015)

handle is hein.amenin/aeiaaxm0001 and id is 1 raw text is: August 2015 What should we do about homeless families? Comments on the Family Options Study By Kevin C. Corinth The recently released Family Options Study offers new, groundbreaking evidence about what works best for home- less families. In this paper, I review the study's design and findings and evaluate the policy conclusions drawn in the report. I propose alternative policy responses, including (1) broadening the goals of the homeless system beyond ending homelessness-to not only provide a housing safety net but also provide effective avenues for self-sufficiency; (2) supplementing rapid re-housing with customized case management, work incentives, and flexible assistance for home-sharing arrangements; and (3) identifying and expanding transitional housing programs that effectively build self-sufficiency. Additional resources needed to fund these policies should be diverted from other federal rental- assistance programs. T he US Department of Housing and Urban Develop- ment recently released a groundbreaking study on family homelessness (US Department of Housing and Urban Development 2015). The researchers randomly assigned more than 2,000 homeless families across the country to one of four interventions and tracked the families for the next 20 months. The study provides unprecedented causal evidence about what works best for some of the most vulnerable families in the country. The only problem is that this high-quality evidence is being used to advocate for lower-quality policy responses. Costly housing vouchers, which have no time limits, are being advanced as a serious policy solution without considering the incentive problem-if you give people who show up at homeless shelters a permanent housing subsidy, you will get more people at shelters. Transitional housing programs-in which study partici- pants had important gains in self-sufficiency-are being cast aside as ineffective because the study lacked the power to detect statistical significance. Largely private resources spent on emergency shelters and transitional housing programs are implicitly and unrealistically being targeted to finance interventions that have tra- ditionally been funded publicly, including temporary rental assistance and housing vouchers. Abetter policy response to the Family Options Study is to reimagine homeless services as both a housing safety net and a means of empowering families toward self- sufficiency. Homeless services are too resource inten- sive, and the challenges of poverty and inequality of opportunity are too important, to focus solely on the goal of housing stability. Housing vouchers diminish self-sufficiency and are not an appropriate solution to a temporary housing problem and thus should not be a major component of homeless services. Rapid re-housing should be expanded, be supplemented by stronger work incentives and case management, and offer more flexible assistance for home-sharing situations. Transitional housing programs that effectively bolster self-sufficiency should be identified and expanded, while ineffective programs and those that focus only on housing stability should lose public funding. Additional funding required AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE1 1

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