Examining the Effects of Housing Programs on Housing Deprivation, Poverty and Material Hardship Among Low-Income Households

Background: Affordable housing has become less accessible to economically vulnerable families. One of the economic challenges for needy families is housing, in which case they may double up with others and have a higher risk of becoming homeless and living in poverty. Research on housing and material hardship is still far less developed. The direct rationale of current housing assistance programs is to offer decent, safe and affordable places for vulnerable population to live. Only if this goal is achieved may the other indirect positive impacts of housing policies appear.

Methods: The study uses baseline and one-year follow-up of pooled data from the first two cohorts of the New York City Longitudinal Survey of Wellbeing study. Multilevel regression models are used to examine the effects of participation in housing programs on low-income households’ housing deprivations, broadly defined to include rent burden, residential crowding and housing insecurity and other forms of economic hardships at one-year follow-up. The analytical sample is restricted to those in renter households or temporarily living with others with an income of less than 250 percent of the poverty threshold (N=1,711). We construct low-income households in three groups: non-participants (eligible but never received housing assistance), program participants (received housing assistance at both baseline and one-year follow-up or only at one-year follow-up), program leavers (received housing assistance at baseline but not at one-year follow-up). There are two treatments in the study – treatment 1: Public housing/Section 8; treatment 2: Rent control. Rent burden is defined as paying over 30 percent of annual income on rent. Residential crowding is classified as more than two persons per bedroom in households. Housing insecurity is measured through several indicators: having lived on the streets/shelters; doubling up with friends. Economic hardship score ranges from 0-5 (food, housing, utilities, medical and financial hardship). The supplemental poverty measure is used for determining the level of income poverty.

Results: We find that compared to the eligible but never-assisted households, current housing-subsidy participants have a significantly lower probability of experiencing rent burden (OR: 0.73, p<.05), living in crowded environment (OR: 0.47, p<.05), a lower likelihood of being displaced (OR: 0.52, p<.1) and entering poverty (OR: 0.57, p<.01) when controlling for households’ socioeconomic factors and the baseline level of the outcomes examined. Similar results are found in current rent-control participant group. We also find that living under rent control help reduce medical hardship. Although a reduction in housing-related deprivation appears, some domains of economic hardship remain high in subsidized households.

Conclusions: The study suggests current participants experience meaningful improvements in the reduction of their housing-cost burden and precarious housing situations. Also, housing programs have significant impacts on poverty reduction, but vulnerable families still find it difficult to escape from compounded economic hardships. Multiple material disadvantages that families confront may not be fully captured if we only look at their movement along the poverty line. A more comprehensive policy and more integrated social service delivery system should be considered to help disadvantaged families cope with multi domains of their life circumstances.