The research focuses on the metropolitan scale and leverages macroeconomic modeling methods for time series data, recognizing that there are structural relationships that drive changes in metropolitan rents over time, including inflation, employment growth, and the rate at which the housing stock grows over time.

AVLF’s Eviction Defense Force has three legal channels for low-income tenants. Residents facing eviction can be assisted through the programs that make up AVLF’s Safe and Stable Homes Project – Saturday Lawyer Program, Eviction Defense Program, Standing with Our Neighbors, and Housing Court Assistance Center. Legal assistance – advice and representation – is provided by staff and volunteer attorneys at no cost to the person. If financial assistance is needed, clients may also qualify for the Community Assistance Program that provides funds for rent payments and/or other necessities such as utilities, food, clothing, and transportation.

The Center will leverage administrative data linkages to build a sustainable and replicable approach to estimate homelessness of youth ages 14-24 in states where data are siloed at different geographic levels. The work will describe K-12 educational, child welfare related public assistance program participation and police involvement histories of youth associated with homelessness as older youth (i.e., ages 18-24).

Connecticut Fair Housing Center will work with the Connecticut Bar Foundation (CBF) and four civil legal services providers (CT-NLA) across Connecticut to design and implement a state-wide Right to Counsel (CT-RTC) program using equity principles and ensuring that BIPOC and low-income tenants are able to stay in their homes or make a planned transition to more appropriate housing. The Center and its partners will undertake the following activities: Provide staff training and supervision as well as project evaluation services; outreach and marketing reaching more than 7,000 tenants through written materials in multiple languages; client intake as well as formal and informal advice for 5,000 tenants; provision of legal representation to 5,000 tenants; and referral to non-legal resources for 1,000 tenants.

This research project will address the enormous challenge of rapidly rebuilding communities that have been badly damaged and perhaps even destroyed by major storms. This problem will become even more challenging due to the increasingly powerful and more frequent hurricanes that are forecast to strike the US. The result of these events has been and will continue to be severely impacted communities whose housing stock is essentially destroyed, leaving their population without adequate shelter, often for long periods of time. To address the problem of rapidly delivering large quantities of post-disaster housing, researchers will focus on how the modular home manufacturing industry can help provide solutions. The major objective of the work is to collaborate with this industry to develop a technology and process roadmap that will enable them to manufacture significant quantities of post-disaster homes. These homes must be able to cope with future severe weather events and be able to provide the basic services needed for families during post-disaster recovery.

The goal of this project is to enable balloon-type CLT construction by providing a reference and guidance for designers to evaluate the seismic response for a vast number of three- and four-story apartment complexes nationwide. These types of buildings are constructed extensively in both suburban and rural areas of the country, and the ability to use CLT will substantially increase the use of this technology in this market, thereby enabling a new type of resilient and sustainable multifamily residential building to be built. This project aims at removing a code-barrier for balloon-type CLT buildings, and thereby significantly increasing the speed of construction compared to platform type building.

Legal Services of Eastern Missouri (LSEM), working in collaboration with the other three Legal Service Corporation (LSC) funded organizations in Missouri, will provide holistic eviction prevention services on a statewide basis, serving all 114 Missouri counties and the City of St. Louis.

The Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada will expand their team to provide representation to tenants in eviction mediation, in court, and with appeals when necessary. The long-term goal is to make permanent all of the innovative programs that are assisting tenants during the COVID-19 pandemic and to expand the Eviction Prevention Program to provide every tenant facing eviction in Clark County with an attorney.

The Florida Legal Aid (FLA) Eviction Prevention Project will provide crucial legal aid services to vulnerable residents of the service area to protect them from eviction, increasing right to counsel for civil legal matters. The project focus is on underserved (i.e., BIPOC, rural, etc.) communities through a statewide coalition of non-LSC funded legal aid programs; legal representation in relation to legal filings and court proceedings; collaboration with courts, judges, and other parties to create and promote eviction diversion programs that reduce the burden of eviction; assistance to tenants to avoid or reduce the negative impacts of a potential eviction, such as referrals to other service providers like Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP); access to improved technology to help prevent future barriers to renting; and education and outreach to tenants at imminent risk of eviction regarding their rights.

Tennessee State University received a cooperative agreement designated for Historically Black Colleges and Universities for research in homebuilding innovations or research related to how housing technology/built environment interacts with social determinants of health and well-being.

By establishing the HBCU Research Center of Excellence (COE), Howard University sets a goal of achieving an equitable and inclusionary society where currently-underserved populations come to be properly served and inequities in housing, health, education, economic well-being, and community development are overcome through policy implementation. The underlying problems that block this goal include the mutually-reinforcing historic and current processes that led and continue to lead to disparate outcomes for underserved populations. Four interacting factors emerge: Housing, Health, Built Environment, and Voice.

The Texas Southern University’s (TSU’s) Center of Excellence—the Center for Housing and Community Development Research (CHCDR)— will advance transdisciplinary academic and empirical research and debate on affordable housing and community development policy for racial equity benefiting low-income communities of color in the six major Texas cities (Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio). Focusing on low-income households and underserved communities of color, CHCDR faculty will carry out research projects that emphasize the relationship between housing policies and programs under the following three thematic and interconnected areas: 1) housing stability or security, 2) individual or community wealth building; and 3) planning and infrastructure.

This research project will study the housing trajectories of family households with children who leave HUD-assisted housing, focusing on housing tenure, housing stability, and neighborhood attainment. It will search to answer the following three questions: (a) What are the factors that influence the probability that a family transitions into sustainable homeownership? (b) Does an exit from HUD-subsidized housing lead to subsequent housing instability, and which types of households experience higher rates of residential moves? And (c) how does leaving HUD-assisted housing influence neighborhood attainment? Researchers will match HUD administrative data with annual residential address and tenure data from Infogroup, which includes a census of household residential moves from 2006 – 2020. The research will analyze outcomes for a broad sample of leaver households living in different housing markets and to assess whether leaver households can successfully navigate the private housing market without subsidy. The research will have direct relevance to HUD policymakers as they work to develop interventions that support self-sufficiency and longer-term economic mobility for lower-income families.

This project expands upon a largely-built data infrastructure that uses confidential U.S. Census Bureau and HUD data from several sources capable of tracking individuals and their residential and employment outcomes over long periods of time. The integrated data provides longitudinal and spatial dimensions, along with very large sample sizes. The core question the researchers will address is how different types of assisted and non-assisted housing affect residential mobility decisions and neighborhood quality, and how these outcomes are linked to intergenerational employment, mobility, and neighborhood quality outcomes.

Idaho Legal Aid Services and Utah Legal Services (ULS), will partner with Montana Legal Services (MLSA), Jesse Tree, Intermountain Fair Housing Council (IFHC), and Idaho Policy Institute (IPI) on this project. The project involves expansion of capacity to serve tenants threatened with eviction in the intermountain western states of Idaho, Montana, and Utah. Each of these states is experiencing dramatic population growth, sharply increasing housing costs, and a lack of affordable housing, which is leading to the displacement of many low-income residents. This project will fund an increase in service capacity of the partners and test four different approaches to using those funds. It will fund four eviction related pilots, two in Idaho and one each in Montana and Utah. Three are statewide and one is regional.

This project will assess the capacity of regional administrative data to improve the estimation of prevalence and incidence of homeless youth in an urban county.

The goal of this research is to provide a strong evidence base for policy and practice and, ultimately, to improve the calculation of FMRs in areas with rising rents.

Community Legal Aid will ensure that at-risk tenants understand eviction procedures and their legal and fair housing rights; are represented before, during, and after trial; get help with court-based mediation and other alternative dispute resolution; receive holistic services including filling out forms and getting help accessing rental assistance and other stabilizing programs; obtain appropriate referrals and in-house counseling; and get assistance navigating transitions connected with vacating rental property. Community Legal Aid will work with Greater Boston Legal Services, Metro West Legal Services, Northeast Legal Aid, and South Coastal Counties Legal Services.

Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, Inc. and Legal Aid of Western Ohio, Inc. (LAWO) will work to support the expansion of a comprehensive eviction diversion program into rural areas including seven counties surrounding ABLE and LAWO’s Dayton, Springfield, and Lima offices. The program's core components will include legal representation in eviction actions, education and outreach for tenant protections in local policies and programs, coordination with rental assistance funds, legal education and information, and access to mediation where available. Their design is to emphasize the program with involvement from tenants in the rural counties served under this project.

This research is driven by the broad research question: What impact do CDBG and HOME activities have on equity outcomes? The research will be conducted in three phases, using data from Dallas County, Texas. Phase one develops two separate indices—neighborhood deprivation and economic growth potential—to describe neighborhood qualities broadly at the census block group (CBG) level. Researchers will use these indices in phase two and three to account for the differential impacts of CDBG and HOME activities across varying neighborhood conditions. In phase two, the researchers will examine the differential impact of CDBG and HOME activities on a broad range of housing and social equity outcomes. They will use both CDBG and address level data to test how individual CDBG and HOME activities and their funding intensity and diversification differentially impact equity across the neighborhood indices developed in phase one. In phase three, they will identify the threshold effects of different CDBG and HOME activities required to impact equity outcomes derived in phase two.

The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program provides billions of dollars in funding to state and local jurisdictions and is one of the largest federal supports for local development. The Urban Institute will study the effects of the program on two key outcomes. The first reviews the highly localized (block-face) impacts of CDBG on single-family home sales, and the second reviews the impact of CDBG on commercial real estate activity. Both will also look for distinct impacts from different types of CDBG activities. This research will involve cases studies and rely on partnerships with grantees from Los Angeles County (CA), Prince George’s County (MD), Jersey City (NJ), and Washington D.C.

The shortage of affordable housing and HUD assistance relative to the demand provides a strong motivation to explore ways to expand coverage to as many eligible people as possible. One possible solution is to support individuals to become economically self-sufficient or make other gains that result in the person no longer requiring housing assistance (a positive exit), thus making these limited resources available for others. Unfortunately, information about the characteristics associated with positive and negative exits is lacking, and studies of leavers’ outcomes are also rare. To address this knowledge gap, this research will build on a unique housing and health collaborative that has already linked housing data with Medicaid and Medicare claims. Researchers will further link this dataset to incorporate data on homelessness, behavioral health, and economic factors. Most of the additional datasets are already in hand and have been linked to each other. The efficiency gained from this approach and the comprehensive nature of the planned longitudinal dataset allow the researchers to answer a wider range of research questions than is possible when looking at the various, disparate linkages between HUD data and other datasets that exist at a national level.

Chapin Hall is partnering with other national experts and jurisdictional partners to develop innovative, practicable methods for estimating and predicting the number of homeless youths, using linked administrative data from multiple sources.

Right to Counsel (RTC)

The University of Utah at Salt Lake City project answered the broad question: Do streetcars enrich the social and economic health of communities? More specifically, can streetcars perform as an economic revitalization tool while enhancing urban quality of life equitably for all residents?

The University of Texas at Austin project developed replicable methodologies for: 1) identifying zones where (unsubsidized) affordable multifamily (MF) rental housing was redeveloped, as planning initiatives intersected with market trends; and 2) prioritized within these zones for rehabilitation and capture as long-term affordable housing. It assessed how local policies (whether funding incentives or regulatory policies) facilitated the rehabilitation of specific MF housing types for energy efficiency, long-term durability, and affordability.

The Trustee of Columbia University study on Examining the Impact of Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) on Children Living in Public Housing Communities looked at the impact of educational outcomes of low-income children living in Fresno, California, and how the effect of RAD varies by changing housing stability and quality as well as the level of resident engagement in the RAD demonstration.

The Woodstock Institute studied the impact of the City of Chicago Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities (MOPD) Community Development Block Grant (CDBG)-funded Home Mod program. The Home Mod program has been in existence for over 15 years and provides home accessibility modifications for qualifying people with disabilities. This research project used ex-post cost benefit analysis to examine the impact of CDBG funds spent on the City of Chicago’s Home Mod program. The analysis used the following five steps: (1) Identify Costs; (2) Monetize Costs; (3) Identify Benefits; (4) Monetize Benefits; and (5) Calculate Net Benefit. MOPD has maintained data about the Home Mod project since its inception, including clients served, work performed, and the cost of this work (labor, materials, etc.).

The Urban Institute analyzed quantitative data provided by the Disaster Recovery Grant Reporting (DRGR) system and available grantee and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Individual Assistance data to: 1) describe lag-times for each housing program, distinguishing programs in the severe disaster scenarios; and 2) assess the contribution of different factors to those lag-times using a proportional hazards analytical model. The assessment's data was used to consider HUD's improvement plans and potential data and knowledge-sharing tools. Proposed solutions were compared to the assessment's findings regarding contributing factors. Qualitative data was collected from structured interviews with HUD's current technical assistance providers and past local contractors in the three case disaster programs—along with previously-collected data shells used by the grantees—to assess the plausibility of improvements and recommended alternatives.

For this evaluation of the Jobs Plus Program, MDRC enrolled participants in a longer-term study and documented the start-up of the Jobs Plus Pilot Program, its early outcomes, and its costs through a comprehensive process study that compares experiences across all nine developments.

The Urban Institute evaluated the Moving to Work program, looking at activities, outcomes, and impacts.

This research supported a number of special secondary data analyses and a related planning process to design a research demonstration project that tested a new employment intervention for recipients of Housing Choice Vouchers. In addition to specifying a new intervention approach, MDRC sought to develop a research strategy for evaluating the effectiveness of that approach, as well as a fundraising strategy to support it.

For this project, Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. and a collaboration of innovative nonprofit, academic, and private sector institutions came together to work with the federal government to create a new model for revitalizing the nation's economically distressed communities through the SC2 Resource Network. Their approach created an innovative paradigm for empowering local communities to meet their underlying economic challenges in a holistic and sustainable manner. The group established a unique networked system of assistance that built the infrastructure for framing a new federal policy for assisting America's distressed cities and communities.

This Abt research assessed the potential of Small Area Fair Market Rents (SAFMRs) to increase access to opportunity by analyzing the characteristics of neighborhoods with units renting below the payment standard before and after introduction of SAFMRs, focusing both on new HCV holders and HCV holders under lease at time of adoption. The research assessed whether SAFMRs changed HCV holders’ likelihood of moving and renting in higher opportunity neighborhoods.

The primary objective of this research was to further evaluate the performance of the rammed building (operational since January 2018) in terms of thermal comfort, energy consumption, indoor environmental quality and thermal dynamics from the data being generated, including personal feeling and views of residents living inside. Another objective was to conduct nondestructive evaluation on the thermal, structural, and durability (long-term aging) performance of the building system to evaluate any stress buildup with time.

The SUNY-Buffalo project objective was to develop an analytic tool for siting subsidized housing and use analysis to identify the boundaries for neighborhoods of opportunity in shrinking US cities. Neighborhoods of opportunity were defined as urban areas that provided residents with access to resources which promoted economic and social mobility. Those resources included access to employment and opportunities for educational and workforce development.

This Urban Institute project included in-depth interviews with TA providers and TA customers, as well as two case studies. The project helped address gaps in TA assessment. It was designed to answer questions about the provision and effectiveness of TA through a focus on TA providers.

The University of Florida Re-Purpose project included identifying prototypical dwelling plans from a systematically gathered inventory of older housing stock. It identified problem areas and effective spaces.