Evaluating Philadelphia's Rapid Re-housing Program - Impacts on Employment and Housing

With American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds for Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing (HPRP), the City of Philadelphia implemented one of the most aggressive and comprehensive rapid re-housing programs in the country, assisting more households with re-housing assistance per capita than the vast majority of HPRP programs. Over 1500 households received rapid re-housing assistance in the three years of HPRP funding. This presentation is reporting evaluation findings on the effectiveness of Philadelphia's rapid re-housing program, presenting differences found in employment and housing outcomes between two groups of assistance levels (households that received 3 months versus households that received 12 months of housing assistance), and the differences found between the assisted group and matched, non-assisted households who entered the Philadelphia shelter system at the same time. Using administrative data, a variety of statistical models are used to analyze differences, including instrumental variable, regression discontinuity, and difference in-difference designs. For each group, return to homelessness data are analyzed, representing housing stability outcomes. This study is also analyzing employment impacts for all of the households re-housed with HPRP assistance, comparing wage and employment patterns to similar homeless households who entered city shelters but did not receive the re-housing assistance. Findings from this rapid re-housing evaluation will indicate effects on employment and housing stability based on length of time and types of households receiving time-limited housing assistance. Ways in which this successful housing assistance program has become instrumental in developing understanding and acceptance of Housing First effectiveness will also be discussed.