Quasi-Experimental Study of the Effects of Homelessness Prevention

该项目旨在确定向面临无家可归风险的人提供临时财政援助对以下几个重要结果的影响：无家可归、住房稳定和犯罪。研究人员将评估美国一个主要城市的无家可归预防呼叫中心（HPCC），以确定这种援助如何影响这些结果。该项目将测试那些接受临时财政援助的人是否更不可能无家可归、搬家或被捕。调查人员将进一步研究通过经济援助减少无家可归和改善其他结果的成本是否超过了收益。因此，这项研究将使政策制定者在分配有限的资源以减少无家可归时做出更明智的决定，将资源用于最有效的方案。此外，该项目将研究这种预防服务如何影响不同类型的接收者，因此结果将重要地告知运营这些呼叫中心的服务提供商。提供者也可以做出更明智的选择，将紧急资金瞄准那些最有可能从中受益的人，这将提高无家可归预防计划的成本效益。该项目是第一个准实验性研究，以检查临时财政援助对无家可归，住房稳定性和犯罪的影响。虽然影响评估的金标准是随机对照试验研究，但这在无家可归者政策研究中具有挑战性，因为所服务的人口既极其脆弱，又具有高度移动的性。这些因素使得跟踪方案的接受者变得困难和昂贵。 因此，关于预防无家可归方案的影响的信息有限。 因此，这项研究填补了一个重要的空白，在文献中的无家可归预防计划的影响。该项目之所以成为可能，是因为HPCC以独特的方式将符合条件的呼叫者与财政援助联系起来，并且通过几个不同的管理数据源提供了丰富的结果。这项研究不仅对研究住房计划的学者，而且对那些努力决定如何最好地在预防和治疗服务中分配有限资源以解决无家可归问题的政策制定者和项目管理者来说都是有益的。

This project aims at determining the impact of providing temporary financial assistance to those at risk of homelessness on several important outcomes: homelessness, housing stability, and crime. The investigators will evaluate a Homelessness Prevention Call Center (HPCC) in a major U.S. city to determine how this assistance impacts these outcomes. This project will test whether those receiving temporary financial assistance are less likely to become homeless, move, or be arrested. The investigators will further examine whether the cost of reducing homelessness and improving other outcomes through financial assistance is outweighed by the benefits. Therefore, this research will allow policymakers to make more informed decisions when allocating limited resources to reduce homelessness, putting resources towards the most effective programs. Moreover, this project will examine how this prevention service impacts different types of recipients, so the results will importantly inform service providers who run these call centers. Providers can also make more informed choices, targeting emergency funding to those most likely to benefit from them, which will improve the cost effectiveness of homelessness prevention programs.This project is the first quasi-experimental study to examine the impact of temporary financial assistance on homelessness, housing stability, and crime. While the gold standard in impact evaluation is a randomized controlled trial study, this is challenging in homeless policy studies because the population being served is both extremely vulnerable and highly mobile. These factors make keeping track of recipients of programming difficult and costly. Consequently, there is only limited information about the impact of homelessness prevention programs. Thus, this research fills an important gap in the literature on the effect of homelessness prevention programs. This project is possible because of the unique way in which the HPCC connects eligible callers with financial assistance, and because of a rich set of outcomes available through several different administrative data sources. This research will be informative not only to scholars who study housing programs, but also to policymakers and program managers who struggle to decide how best to distribute limited resources among prevention and treatment services to address the issue of homelessness.