Are Public Housing and Homelessness Linked? Evidence from Two Decades of Data Across 330 U.S. Metros

• In Event: Revisiting Public Housing as a Potential Solution to America’s Housing Crisis

Abstract

Spurred in part by escalating housing cost burdens – which are unequally distributed by race and class and undeterred by a strained social safety net – a growing body of research examines the patterns and predictors of homelessness across U.S. metropolitan areas. Scholars have tested a wide range of hypotheses to explain sharp spatial disparities in metros’ homelessness rates, including differences in law enforcement, weather, social service provision, poverty, and rental housing affordability. An emerging scholarly consensus supports the importance of the latter factor: metros with higher rental housing costs tend to have higher rates of homelessness. However, rental housing cost variation is not exogenous. Identifying concrete policy interventions that may depress homelessness through reduced rental housing costs and other mechanisms is thus imperative. We propose that publicly-subsidized housing is one such intervention. To test the possibility that two forms of public housing – traditional public housing and Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs) – place downward pressure on homelessness concentrations, directly and indirectly (via reduced rental housing costs) –  we employ multilevel models and two decades of spatially-disaggregated data for 330 U.S. regions from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on population-adjusted homelessness rates and public housing and HCV concentration. Our models control for regional structural and economic conditions, drawn from the American Community Survey, as well. Findings reveal grim overall trends in homelessness from 2010 through 2024, with substantial regional variation, which is partially explained by classic structural factors, including poverty and unemployment. As predicted, regional levels of public housing and, to a lesser extent, HCV concentration appear to depress rates of homelessness nonlinearly, with diminishing marginal returns. These effects are not mediated by area-level rents, which exert positive but largely independent effects on unsheltered homelessness. We conclude that investment in, and revitalization of, traditional public housing may be a particularly promising strategy for ameliorating the burgeoning homelessness crisis in the United States.

Authors

• Jared Nathan Schachner, University of Southern California
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Matthew Gannon, Johns Hopkins University
  Presenting Author