Does outreach increase engagement with housing services and reduce evictions? Evidence from a large-scale RCT

• In Event: Power, Protection, and Precarity: Evaluating Interventions in Housing Stability

Abstract

The United States faces a rapidly worsening housing crisis. Nearly 12 million US households spend over half their income on housing costs, and nearly four million people across the country face eviction each year, with low-income households and renters of color experiencing eviction at disproportionately high rates. Eviction can have long-lasting adverse impacts on health, educational, and economic outcomes. While local governments increasingly offer housing stabilization services such as financial assistance, tenant-landlord mediation, and legal assistance, with the aim of preventing and mitigating the consequences of eviction, take-up of these programs is often low. In a large-scale RCT (N = 16,495) conducted with a mid-sized city's housing stabilization department, we tested the impact of targeted outreach and message framing on tenant engagement with the city’s housing stabilization services and downstream housing outcomes. 

In our preliminary results, we find that informational outreach increased engagement with housing stabilization services by 0.4 pp (124% from a baseline of 0.3%), relative to receiving no outreach – a significant difference. Furthermore, outreach reduced eviction judgments by 6.9 pp (10% from a baseline of 69.6%) among tenants with an active eviction case at the time of outreach, though this difference is insignificant. 

We do not find any consistent impact of message framing. We tested two distinct messages: one that emphasized that housing stabilization services are effective and staff are available to support tenants, and one that emphasized tenants’ rights in the eviction process. While messages emphasizing the supportiveness of staff and the efficacy of services increased phone calls to the department by 0.8 pp (38% from a baseline of 2.4%) relative to messages emphasizing tenants’ rights in the process, we find no difference between the two messages in engagement with an informational website linked on each mailer. On downstream outcomes, we see that the support and efficacy message decreased eviction judgments by 5.1 pp (8% from a baseline of 65.3%), but this difference is not significant.

These findings extend a growing evidence base on approaches to connecting low-income residents with government resources to a new policy domain: housing stabilization programs. While increasing take-up of housing stabilization programs will not, on its own, solve the affordable housing crisis, it is one critical step to supporting low-income tenants across the country. This study offers important lessons for both practitioners and researchers on “what works” to increase engagement with government programs, and how this can improve outcomes for residents.

Authors

• Heidi L Wallace, University of California, Berkeley
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Linos, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Jessica Lasky-Fink, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author