Foreword: "In 1970 Congress and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development initiated and elaborate social experiment. The Experimental Housing Allowance Program (EHAP), conducted over an 11-year period, tested the feasibility of providing cash subsidies to low-income households to help them obtain adequate housing. The Urban Institute was involved with EHAP since its beginning. In this book, eight Institute researchers not only thoroughly analyze and describe the experiment but also probe the larger question of just what government strategies seem most effective in aiding the poor...EHAP answered these questions and provided implications for other aspects of housing programs and aid to the poor. Findings were derived by analyzing the behavior of 30,000 lower-income households who participated at 12 sites across the country. Analysis showed that from the household's viewpoint, straight cash transfers to low-income households are even more beneficial and effective than are housing allowances which are loaded with government restrictions. EHAP findings also suggested that allowances provide services equivalent to other housing programs but at a lower cost."
Description by Rossi 1987 of how EHAP exemplified "wrong treatment" in social experimentation:
"Wrong Treatment: This occurs when the treatment is simply a seriously flawed translation of the problem theory into a program. One of the best examples is the housing allowance experiment in which the experimenters attempted to motivate poor households to move into higher quality housing by offering them a rent subsidy, contingent on their moving into housing that met certain quality standards (Struyk and Bendick, 1981). The experimenters found that only a small portion of the poor households to whom this offer was made actually moved to better housing and thereby qualified for and received housing subsidy payments. After much econometric calculation, this unexpected outcome was found to have been apparently generate by the fact that the experimenters unfortunately did not take into account that the costs of moving were far from zero. When the anticipated dollar benefits from the subsidy were compared to the net benefits, after taking into account the costs of moving, the net benefits were in a very large proportion of the cases uncomfortably close to zero and in some instances negative. Furthermore, the housing standards applied almost totally missed the point. They were technical standards that often characterized housing as sub-standard that was quite acceptable to the households involved. In other words, these were standards that were regarded as irrelevant by the clients. It was unreasonable to assume that households wounder undertake to move when there was no push of dissatisfaction from the housing occupied and no substantial net positive benefit in dollar [pg15] terms for doing so. Incidentally, the fact that poor families with little formal education were able to make decisions that were consistent with the outcomes of highly technical econometric calculations improves one's appreciation of the innate intellectual abilities of that population."
Author(s): coll.
Publisher: The Urban Institute Press
Year: 1981
Language: English
Pages: 0
Tags: sociology, economics, housing, social experiment, Experimental Housing Allowance Program (EHAP), 1970, cash subsidies, welfare, moving houses, Urban Institute, low-income housing, subsidized loans, poverty, program evaluation, cash transfers
Foreword ________________________________________________ xvii
Acknowledgments ________________________________________ xix
About the Authors ________________________________________ xxi
PART I. INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1. POLICY QUESTIONS AND EXPERIMENTAL RESPONSES _____________________________________ 3
Raymond J. Struyk
An Overview of the Book __________________________ 10
Answers to the Initial Questions _____________________ 11
A Wider View ____________________________________ 18
PART II. ORIGINS, DESIGN, AND OPERATIONS
2. ORIGINS OF AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH _____ 23
Marc Bendick, Jr. and Raymond J. Struyk with contributions by David Carlson
Forty Years of Policy Debate _______________________ 24
A Complex Research Design ________________________ 35
Criticisms of the Design ____________________________ 44
3. THE THREE EXPERIMENTS ______________________ 51
Marc Bendick, Jr. and Anne D. Squire
The Demand Experiment ___________________________ 51
The Supply Experiment ____________________________ 64
The Administrative Agency Experiment _______________ 68
Diversity and Consistency __________________________ 72
PART III. HOUSEHOLD RESPONSES
4. PARTICIPATION IN THE EXPERIMENTAL HOUSING ALLOWANCE PROGRAM ___________________ .79
Francis J. Cronin
The Process and Patterns of Participation _____________ 81
Factors Affecting Enrollment ________________________ 89
Factors Affecting Participation ______________________ 91
The Dynamics of Participation ______________________ 101
A Note on the Household’s Evaluation of a Constrained Subsidy _______________________________________ 105
MOBILITY _______________________________________ 107
Francis J. Cronin and David W. Rasmussen
The Role of Mobility in Altering Housing Conditions ___ 108
The Impact of Program Features on Mobility __________ 114
Barriers to Mobility _______________________________ 126
CONSUMPTION RESPONSES TO CONSTRAINED PROGRAMS ___________________________________ 129
Francis J. Cronin
Allowances and Meeting Minimum Housing Standards __ 130
Allowances and More General Measures of Housing Consumption ___________________________________ 134
Allowance Eflects on Rent Burdens ___________________ 147
Is There a Participation-Consumption Trade Off? ______ 150
HOUSEHOLD RESPONSIVENESS TO UNCONSTRAINED HOUSING ALLOWANCES ____________ 159
Francis J. Cronin
Pre-EHAP Views of Household Demand ______________ 160
Estimates of Housing Demand Elasticities Using EHAP Data __________________________________________ 163
Evaluating Housing Policies: The Role of Elasticities ___ 169
Comparing Income Supplement and Price Reduction Programs ______________________________________ 173
PART IV. LANDLORD, MARKET, AND AGENCY RESPONSES
REPAIRS AND MAINTENANCE ON THE UNITS OCCUPIED BY ALLOWANCE RECIPIENTS _______ 179
James P. Zais
Studying Effects on the Housing Stock ______________ 179
Initial Repairs to Pass Standards ____________________ 182
Ongoing Housing Unit Maintenance _________________ 193
Conclusions ______________________________________ 205
9. COMMUNITYWIDE EFFECTS OF HOUSING AL-
LOWANCES ___________________________________ 207
Larry J. Ozanne and James P. Zais
Allowances, Supplier Behavior, and Inflation __________ 207
Other Community Impacts __________________________ 227
10. ADMINISTERING HOUSING ALLOWANCES ________ 235
James P. Zais
Performing Administrative Functions ________________ 238
Overall Administrative Costs ________________________ 260
Conclusions on Administrative Feasibility _____________ 261
PART V. BROADER PERSPECTIVES
11. POLICY IMPLICATIONS: MOVING FROM RESEARCH TO PROGRAMS _______________________________ 267
Morton L. Isler
The Multifaceted Program World ____________________ 267
Benefits to Individuals _____________________________ 269
Benefits to the Community __________________________ 279
Benefits to the Housing Sector ______________________ 284
Finding the Program Mix __________________________ 288
EHAP and Section 8 _____________________________ 289
Future Applications of EHAP Results ________________ 293
12. SOCIAL EXPERIMENTATION AND POLICY RESEARCH ______________________________________ 295
Raymond ]. Struyk
Issues Not Addressed ______________________________ 296
Design Lessons for Future Experiments _______________ 302
Was EHAP Worth the Cost? _______________________ 306
Appendices
A. Data Collection in the Three Experiments _______________ 311
B. The Representativeness of EHAP Sites _________________ 329
C. Housing Quality Standards in the Experiments ___________ 339
D. Case Studies of Four Households ______________________ 359
E. Housing Allowances in Other Industrial Nations _________ 371
