Overview

• "Many of those on the brink of homelessness face challenges beyond just a shortfall in resources"

Motivation

• "Little is known about whether programs that offer case management services as well as financial assistance are more effective at preventing homelessness than programs that offer only cash."

• "About 1.3 million individuals and 300 thousand children enter a homeless shelter each year in the United States"

Geography: King County, WA

Design

Financial Assistance

Financial Assistance + Case Management

Treatment Arms

(631 people who are not homeless)

Housing Support, Help Generating Income, Emotional Support

Empirical Results # 1

Case Management increases likelihood  

• Arrested within one year by 4.3 pp

• Emergency shelter use and street outreach by 4.2 pp

"We conclude that case management did not, on average, improve housing stability significantly beyond any effect of financial assistance alone."

Takeaway

"We find evidence that case management leads to positive outcomes when it is more intensive and worse outcomes when it causes financial assistance to be delayed."

Empirical Results # 2

Details

YFHPI Intervention

• Families at imminent risk of homelessness

• Payment will prevent homelessness

• Typical Cap: $2300

• Expenditure on auto repairs are limited

Sample Eligibility

Not Eligible 

for Support

Eligible 

for Support

Eligible  and receive Case Management

Assessment Score

"People scoring as low risk (< 15) are ineligible for YFHPI. People scoring as high risk (> 28) were excluded from the study because the implementing organizations had ethical concerns about assigning them to a study arm that did not include case management."

Sample Construction

Eligible for Support

Do you want financial support & Case Management

Yes

No

Randomized Case Management

Given Case Management

Case Managers

• Housing Stability

• Communicate with Landlords

• Search for Housing

• Income

• Job Search

• Connect with Public Benefits

• Emotional Support

• Counseling

• Motivational Interviewing

"Case managers typically deliver within one or two weeks"

Funds Only Group

"Financial assistance for that group could take many weeks to disburse, and case managers `sometimes delayed payment to see if case management might solve the client's financial problems or if other sources of financial support could be
obtained.'"

Case Management Group

Interpretation

At one level, we're comparing the impact of an offer of case management.

But it's not holding financial assistance fixed and varying the offer of financial assistance 

Analysis

What "Jumps" out?

Funds

Service Hours

Distribution

Empirical Results #1

Indicator for homeless program use

Case Management

Controls

Text

- Emergency Shelter

- Street Outreach

- Coordinated Entry

- Long-term Subsidy

Regression Specification

Pre-outcome

Housing Loss Expected

Previously Homeless

Number of Children

Age

Gender

Race

Child with Dissability

Month

Homeless Services

"Case manager referrals might particularly lead to increases in generous long-term subsidies, though the increased contact with street outreach is more difficult to account for by direct referrals."

Eviction Filings

Some households are already in the eviction process at the time of random assignment, so they have a judgement in the post period but not the filing

Address Changes

Applied Econometrics

Consider

• Which do you prefer in this context - the mean difference, or the residualized difference?

• Would it be appropriate to drop the 2-3 (of the 13 counselors who don't comply with the assignment?)

• What if we conditioned on the leave-one-out immediate funds rate of the case manager?

We should not interpret both of these coefficients as causal. Conceptually, it doesn't make sense to have multiple causal variables

Reflections

It can be really hard to implement a high quality RCT in this context

• Are you able to randomize over the relevant population?

• Are we interested in the effects of the treatment variable? 

"Little is known about whether programs that offer case management services as well as financial assistance are more effective at preventing homelessness than programs that offer only cash."

Recall the initial motivation

Cannot answer this question by comparing mean outcomes between treated and control groups

"We observe two facts that are consistent with strong external validity of our main results."

Fact #1

"In our study sample, the equivalent value is 1.6% at 6
months (and 2.6% at 12 months)"

Fact #2

• The most interesting line of the paper may have been footnote 2

"In a case review prior to this study, case managers stated that 59% of their clients would prefer to receive just financial assistance but the state thought that only 20% could manage without case management."

Comments/Thoughts

These are intended to be helpful to students reading the paper

"In practice, the database records few individuals with risk scores too low to qualify for the program because case managers save time by informally screening low-risk people out prior to taking the assessment."

Comment

• This is important contextual information to include!

"Case management hours are more difficult to verify, and conversations with case managers suggest that they under-report case management hours due to the burden of record-keeping"

"Case manager referrals might particularly lead to increases in generous long-term subsidies, though the increased contact with street outreach is more difficult to account for by direct referrals."

Comment

• Very Transparent

"First, case management hours and funding rates are largely uncorrelated"

Comment

• What is the correlation coefficient?