Related UI Researchers

Publications on Housing

Recipients of housing assistance under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Public Housing and Housing Choice Voucher programs can keep their benefits as long as they remain income eligible and abide by program requirements. Under HUD's MTW demonstration, however, a small number of housing agencies that administer these programs chose to impose time limits on various program benefits, including housing assistance. This report documents their rationale for doing so, companion policy and programmatic changes they made in conjunction with time limits, their design decisions and implementation experiences and, to the extent knowable, effects on recipients and housing agencies.

This report, the first of three completed under contract to the D.C. Department of Human Services to assess the District of Columbia's homeless assistance system, examines seven functions that The Community Partnership manages for the District. These include contracting for emergency shelter; orchestrating the District's Continuum of Care; managing and monitoring contracts between homeless service providers and DHS, HUD, and DHCD; quality assurance and program monitoring; rule setting related to provider and client rights and obligations; data collection and analysis; and performance standards and client outcomes. Findings feed into and helped shape the final recommendations offered in the second and third reports.

This report is the second of three for our contract to assess the District of Columbia's homeless assistance system. It looks at the system as a whole, including the flow of people into and through the District's emergency shelter system, the overall structure of the system, and the ways that homelessness impacts D.C. government agencies and the programs they have for addressing it. One critical set of findings-that very few people account for a very large number of shelter days while most people coming in to shelter use very few system resource-leads to the major recommendations of our assessment.

This final report for our contract to assess the District of Columbia's homeless assistance system summarizes findings and presents major recommendations: (1) move chronically homeless people from shelters and streets into permanent supportive housing with appropriate supportive services, (2) create a process that prioritizes who gets the 2,500 new PSH units, (3) transform emergency shelters to use half the beds and specialize more, and (4) make the homeless management information system work as a tool to measure system progress by opening it and using better analytic techniques. The Mayor and Interagency Council are already making progress on the first two recommendations.

This report analyzes FHA borrower closing costs using data from 7,600 FHA-insured, 30-year fixed-rate home purchase loans. Total closing costs paid to mortgage originators are substantial, averaging just under $3,400. Borrowers in neighborhoods with more minorities and lower educational attainment consistently pay higher costs than others. Loans with simpler terms are less expensive. Borrowers who use "no-cost" loans and so can shop on interest rate alone pay $1,200 less than borrowers who pay some lender or broker fees in cash. This suggests that consumers have a tougher time comparing alternatives when trade-offs are involved and that mortgage loan markets are not fully transparent or competitive.