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Policy Framework
For many low-income families, taking a low-wage job was once a route to deeper poverty, since doing so usually led to loss of welfare payments, Medicaid, and other benefits. More than most poor families, public housing residents knew that work did not pay because, on top of these other losses and new expenses, increases in income would lead, under traditional public housing rules, to higher rents that would consume a substantial part of what they earned.
Policymakers have enacted a series of measures over the past decade designed to make work pay. The Jobs-Plus Community Revitalization Initiative for Public Housing Families goes even further. This ambitious place-based effort builds on those policy innovations by changing traditional public housing rent rules so that tenants' rents do not rise as quickly when their earnings grow. In addition to this financial work incentive, Jobs-Plus offers employment-related assistance, on-site case management, and job-related information sharing through resident networks.
Agenda, Scope, and Goals
In assessing the feasibility, effectiveness, economic costs and benefits, and implications for best practices of the Job-Plus approach, the evaluation investigated the following questions:
- Across diverse public housing settings and resident populations, can key programmatic features of Jobs-Plus be implemented successfully and can effective interagency and resident partnerships be developed?
- To what extent and in what ways do residents come forward to take advantage of the new work-related opportunities Jobs-Plus offers them?
- Does Jobs-Plus substantially increase residents’ employment and earnings compared with what they would have achieved in the absence of the program?
- Do increases in employment and earnings lead to improvements in residents' quality of life, and do they make public housing developments better places in which to live?
Design, Sites, and Data Sources
Seven pubic housing developments in six cities across the nation operated the Jobs-Plus program:
- Baltimore, Maryland
- Chattanooga, Tennessee
- Dayton, Ohio
- Los Angeles, California (two developments)
- St. Paul, Minnesota
- Seattle, Washington
Other public housing developments in these same cities served as comparison developments. The allocation of program and comparison developments within each city was determined through random assignment.
In addition to records provided by the public housing agencies, the evaluation of the effectiveness of Jobs-Plus used long-term trend data derived from administrative records on public housing residents’ employment and earnings and their receipt of welfare and food stamps.
Survey data collected before the start of Jobs-Plus provided baseline profiles of the residents of the participating developments. Qualitative data were collected during the field research phase, and follow-up surveys measured residents’ outcomes almost five years after the program began.
What's Next
The demonstration concluded in late 2004. A final report was released in March 2005.
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