About MDRC
Joshua Vermette is a quantitative researcher in the Economic Mobility, Housing, and Communities policy area. He is currently the data manager for the Stepped and Tiered Rent Demonstration, a study designed to test the effects of alternative rent policies on workforce engagement, and the MyGoals Evaluation, a workforce coaching program focusing on executive skills for recipients of public housing assistance. He is also a member of the data teams for the Rent Reform Demonstration and the Family Self-Sufficiency Evaluation and previously had data and analysis roles on the Jobs Plus Opportunities Evaluation and the SaveUSA study. Vermette is an experienced programmer and data manager whose responsibilities have included data acquisition, data processing, impact analysis, and report writing. He holds a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and a BA in political science from Syracuse University.
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MDRC Publications
ReportMay, 2023In 2014, HUD scaled up Jobs Plus, a rigorously tested and promising model offering rent incentives and on-site work supports to public housing residents. The first three cohorts show no evidence of higher employment or earnings during the early years, potentially due to lower participation levels and implementation challenges.
ReportMay, 2023The Jobs Plus demonstration aimed to increase economic empowerment and mobility for public housing residents through on-site employment services, rent-based work incentives, and supportive work activities. Sites that fully implemented the model saw long-term positive employment and earnings effects, but negative effects were observed in sites that did not.
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Other Publications
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Projects
James A. Riccio, Donna Wharton-Fields, Nina Castells, Stephanie Rubino, Keith Olejniczak, Joshua Vermette, Hannah Dalporto, Annie UtterbackMyGoals for Employment Success is a new workforce program intended to help recipients of federal housing subsidies who are not employed find work, build careers, and advance toward greater self-sufficiency. The program incorporates an innovative employment coaching model that is informed by current literature in behavioral psychology on executive functioning skills and...
Many U.S. households do not have enough savings to help manage temporary losses of income or increased expenditures from unexpected events. Increased savings might particularly help low- and moderate-income families avoid resorting to high-cost (sometimes “payday”) loans or failing to meet monthly rent bills and minimum credit card payments....
James A. Riccio, Nandita Verma, Gilda Azurdia, Edith Yang, Jonathan Bigelow, Keith Olejniczak, Joshua Vermette, Audrey Yu, Melissa WestThe Housing Choice Voucher Program is one of the federal government’s major programs for helping very low-income families with children, elderly people, and disabled people afford decent and safe housing in the private rental market. Housing vouchers are administered locally by public housing agencies with funding from the U.S. Department of...
Nandita Verma, James A. Riccio, Donna Wharton-Fields, Betsy L. Tessler, Stephanie Rubino, David Navarro, Michelle Ware, Joshua VermetteThe Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program is the main federal program for increasing employment and earnings and reducing reliance on government subsidies among recipients of housing subsidies. Created in 1990, FSS is administered by state and local public housing agencies with funding from the U.S...