About MDRC
Since joining MDRC in 1996, Verma has been involved with the design, analysis, and management of a wide range of evaluation projects. She currently oversees the evaluation of the Chicago New Communities Program, a multi-method assessment of a complex community development initiative underway in 16 communities. In addition, she is involved with Opportunity NYC, a test of conditional cash transfers, leading the project’s survey effort. She co-authored the final evaluation report of the Jobs-Plus Demonstration, an initiative testing the effectiveness of an employment-focused neighborhood saturation strategy on transforming public housing neighborhoods. She also served as a co-principal investigator on the neighborhood indicators component of MDRC’s Project on Devolution and Urban Change, a study that examined the effects of welfare reform on large urban areas. Her expertise in welfare policy and neighborhood research has benefited from her years of study and work at Case Western Reserve University, where, prior to joining MDRC, she worked at the Center for Urban Poverty and Social Change investigating the implications of changes in welfare policy and community impacts. Verma maintains an active schedule of publications for research and policy audiences. She holds a Ph.D. in social welfare from Case Western Reserve University.
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MDRC Publications
Issue FocusJuly, 2023Two new MDRC reports published by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development highlight both the long-term potential of the Jobs Plus employment program to improve economic mobility and the challenges of effectively expanding the model.
ReportMay, 2023In 2014, HUD expanded Jobs Plus, a rigorously tested model offering rent incentives and on-site work support to public housing residents. The first three groups to enroll show no evidence of higher employment or earnings during the early years, potentially due to low 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.
ReportFive-Year Findings from the Family Self-Sufficiency Evaluation
May, 2023The federal Family Self-Sufficiency program is a voluntary case-management and asset-building intervention that provides incentives to work for Housing Choice Voucher recipients. This report examines program implementation, participants’ engagement in services, and impacts on labor force participation and receipt of government benefits five years following random assignment.
ReportFindings From the Family Self-Sufficiency Evaluation
July, 2021The federal Family Self-Sufficiency program works with Housing Choice Voucher recipients to foster economic self-sufficiency and boost assets through case management and an escrow account for participants’ increased earnings. This three-year report examines program implementation, participants’ engagement, and impacts on employment, government benefits receipt, and material and financial well-being.
Issue FocusMarch, 2021For over 20 years, MDRC has designed and evaluated strategies that use the housing subsidy system to support economic self-sufficiency. This memo reviews what is known about these strategies, how people respond to them, and what elements should be considered when designing economic mobility programs for families receiving housing assistance.
ReportJanuary, 2021The Rent Reform Demonstration is testing an alternative rent-setting system for housing choice voucher recipients. It offers an employment incentive and aims to reduce administrative complexity and cost without burdening participating households. This report presents impacts on labor market and housing-related outcomes through roughly three and a half years.
Issue FocusHow Place-Based Employment Programs like Jobs Plus Can Help During the COVID-19 Pandemic
July, 2020Employment programs situated within public housing developments are facing multiple challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With routine operations disrupted by shelter-in-place orders, programs like Jobs Plus can find creative ways to keep their doors open and their clients engaged.
ReportOngoing Implementation Experiences
November, 2019Households receiving federal rental subsidies struggle to become self-sufficient. Jobs Plus provides grants to public housing agencies to offer tenants employment-related services, rent-based work incentives, and community support for work. This report examines a second round of Jobs Plus implementation, including evolving program operations, challenges, resident participation, and technical assistance.
ReportAugust, 2019This report presents 27- to 30-month impacts of an alternative rent policy for housing voucher recipients in four locations. Voucher program tenure and monthly housing subsidies increased for recipients, and housing agencies’ administrative burdens decreased. Average earnings did not rise overall, but earnings increased in two locations and employment increased in one.
ReportEarly Findings From the Family Self-Sufficiency Program Evaluation
March, 2019This first national randomized controlled trial of the Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program — the main federal strategy to help housing voucher recipients make progress toward economic mobility — examined program implementation, participants’ engagement, and impacts on labor force participation and benefits receipt in the first 24 months of this five-year program.
ReportRent Reform Demonstration Baseline Report
October, 2017Housing Choice Vouchers subsidize rent and utilities for homes that families rent from private landlords. The Rent Reform Demonstration is testing an alternative rent policy for voucher recipients. This report describes the new policy, the rationale behind each of its elements, and the way it is being evaluated.
ReportHighlights from the Jobs Plus Pilot Program Evaluation
September, 2017Jobs Plus promotes employment among public housing residents through employment services, rent rule changes that provide incentives to work, and community support for work. Within the first 18 months, all nine public housing agencies in this evaluation had begun structuring their programs, building partnerships, and implementing the model’s core components.
ReportFinal Results from the Family Self-Sufficiency Study in New York City
September, 2017FSS provides case management services and a long-term escrow-savings account to housing-assisted families; an enhanced version also offered short-term cash work incentives. Six-year results of the random assignment evaluation show few significant effects overall for either program. However, the enhanced program increased employment and earnings for participants not working at enrollment.
ReportFindings from Family Rewards 2.0
September, 2016A program in Memphis and the Bronx offered cash incentives, coupled with family guidance, to poor families for meeting certain health care, education, and work milestones. The program increased income and reduced poverty, increased dental visits and health status, reduced employment somewhat, and had few effects on students’ education.
ReportInterim Findings from the Work Rewards Demonstration in New York City
June, 2015This report presents four-year findings from a test of three interventions: the Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program, FSS plus cash work incentives, and cash work incentives alone. FSS+incentives improved employment and earnings among participants who were not working at study entry, but none of the interventions had impacts for participants overall.
ReportThe Continuing Story of the Opportunity NYC−Family Rewards Demonstration
September, 2013Family Rewards, a three-year demonstration, provided cash payments to low-income families in New York City for achieving specific health, education, and employment goals. New results show that the program substantially reduced poverty and material hardship while it operated and had positive results in improving some education, health, and work-related outcomes.
ReportEarly Findings from a Program for Housing Voucher Recipients in New York City
December, 2012Opportunity NYC–Work Rewards is testing three ways of increasing work among families receiving housing vouchers — services and a savings plan under the federal Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program, the FSS program plus cash incentives for sustained full-time work, and the cash incentives alone. Early results suggest intriguing positive findings for certain subgroups.
Working PaperAn Analysis of the Interaction among Quality-of-Life Indicators from the New Communities Program Evaluation
June, 2012This paper explores analytic methods that assess the rate at which changes in neighborhood quality of life occur. It looks at correlations among quality indicators over time and the effect of both neighborhood context and conditions beyond the neighborhood, like the Great Recession, identifying which indicators are predictors of others.
ReportEarly Findings from New York City’s Conditional Cash Transfer Program
March, 2010Targeted toward low-income families in six high-poverty New York City communities, Opportunity NYC-Family Rewards offers cash payments tied to efforts and achievements in children’s education, family preventive health care practices, and parents’ employment. In its first two years, the program substantially reduced poverty and material hardship and had positive results in improving some education, health-related, and work-related outcomes.
ReportInterim Findings from Chicago’s New Communities Program
February, 2010A 10-year, $47 million MacArthur Foundation initiative, the New Communities Program was developed and is managed by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation of Chicago. This interim report focuses on the roll out of this comprehensive neighborhood improvement initiative and its early implementation years, examining community conditions, how local groups worked together, and the more than 700 projects supported through 2008.
Working PaperCamden During Receivership
April, 2009This working paper gives a broad overview of redevelopment efforts under the first term of state receivership in Camden, New Jersey. It concludes that attempts to build public capacity to revitalize cities may need to be complemented by efforts to build civic capacity, or the ability to solve problems in coordination with major partners.
ReportPromoting Work in Seattle Public Housing During a HOPE VI Redevelopment
October, 2005Early success for this ambitious employment program for public housing residents in Seattle was disrupted by a federal HOPE VI grant to tear down and revitalize the housing development.
ReportThe Effectiveness of Jobs-Plus
March, 2005Jobs-Plus, an ambitious employment program inside some of the nation’s poorest inner-city public housing developments, markedly increased the earnings of residents in the sites where it was implemented well.
ReportImplementation, Effects, and Experiences of Poor Families and Neighborhoods
October, 2003Based on a comprehensive body of evidence, this report from the Project on Devolution and Urban Change examines how changes in Pennsylvania’s welfare reform policies combined with a strong regional economy in the late 1990s to create substantial change in the welfare system in Philadelphia.
ReportEvidence from Connecticut and Minnesota
September, 2003Using data from two random assignment welfare reform experiments, this report contributes insights to efforts to foster economic self-sufficiency in both the assisted housing and the welfare policy arenas.
ReportLessons from Jobs-Plus About the Mobility of Public Housing Residents and Implications for Place-Based Initiatives
March, 2003This paper begins to fill a void in the understanding of residential mobility in low-income communities by examining intended and actual out-migration patterns of a cohort of residents of five public housing developments.
ReportJanuary, 2003This report studies the post-welfare experiences of three groups — two that received federal housing assistance when they left the welfare rolls and an unassisted group that did not — to see how they differ with respect to their labor market outcomes, material well-being, and propensity to return to the welfare rolls or rely on other forms of public assistance.
ReportHow Are They Faring?
January, 2003Responding to the growing need to understand whether people who have left the welfare rolls since the passage of the 1996 welfare reform law are able to find and keep jobs and earn enough to lift their families out of poverty, this study compares two groups of single-parent welfare recipients — one that left the welfare rolls in 1996, and a similar group who exited welfare in 1998 —investigating their background characteristics, their employment and earnings experiences, and their material well-being.
ReportImplementation, Effects, and Experiences of Poor Families and Neighborhoods
September, 2002This report from the Project on Devolution and Urban Change examines how welfare reform has played out in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County, which encompasses Cleveland, based on a comprehensive body of evidence that includes administrative records, surveys, and ethnographic interviews.
ReportHow Are They Faring?
April, 2001ReportFinal Report on Florida’s Initial Time-Limited Welfare Program
December, 2000ReportThe Urban Change Project and Methodological Considerations
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Other Publications
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Projects
Nandita Verma, James A. Riccio, Gilda Azurdia, Jonathan Bigelow, Cynthia Miller, Caroline Schultz, Edith Yang, Melissa WestGrowing up in high-poverty, highly segregated neighborhoods can limit the future prospects of young children. But low-income families with children often lack sufficient resources and face other systemic barriers to choosing freely what neighborhoods they live in. The federal government’s Housing Choice Voucher Program, which subsidizes rent for some low-income...
Over 2 million households receive federal housing subsidies that allow them to rent in the private rental market. The Housing Choice Voucher program, funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ( HUD ), requires households to pay 30 percent of their incomes toward rent; HUD subsidizes the remaining amount of the households’ rent up to a certain...
The concentration of Housing Choice Voucher Program participants in high-poverty neighborhoods has been a concern of practitioners and policymakers for decades. Compelling research by Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence Katz found that when young children move to “high-opportunity” areas, their prospects for better economic outcomes as adults can greatly...
Megan Millenky, Dan Bloom, Susan Scrivener, Charles Michalopoulos, Dina A. R. Israel, Johanna Walter, Lauren Cates, Sally Dai, Caroline Mage, Emily Marano, Viktoriya Syrov, Douglas Phillips, Kyla Wasserman, Lily Freedman, Osvaldo Avila, Emily Brennan, Jillian Verrillo, Gilda Azurdia, Frieda Molina, Shelley Rappaport, Clinton Key, Nandita Verma, Cynthia Miller, Jared Smith, Shawna Anderson, Kelsey Schaberg, Caitlin Anzelone, James A. Riccio, Keri West, Caroline Schultz, Ethan Feldman, Gabriel WeinbergerMany Americans struggle in the labor market even when overall economic conditions are good. Unemployment is persistently high for some demographic groups and in certain geographic areas, and a large proportion of working-age adults — about two in five in 2019 — tend to be out of the labor force. Factors such as systemic racism embedded in the economy and...
In 2007, New York City officials launched three related initiatives testing distinct strategies for promoting employment and economic well-being among recipients of housing assistance, particularly those receiving rent subsidies through Housing Choice Vouchers (also known as “Section 8” assistance, after Section 8 of the Housing Act of 1937). Called the Work Rewards...
James A. Riccio, Cynthia Miller, Nandita Verma, Edith Yang, Jared Smith, Gilda Azurdia, Donna Wharton-Fields, Anne Warren, M. Victoria Quiroz BecerraFamily Rewards was an innovative approach to poverty reduction in the United States that was modeled on the conditional cash transfer ( CCT ) programs common in lower- and middle-income countries. The program offered cash assistance to poor families, contingent on their meeting certain criteria related to family health care, children’s education, and parents’ work, in...
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 Housing and Urban...
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. Department of Housing and Urban Development ( HUD ). In 2014, HUD...
Can community-led efforts improve outcomes for residents at the neighborhood level? This is a critical question for policy and practice. For over a decade, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has supported the Local Initiatives Support Corporation of Chicago ( LISC Chicago) to make neighborhoods safer, support young people, improve schools, and preserve...
James A. Riccio, Gilda Azurdia, Nandita Verma, Donna Wharton-Fields, Cynthia Miller, Jared Smith, Edith Yang, Betsy L. Tessler, Nikki OrtolaniIn March 2007, former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced his intention to test a set of antipoverty initiatives, called Opportunity NYC , that would use temporary cash payments to poor families to boost their income in the short term, while building their ability to avoid longer-term and second-generation poverty. Such payments are known internationally...
James A. Riccio, Gilda Azurdia, Edith Yang, Donna Wharton-Fields, Nandita Verma, Caroline Schultz, Frieda Molina, Cynthia Miller, Richard Hendra, Barbara S. Goldman, Jared Smith, Mark van Dok, Natasha Piatnitskaia, Betsy L. Tessler, Stephanie Rubino, Sharon RowserThe Social Innovation Fund ( SIF ) , an initiative enacted under the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, deploys millions of dollars in public-private funds to expand effective solutions in three issue areas: economic opportunity, healthy futures, and youth development and school support. This work seeks to create a catalog of proven approaches that can be replicated...
Nandita Verma, James A. Riccio, Donna Wharton-Fields, Betsy L. Tessler, Nikki Ortolani, Jonathan Bigelow, M. Victoria Quiroz Becerra, Edith YangPublic housing developments are among the most economically challenged neighborhoods in the United States. In fact, many public housing residents face obstacles to employment even beyond those normally experienced by other low-income people. To address this problem, Jobs-Plus was conceived in the mid-1990s by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ( HUD...
Since World War II , the story of U.S. cities has been one of ever-expanding growth at the fringes and decline at the core. This pattern of development has led to concentrations of poverty in inner cities and inner suburbs, racial and economic segregation, and astounding consumption of rural land, resulting in environmental degradation, increased commute times, a...