THE RELATIONSHIP OF HOUSING ASSISTANCE TO THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF LOW AND MODERATE INCOME HOUSEHOLDS (SUBSIDIZED, VOUCHER, POLICY)

This study analyzed the effect of housing assistance upon recipient households to determine whether housing assistance helps families realize benefits in areas other than physical improvement in the housing unit. The analysis was conducted upon data from the Experimental Housing Allowance Program Study, a controlled experiment in which the treatment group received housing allowances and the control group did not. Housing is defined in terms of its physical, social, and economic dimensions. The difficulty of measuring the various dimensions of housing is presented in the discussion of measures traditionally used by the government and researchers to assess housing quality.;Some of the major theoretical concepts underlying housing policy are introduced to lend validity to the empirical investigation. An overview of the underlying theoretical assumptions that have supported federal housing policy and programs is presented in terms of each of the dimensions. Conclusions drawn from this study are encompassed into three major statements: (1) When considered collectively, the social and economic gains achieved by families receiving housing assistance are not as apparent as when data are analyzed in the disaggregate. (2) When data are analyzed in the disaggregate, families that benefited from housing assistance are those headed by persons with less than a high school education and those headed by nonworking persons, in both cases regardless of race. (3) The continued emphasis of the federal government in divestiture of its involvement with housing for low and moderate income families forces the economic dimension of housing to become primary in the lives of assisted families and treats the social and physical diminsions as incidential. The data presented within this study and analysis of the housing directives of the Reagan administration are the bases for concluding that the abandonment of social goals in the interest of narrow economic objectives forces the focus of housing policy to be reduced to the need for physical shelter.