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ACADEMIC RESEARCH |
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VOUCHER LOTTERY WAITLIST STUDY
In June of 2018, Vincent Reina received a University Research Foundation grant to study the impact and effectiveness of the Los Angeles Housing Choice Voucher program, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Southern California. The groundbreaking multi-year project is crucially timed, as it will capture the first wave of households being offered a voucher and provide baseline data across the whole population that can be used moving forward in this important project.
In the fall of 2017, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) re-opened the waiting list for the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) for the first time in 14 years. The HCV program is the largest federal rental subsidy program in the U.S, serving over 3 million households across the country. Through this program, the federal government pays the difference between 30 percent of a household’s income and the market rent for a unit. When HACLA re-opened their waiting list, they held a lottery to determine who could be added, and nearly 200,000 households applied for the 20,000 waiting list positions. The goal of the project is to identify who applies for a voucher and why; determine what drives people to use the voucher system and what barriers prevent it; quantify whether vouchers increase stability, neighborhood choice, or affect such circumstances as becoming homeless; and explore whether the often-lengthy wait for a voucher affects a household’s economic and housing decisions. The project includes multiple waves of interviews in both English and Spanish with over 50 Los Angeles residents who are on the waitlist for, or have received, a housing voucher. |
ASIAN AND LATINO/A PHILADELPHIANS' ACCESS TO HOUSING ASSISTANCE
Vincent Reina and Claudia Aiken have conducted a detailed study about access to housing assistance in Philadelphia’s Asian and Latino/a communities. The study emerged from concerns raised by community advocates during Philadelphia’s Assessment of Fair Housing process in 2016 that Asians and Latino/as are systematically excluded from municipal housing programs and planning processes. Reina and Aiken ask whether these groups are indeed underrepresented in Philadelphia housing programs, and if so, what barriers these two groups face to accessing housing assistance.
The study relies on interviews with 26 stakeholders (including Asian and Latino/a community leaders, Asian- and Latino/a-serving nonprofits, and fair housing organizations) and 4 multilingual focus groups with Asian and Latino/a residents. It also incorporates analysis of 2008 and 2016 National Asian American Survey data, census data, and City and Philadelphia Housing Authority program usage data to analyze rates of housing need, eligibility, and program participation by race and ethnicity. The research team also examines what implications their findings have nationally, given the increasing presence and diversity of Asians and Latino/as in cities across the United States. The Russell Sage Foundation selected a paper resulting from this study for possible inclusion in a special issue of the Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences called “Asian Americans: Diversity and Heterogeneity.” |