More housing stability over time

The one-of-a-kind pilot is the result of a partnership between the University of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Housing Authority and the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation, which has operated the program on behalf of the city.

A total of 301 renter households agreed to participate after they were randomly selected from waitlists maintained by the PHA. To be eligible, they had to earn less than 50% of the area median income — $59,700 a year for a family of four in 2025 — and have at least one child under 16. They also couldn’t have a housing voucher or live in a public housing unit.

Each month, households received between $45 and $2,433, depending on the need, according to the report.

Researchers compared the program participants’ experiences to the experiences of two other cohorts — a group of 170 households who were offered tenant-based housing vouchers and 725 “control households,” who received no rental subsidy and remained on a PHA waitlist.

They found that, relative to households receiving no subsidy, the cash assistance led to a 75% reduction in so-called “forced moves” for participants after two years in the program. The term covers formal evictions, as well as more informal actions that left families looking for a new place to live, such as a landlord changing the locks.

The study also shows that participating households experienced homelessness at about half the rate of the control households after two years in the program.

Penn psychology professor Sara Jaffee, who directs the university’s Risk and Resilience Lab, said that, over time, housing stability often helps improve a family’s overall quality of life.

“There’s robust literature showing that households that are more housing secure, households that are not facing evictions, who are not making multiple moves, who are living in higher-quality homes, that adults and children in those households have better mental health, have better physical health,” Jaffee said.

PHLHousing+ was launched not long before the housing authority reopened its waitlist for the Housing Choice Voucher Program — often referred to as Section 8 — for the first time in more than a decade.

The agency’s new list was capped at 10,000 applicants, a total PHA has said would take between three and five years to clear.