{"id":193255,"date":"2025-09-02T04:54:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T04:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/193255\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T04:54:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T04:54:10","slug":"penn-city-of-phila-release-findings-from-affordable-housing-pilot-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/193255\/","title":{"rendered":"Penn, City of Phila. release findings from affordable housing pilot program"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"11-17-2024-west-philly-housing-jan-mejia-toro\"\/
\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

The PHLHousing+ pilot program selected 301 households to receive rental assistance through monthly cash payments distributed via a dedicated program debit card.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: Jan Mej\u00eda-Toro<\/a> \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The PHLHousing+ pilot program \u2014 a rental assistance project spearheaded by the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation and the City of Philadelphia in collaboration with Penn \u2014 announced their findings last week.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Initially established in 2022 to help address housing insecurity in Philadelphia, the program<\/a> provided rental assistance to participants in the form of monthly cash payments via a program-specific debit card. A total of 301 households were randomly selected to participate in PHLHousing+ from the Philadelphia Housing Authority waitlists.\u00a0\n\t\t<\/p>\n

The pilot revealed a potential new method of housing assistance in addition to evaluating the effectiveness of existing housing assistance, like housing vouchers. \u201cPhiladelphia really needs multiple housing strategies because no single approach will work for everyone,\u201d PHA President and CEO Kelvin Jeremiah said in a press release<\/a> documenting the program\u2019s initial outcomes.\n<\/p>\n

Newly released research <\/a>\u2014 authored by researchers from the Housing Initiative at Penn<\/a>, the Risk and Resilience Lab<\/a>, and PHDC \u2014 reported that the program \u201chas had significant positive impacts on the housing security of participating families\u201d which are \u201ccomparable to those reported by households that receive rental assistance\u201d \u00a0through the Housing Choice Voucher program.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The brief detailed cash rental subsidies \u201csignificantly reduced the chances of a household experiencing homelessness,\u201d \u201cimproved the reported housing quality of households,\u201d and decreased forced moves by 63-75% \u201crelative to households that received no assistance\u201d after one year, among other benefits. \u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Though direct cash fares have promising positive outcomes, the research brief still affirms that both cash payments and vouchers are necessary to maintain robust, effective housing assistance.\u00a0\n\t<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth forms of rental assistance are crucial for ensuring low-income families have safe, stable, and affordable housing,\u201d the brief reported.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Penn researchers are continuing to help analyze the program\u2019s results, evaluating both direct cash payments\u2019 effectiveness in comparison with other housing assistance as well as their impacts on individual outcomes.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and Faculty Director of the Housing Initiative at Penn Vincent Reina<\/a> said that the findings tell a clear story.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are clearly positive benefits of this cash transfer program,\u201d Reina told The Daily Pennsylvanian. \u201cFolks are clearly seeing higher levels of housing stability and improvements in housing quality.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

He added that the findings highlight “reality that there\u2019s a real opportunity \u2014 one for us to think creatively about how we apply rental assistance, but also to acknowledge that we need this broader tool set out there \u2026 to help households.”\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\tSign up for our newsletter<\/p>\n

Get our newsletter, DP Daybreak, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.<\/p>\n

In addition to promoting housing security, Department Chair and Psychology professor Sara Jaffee explained how the cash subsidies can potentially impact several other individual opportunities.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re also very interested in a related set of outcomes,\u201d Jaffee told the DP. \u201cDoes it enable our households to move to higher opportunity neighborhoods? We\u2019re going to pivot in that direction, to start looking at the kinds of educational opportunities, employment opportunities, the kinds of health opportunities that exist in neighborhoods.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Jaffee added in the initial PHDA press release<\/a> that the \u201clessons learned from this program will offer invaluable insight about the impact of housing assistance on a broad set of adult and child outcomes and about the difference flexible assistance makes in people\u2019s ability to access and maintain housing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Daily Pennsylvanian is an independent, student-run newspaper. Please consider making a donation<\/a> to support the coverage that shapes the University. Your generosity ensures a future of strong journalism at Penn.<\/p>\n

Donate<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The PHLHousing+ pilot program selected 301 households to receive rental assistance through monthly cash payments distributed via a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":193256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,8432,8430,50,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,45998],"class_list":{"0":"post-193255","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-beats","10":"tag-centerpiece","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-pa","13":"tag-pennsylvania","14":"tag-philadelphia","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa","21":"tag-west-philly"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115132921684827854","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}