After the Great Recession, many low and middle-income households are struggling to pay the rent.

Despite growth in the US economy after the Great Recession, more than half of households that rent pay more than 30 percent of their income towards their accommodation. In new research, Gregg Colburn and Ryan Allen find that major differences in rent burden between households are likely due to income, geography, and household size. With more households renting, they argue that policymakers must do more to address housing affordability in the US

The Use of Markets in Social Policy: Welfare Recipients as Market Participants

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. August 2017. Major: Public Affairs. Advisor: Edward Goetz. 1 computer file (PDF); vii, 336 pages.The structure of welfare benefits has a material impact on the experiences and outcomes of beneficiaries. Historically, many governments provided supply-side welfare benefits in which the state provided direct provision of goods or services (i.e. public housing). Since the 1970’s, many governments have increasingly provided demand-side benefits, such as vouchers and cash transfers, in which recipients use the benefits to procure goods and services in the private market. A fundamental reality of demand-side subsidies—largely ignored by the scholarly community—is that the use of such subsidies turns welfare beneficiaries into market participants. Because the recipients of demand-side subsidies must enter the market to use the benefit, the terms on which they do so may have a significant effect on the outcomes produced by these social policies. It is, therefore, the experiences of welfare beneficiaries in the private market that serves as the foundation of this study. This study presents the concept of a market position to help understand the experiences of welfare recipients in the private market. The Market Position Framework is introduced as a tool to analyze market positions and the framework is applied to social programs in the U.S. and in Europe. Market positions are defined and compared and the relationship between market positions and market outcomes is examined. The study demonstrates that market positions are constituted by a set of social, political, economic, and individual factors. The analysis highlights how social and political contexts combine with program conditions to explain variation in market positions. The study also finds an association between market positions and market outcomes—stronger market positions are associated with better outcomes. This study offers a unique perspective on the analysis of social policies that is missing from conventional welfare state scholarship that focuses solely on the relative generosity of programs. This approach may be used by policymakers, advocates, and scholars to help explain the market outcomes of welfare recipients. Importantly, these tools may help to explain welfare program outcomes that may, in certain circumstances, deviate from the stated goals and objectives of that program

Constraints And Opportunities For Innovation In The Moving To Work Demonstration Program

The Moving to Work (MTW) Demonstration Program provides participating housing agencies with additional programmatic and operational flexibility that is used to achieve Congress’s statutory goals. The MTW Demonstration Program is designed to provide agencies with the flexibility to pursue innovative activities, yet there are myriad constraints that alter the behavior of these agencies. This study uses evidence generated from interviews with personnel from MTW agencies to understand how they use MTW to address and overcome bureaucratic, resource, and market constraints to further their mission. The findings from this study enhance our understanding of MTW agencies, their decision-making, and how they innovate in a constrained environment. These results are relevant to a wide audience, including existing MTW agencies, public housing authorities that are considering MTW designation under the new expansion, housing researchers, as well as policymakers and practitioners who focus on federal housing policy and innovation in public agencies