Since fall 2022, Philadelphia has been giving no-strings-attached cash to 301 households randomly selected from the Philadelphia Housing Authority’s wait lists for public housing and federal subsidies. The program was scheduled to end in June, but because of new findings about the program’s success, it has been extended until next June.
A report analyzing the first two years of the program by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and staff at the Philadelphia Housing Development Corp., which partners with the city to administer the program, found that the PHLHousing+ program has been helping to keep families housed.
PHDC is discussing what the next phase of the program could look like, said Rachel Mulbry, the organization’s director of policy and strategic initiatives and a coauthor of the report, but “we’re in a much stronger position now that we have results like these.”
Households that received cash were less likely to be evicted or become homeless than households without assistance, according to the report.
Households that got cash also had fewer concerns about the quality of their homes. Researchers asked about issues such as extreme heat and cold, unsafe and substandard buildings, and flooding and fire damage.
“This was very much designed as an experiment, so we weren’t sure what the relative impacts would be,” Mulbry said.
The results show “when we invest in people in Philly, their lives do improve,” she said. “And this model of very flexible rental assistance given directly to tenants is showing a lot of promise.”