HUD’s Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program is the main federal strategy to increase employment and earnings and reduce reliance on government subsidies among Housing Choice Voucher recipients.  It combines referrals to employment and other services with an asset-building mechanism known as “escrow savings accounts.” Despite the prominent role of FSS for more than two decades, little evidence exists about the program’s effectiveness. New York City’s Opportunity NYC—Work Rewards demonstration, sponsored by the Center for Economic Opportunity, includes the first-ever randomized control trial testing the FSS program, as well as two alternative strategies, including the paring of the FSS program with cash incentives for full-time work. Furthermore, HUD has recently launched the first national evaluation of this program. This paper will present longer-term findings from the Work Rewards demonstration and describe the new national FSS evaluation.     

Drawing on a recent tenant survey and updated administrative data, the paper will discuss the longer-term effects of Work Rewards’ FSS interventions (FSS alone and FSS plus workforce incentives) on a broad set of outcomes. Covering roughly 42-48 months of follow-up, the paper will address the following questions: What are the longer-term effects of these interventions? Are there differential effects on particular subgroups? Are these impacts sustained over time? What are the effects on receipt of public benefits? Early results, covering the first 30 months of follow-up, showed that the FSS program had quite limited effects on participants’ employment and earnings.  However, combining FSS with extra incentives produced a large effect on employment and earnings for a particular subgroup: participants who were not working when they entered the program. The newer findings, which cover a four-year period, suggest that the earlier effects persist despite the end of incentive payments.

The paper will discuss the effects of the interventions on a broad range of measures of family well-being such as material hardship, savings and debt, and voucher receipt. The gains in employment and earnings for the subgroup described above do not appear, so far, to have translated into reductions in housing voucher or other public benefit receipt or material hardship. However, FSS is a five-year program, and the evaluation will continue to monitor key outcomes.

The paper will close with a discussion of the national FSS evaluation, funded by HUD. Going beyond New York City, this demonstration will make it possible to assess, with a high degree of rigor, whether FSS is helping families achieve economic independence and improve their quality of life. The study is expected to include a sample of at least 2,500 voucher holders who will be randomly allocated in equal numbers to two groups: (1) a group that would receive the full FSS program and (2) a control group not enrolled in FSS and not entitled to receive the escrow savings. Eighteen housing authorities across the country are participating in this evaluation. Presenters will comment on the scope of that evaluation, how the findings of the Work Rewards demonstration informed its design, and the type of evidence such a study will add.