Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The CMTO services offered to new voucher holders at KCHA and SHA, which are delivered by a contracted service provider organization, are composed of a range of offerings that aim to promote “opportunity moves” in the Seattle region. Program staff educate families about their locational options, assess families for barriers to leasing, coach families to successfully market themselves to landlords, help families identify their housing needs and preferences, train families to search for housing, provide financial supports, and generally counsel them on strategy along the way. In addition, staff promote CMTO program participation directly to landlords and rental market stakeholders—often directly advocating for specific families seeking tenancy—and expedite many housing authority processes upon the successful approval of families by landlords.

This rich, multi-faceted bundle of service and participation inputs—with variation stemming from multiple family-, landlord- and neighborhood-level conditions—warrants an examination of program implementation to understand service practice, to detail operations, to identify trends in family and landlord engagement, and to inform theory about why and for whom CMTO works. Through monitoring and fieldwork with program staff at both PHAs and the service provider organization, the evaluation team has developed key program implementation insights, which also serve the goal of informing program improvement and redesign.

Initial observations have highlighted the family-centered approaches adopted by staff, while also identifying some of the challenges of supporting families with varying service needs. Staff identify “marketability” coaching supports, services to prepare families for housing searches —targeted both before and during the search process—as critical to achieving success in driving desired locational outcomes. Other insights and observations center around the varied approaches to engagement needed to successfully engage different types of landlords, from independent landlords to leasing agents at corporate landlords.