Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Housing is one of the underpinnings of opportunity. However, access to affordable rental housing has become increasingly challenging for those at the lower end of the income scale, with market dynamics and limited affordable housing supply considered a factor driving and sustaining rates and duration of homelessness in communities across the country.

All sectors point to the critical impact of affordable housing shortages on economic and community development and prosperity. Collaboration is often touted as the key to resolving ‘wicked problems’, including expanding affordable housing supply and addressing homelessness. Purpose-oriented or goal-directed networks are one set of vehicles for this type of collaboration. The landscape of affordable housing producers includes public agencies, non-profit community/housing development corporations, for-profit real estate firms, and continuums of care for homeless assistance. Some are acting individually; others are allied in affordable housing networks or coalitions of various types.

A Continuum of Care group (CoC) is a community planning body required by HUD to work collaboratively to plan, organize, and deliver housing and services to meet the specific needs of people in that community who are homeless. While CoCs function generally primarily as service delivery networks working to address the most urgent needs of those who are homeless, permanent and permanent supportive housing are also elements of their charge. Fostering the production of more housing affordable to those with extremely low incomes (ELI) would help reduce inflows into homelessness and broaden options for exiting homelessness.

I wish to conduct a qualitative investigation of the involvement and influence of CoCs in fostering affordable housing production for ELI households in older industrial cities. I plan to examine CoCs’ focus and actions in increasing affordable housing production in 3-4 communities with varying housing market conditions; identify facilitating factors, barriers, and best practices among CoCs in this work; and explore the evolving interplay of CoCs with other stakeholders and participants in affordable housing development. I hope to fill a gap in knowledge about the role of CoCs in affordable housing provision, broaden understanding about evolution of service delivery networks, and provide information on best practices for other CoCs.

Network theory will provide the overarching conceptual framework for this project, with a focus on the interconnected relationships in and around these purpose-oriented networks. This study will build on the recent development by Carboni et al (2019) of a conceptual framework for purpose-oriented networks, including their identification of 4 constitutive dimensions of purpose, joint effort, membership, and governance. This proposed study of CoCs will investigate key issues they identified as areas for further research related to development and evolution of network purpose.

In this poster session I will present a summary of current knowledge on operation and effectiveness of CoCs generally and in the affordable housing ‘space’; a review of the literature on purpose-oriented networks related to affordable housing development and on network evolution; and preliminary hypotheses and research questions drawn from that review.