Project Summary:
Evaluating PHLHousing+ Cash-Based Rental Assistance Program
First Long-Term Study of Whether Cash Rental Assistance Improves Family and Child Well-Being
Safe, stable housing is one of the most powerful drivers of children’s health, education, and long-term opportunity. Yet nearly 40% of households offered a federal housing voucher cannot successfully use it, often because of complex administrative requirements or landlord reluctance. PHLHousing+ tried a different approach: providing rental assistance via unconditional monthly cash payments directly to low-income families with children. CoLab is funding the University of Pennsylvania to conduct the first long-term randomized evaluation of this model, tracking whether cash assistance produces lasting improvements in housing stability, financial well-being, child health, and educational outcomes.
Partners
We funded researchers at the Housing Initiative at Penn and the Risk and Resilience Lab to lead this evaluation. The Housing Initiative at Penn is a research center at the University of Pennsylvania dedicated to advancing effective, equitable housing policy through rigorous research, program evaluation, and policy design. The Risk and Resilience lab researches the impact of adverse experiences on people’s mental health and their life outcomes, both within and across generations. Additional key collaborators include the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation, which administers PHLHousing+, and the Philadelphia School District, which has agreed to share student outcome data through the end of the study. Researchers have also organized a Community Consultation Group, composed of people with lived experience in housing insecurity, that is advising them throughout the process.
What they will do
PHLHousing+ is a program structured as a randomized controlled trial with three arms: 301 households receiving direct monthly cash assistance, 174 households offered a traditional Housing Choice Voucher, and 688 households remaining on a waitlist as a control group.
CoLab funding supports a three-year follow-up to assess whether the effects of the program persist over time. Participant data will track outcomes across multiple domains:
- Housing stability: eviction rates, homelessness, housing quality, and moves
- Neighborhood opportunity: residential mobility and access to higher opportunity neighborhoods
- Financial wellbeing: income, savings, debt, and credit scores
- Child education: test scores, graduation rates, and college enrollment
- Health: hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and mental health indicators
A key feature of the study is understanding the comparative performance of cash and voucher assistance. Preliminary findings after two years are promising: compared to the control group, PHLHousing+ households had significantly lower rates of eviction, homelessness, and serious housing quality concerns. Voucher households showed similar gains. The long-term follow-up will reveal whether and how these initial effects hold, and whether cash assistance produces meaningfully different outcomes than vouchers over time.
Grant type:
- Long-term outcomes evaluation
Focus area:
- Affordable housing and homelessness prevention
population:
- Families with children
When it will happen
The project began in October 2025 and will continue through December 2028.
Why it matters
The Housing Choice Voucher program is the federal government’s primary tool for reducing rent burden for low-income families, serving roughly 5 million people annually. But the program’s administrative complexity means some households are unable to use their voucher. PHLHousing+ is the only housing-focused guaranteed income experiment since the 1970s, and the University of Pennsylvania’s evaluation is the first large-scale test of a direct cash rental assistance model.
Understanding whether cash can replicate or outperform vouchers has immediate implications for how cities and the federal government design housing assistance. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently published a Request for Information on direct rental assistance models and issued guidance allowing public housing authorities to pilot them. This study is positioned to be the most rigorous evidence available to inform those decisions.
Findings will also shed light on how housing stability in early childhood shapes children’s long-term trajectories, connecting directly to CoLab’s mission of investing in evidence that advances economic mobility across generations.
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