HUD Family Options Study

The Family Options Study is a multi-site random assignment experiment designed to study the impact of various housing and services interventions for homeless families. HUD launched the Family Options Study in 2008 in response to Congressional direction and with the goal of learning more about the effects of different housing and services interventions for homeless families.

Families were followed for three years following random assignment, with extensive surveys of families conducted at baseline and again approximately 20 and 37 months after random assignment. In addition to collecting data about the well-being of families and children at different points in time following random assignment, extensive cost data on each of the interventions studied was also collected, in order to calculate the fiscal costs of achieving the outcomes that were documented. While the primary outcome of interest is housing stability, and, in particular, preventing families from returning to homelessness, additional outcome domains of interest include family preservation, adult well-being, child well-being, and self-sufficiency.

The Family Options Study was an important research effort that yielded significant results. At both the 20-month and 37-month points of observation, significant positive impacts were observed in both the adults and the children of the families offered a voucher. It is unclear whether these positive impacts extend over a much longer follow-up period, which has particular relevance given the number of children in the sample, and thus HUD is interested in potentially pursuing a longer-term follow-up with study families. In advance of pursuing this effort, HUD funded a tracking effort to determine if the contact information for the study sample was still viable.

A grant to Vanderbilt University by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) supported child data collection and analysis for this study.

The project review timeframes above do not apply to applications that request access to confidential data assets commingled with data that are either not owned, or are only co-owned, by the statistical agency(s) or unit(s) and require approval from third parties not subject to this policy (e.g., state and local government agencies).