Mitigating the Stress of Housing Instability: The Impact of Housing Choice Vouchers on Social Supports, Behavioral Health, and Criminal Justice Involvement

The Housing Choice Voucher program is the largest low-income housing subsidy program managed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Research shows that vouchers improve housing affordability and stability and access to higher quality housing units and safer neighborhoods. Yet less is known about how housing supports affect a household’s health and well-being and contact with other social services, and even less about the impact of vouchers in non-urban areas. To broaden the literature on the impacts of receiving a voucher, we leverage the random selection of voucher recipients and linked administrative data from eight agencies in rural and suburban Sonoma County, California. The voucher lottery occurred in September 2019 and outcomes are measured through April 2022. Although the study has limited power to detect changes in infrequently occurring outcomes, the results show decreases in criminal justice involvement for those who are selected for the voucher waitlist, but little change in receipt of health and support services in a non-urban area.