Difficult Definition
“Hard to house” residents are those with multiple complex problems, such as serious mental and physical ailments, addiction, domestic violence and histories of lease violations.
This brief explores the employment experiences of public housing residents during the Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) partnership in the Family Case Management Demonstration. The Demonstration was an innovative effort to test the feasibility of providing comprehensive support services, including pre- and post-job help, for fragile public housing families.
“Hard to house” residents are those with multiple complex problems, such as serious mental and physical ailments, addiction, domestic violence and histories of lease violations.
A central goal of the transformation of public housing that began in the 1990s was to help residents become more self-sufficient.
Public housing residents face numerous barriers to employment: lack of schooling, poor mental and physical health, limited access to job networks, and physical isolation from opportunity.
Project Match, a Chicago-based workforce development program, combined a human development approach with comprehensive employment services. For their “high advancement” group, earnings jumped 105% over 10 years.
Demonstration participants’ self-reported employment rate increased from 49% in 2007 to 59% in 2009.
While self-reported employment increased for the Demonstration sample, incomes stayed around $10 an hour, leaving most households still living below the poverty level.
Since wages did not improve, public assistance roles from 2007 to 2009 remained relatively unchanged as well: 37% of households received SSI; 68% of households received food stamps; 10% of households received Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
Eight years after Chicago’s Transformation Plan inception, most residents were living in better housing and in substantially safer neighborhoods. However, nothing from the Panel Studies showed that these quality-of-life improvements translated into employment gains or increased earnings for CHA residents. The Chicago Family Case Management Demonstration implemented intensive support services to see if those employment outcomes could be changed.
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