Employment Outcomes Associated with Rapid Re-housing Assistance for Homeless DSHS Clients in Washington State

Programs providing Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing (HPRR) assistance served 15,057 individuals in 2010, according to the Washington State Department of Commerce’s Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). Assistance may include rent assistance, relocation and stabilization assistance, security deposits, utility payments and other financial help to help stabilize someone at risk of losing their current housing or rapidly re-house a homeless person into a permanent location they do not have to leave once the assistance ends. Using a quasi-experimental, matched comparison group design, this report examines employment outcomes of working-age adults who were eligible for publicly funded medical assistance in the prior year who also received assistance to be rapidly re-housed in 2010 (we call these HMIS-DSHS Rapid Re-housing clients). We found that—compared to similar homeless clients who did not receive rapid re-housing assistance—HMIS-DSHS Rapid Re-housing clients experienced improved employment outcomes in the year after intervention: 1. HMIS-DSHS Rapid Re-housing clients were almost 50 percent more likely than the comparison group to be employed during the quarter they received assistance. 2. HMIS-DSHS Rapid Re-housing clients were 25 percent more likely than the comparison group to be employed sometime over the entire follow-up year. 3. On average, HMIS-DSHS Rapid Re-housing clients earned about $422 more than the comparison group over the follow-up year.