The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is expanding the Moving to Work (MTW) demonstration, an initiative that allows participating public housing agencies to use federal funds with more flexibility in pursuit of the demonstration’s three statutory objectives: (1) to improve cost effectiveness, (2) to promote self-sufficiency of assisted households, and (3) to increase housing choice for low-income families. HUD is required to test the policy concepts introduced through MTW. For this expansion, the MTW Research Advisory Committee recommended studying approaches to asset building, giving rise to the Asset Building cohort (ABC). In the first phase of the ABC project, MEF Associates, in partnership with Abt Associates, designed research to evaluate the programs implemented by public housing agencies (PHAs) participating in MTW’s Asset Building cohort. MEF and Abt provided participating PHAs assistance in designing their programs and identifying implementation partners and offered information on best practices in the field of financial empowerment.
In the second phase of the project, 17 PHAs are participating in a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effects of two asset building policies—an opt-out savings account program and a rent reporting for credit building program—on the financial and housing stability of HUD-assisted households. The evaluation will assess whether these initiatives can serve as an effective platform for financial empowerment. MEF Associates is a subcontractor to Abt Associates and will be responsible for site development, implementation of random assignment procedures, implementation research, and qualitative analysis. MEF will also examine the costs associated with program implementation.