This post was originally published by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In the past 30 years, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has increasingly focused on promoting the self-sufficiency of housing assistance recipients through initiatives such as Jobs Plus, Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS), and the Rent Reform Demonstration. This paper synthesizes the evaluations of these programs to provide insight into short-, medium-, and long-term successes and limitations of these programs. It examines plausible reasons for their limited success. The paper then describes potential pathways forward.