Evidence indicates that housing counseling can be an effective intervention in helping distressed homeowners avoid foreclosure. This paper briefly summarizes recent research evidence on the role of housing counseling to improve housing outcomes for homebuyers, homeowners, and renters. PD&R has published an updated version of this paper titled Housing Counseling... Read more

Section 203 of the National Housing Act of 1934 created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to provide federally backed insurance of home mortgages against the risk of default. FHA insurance typically serves borrowers with higher perceived credit risk, including first-time homebuyers and minority borrowers. FHA is also restricted to loan... Read more

In 2009, HUD awarded funding to 23 Continuums of Care (CoC) to implement a demonstration program to implement a promising new homelessness intervention- rapid re-housing (RRH) for homeless families. As part of the language authorizing the program, HUD was required to evaluate the program, “in order to evaluate the effectiveness... Read more

Rapid re-housing is a homeless assistance strategy that provides homeless families with immediate, temporary assistance to help them return to permanent housing and to promote their housing and economic stability. This approach has been growing in popularity for 10 years. In 2007, in response to the growing emphasis on rapid... Read more

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and public housing authorities (PHAs) have long struggled to maintain the country’s 1.1 million public housing units. In 2010, a study prepared for HUD estimated the backlog of public housing capital needs to be approximately $26 billion, with each subsequent year... Read more

The Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) was established under the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2012 to provide public housing authorities (PHAs) with new options for preserving public housing by converting their public housing projects to HUD’s project-based Section 8 assisted housing platform. The primary intent is for PHAs... Read more

This Guidebook, co-authored with the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, reviews and explains strategies that institutions of higher education may consider to support their students with housing insecurity and other living costs, as well as examples of these strategies’ implementation. In the introduction, the Guidebook contextualizes these strategies with reference to evidence... Read more

On May 25, 2016, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, in partnership with HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research, the NYU Furman Center and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, hosted the Research Symposium on Gentrification and Neighborhood Change. This summary report highlights important research findings, policy implications, and... Read more

Congress and many researchers and practitioners in the field of housing counseling have asked whether pre-purchase homeownership counseling for higher risk borrowers leads to better borrower outcomes and reduced lender risk relative to no counseling. Prior research has suggested there are benefits of pre-purchase homeownership counseling, but those benefits have... Read more

In preparation for Habitat III, the UN Conference on Housing and Urban Sustainability, HUD, on behalf of the U.S. government, has prepared this U.S. 20/20 Habitat III Report to share the U.S. story around housing, community development, and the fostering of inclusive, sustainable, and resilient neighborhoods and communities across the... Read more