The multifamily service coordination program is a promising resource for older residents of properties subsidized by HUD

This federal Project Grant award of $133,078 was provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Office of Policy Development and Research under the General Research and Technology Activity program (CFDA 14.506). The grant aims to address the limited research on the impact of the Multifamily Service Coordination Program, which provides service coordinators for older residents of HUD-subsidized properties.

The key objectives of this 30-month project are to: 1) use HUD administrative data to identify properties employing service coordinators, 2) evaluate the effectiveness of this approach through a property survey, and 3) measure the impact of service coordination on resident outcomes like tenure, income, and benefits receipt. The project will yield a methodology for estimating service coordinator presence, a set of indicators for tracking coordinator presence over time, and an assessment of how coordinators helped residents during the COVID-19 pandemic. The award recipient is the President and Fellows of Harvard College, who will conduct this research from their office in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Activities

This study aims to address this GAP by using administrative data already obtained from HUD through a foia request. The study has the following three goals: 1. Use administrative data to identify properties that employ a service coordinator. 2. Evaluate the effectiveness of this approach using a survey of properties. 3. Measure the impact of service coordination by comparing outcomes for residents living on properties with a service coordinator to those who live on properties that do not employ one.

Expected outcomes

The project has a 30-month period of performance and would yield the following three deliverables: 1. A methodology for using existing administrative data to estimate the likelihood that a service coordinator works on a property at a given time. 2. A set of indicators that a service coordinator worked on a property, year by year, for a defined period of time. 3. An assessment analyzing whether service coordinators helped residents cope with the covid-19 pandemic.