Community Choice Demonstration

The Community Choice Demonstration (Demonstration) is a multi-site randomized controlled trial that will study the effects of two interventions. The first intervention, Comprehensive Mobility-Related Services (CMRS), will provide a comprehensive set of services that aims to address all of the principal obstacles that HCV participants experience accessing lower-poverty areas, including financial barriers, knowledge and skill gaps, hesitancy on the part of families to move to opportunity areas, hesitancy on the part of property owners in opportunity areas to participate in the HCV program, and challenges that affect families’ ability to stay in opportunity areas once there. The second intervention, Selected Mobility-Related Services (SMRS), will test up to three bundles of services selected from the broader CMRS to determine whether they can effectively assist families in accessing opportunity areas at a lower cost.

The term “Community Choice Demonstration” is the new name developed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the Housing Choice Voucher Mobility Demonstration that was authorized and funded through the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2019 and the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020.

2022-08-01

2027-04-30

Having a new lease-up in an opportunity area during the first 12 months after RA
Number of months residing in an opportunity area during the first 24 months after RA (for Phase 1 report)
Number of months residing in an opportunity area during the first 36 months after RA (for Phase 2 report)

Having a new lease-up in an opportunity area at any time during the study observation period
Residing in an opportunity area at the 12-month timepoint after RA
Percent of the period from month 13 after random assignment through the last month observed that a family spends in an opportunity area
Residing in an opportunity area at some time during the first 24 months after RA (for Phase 1 report)
Residing in an opportunity area at some time during the first 36 months after RA (for Phase 2 report)
Leased up or moved with a voucher within 12 months after RA
Rental unit characteristics 12 months after RA
Census tract characteristics 12 months after RA
Housing assistance payment (HAP) 12 months after RA

The Demonstration will have two phases of enrollment over a study period of approximately four-and-a-half years. During Phase 1 implementation—the first two years of enrollment —the sites will randomize enrolled families to either CMRS or the control business-as-usual condition. During Phase 2, which will take place over the following two and a half years, the sites will randomize enrolled families to one of three groups: CMRS, SMRS, or the control group.

The impact analysis will estimate impacts for three experimental contrasts:
o CMRS versus Control (Families enrolled in Years 1–5 after the Pilot)
o SMRS versus Control (Families enrolled in Years 3–5)
o SMRS versus CMRS (Families enrolled in Years 3–5)

Because families will be randomly assigned to the offer of SMRS only during the last two and a half years of enrollment (Phase 2), the samples of families used to estimate the impacts of SMRS—both against the control condition and against CMRS—will only include families enrolled during these two and half years.

Confirmatory Research Questions

During Phase 1, the study will have the following confirmatory research questions:

1. For voucher families with children, what is the effect of offering CMRS on moves to an opportunity area during the 12 months following random assignment?
(a) What is the effect for existing voucher families?
(b) What is the effect for waitlist families?

2. For voucher families with children, what is the effect of offering CMRS on the duration of residency in an opportunity area in the 24 months following random assignment?

During Phase 2, the study will continue with the first research question and modify the second research question to examine the duration of residency in an opportunity area over a longer time period of 36 months. In Phase 2, the study will also add three additional confirmatory research questions:

3. For voucher families with children, what is the effect of offering a particular SMRS package on moves to an opportunity area in the 12 months following random assignment?

4. For voucher families with children, what is the effect of offering a particular SMRS package on the duration of residency in an opportunity area in the 24 months following random assignment?

5. Are families offered a particular SMRS package less likely to move to an opportunity area in the 12 months following random assignment than similar families who are offered CMRS?

Secondary Research Questions

The study will also assess the impacts of being offered CMRS on a range of secondary outcomes, such as the share of new voucher recipients who use their vouchers to find a unit (in any location) and the share of existing voucher families who move (to any location). In addition, the study will examine which services appear to be most effective in facilitating moves to an opportunity area and the site- and household-level factors that appear to affect the likelihood that a family moves to an opportunity area, which may shed light on possible ways to strengthen mobility-related services in the future.

Pilot Periods

The first six months of Phase 1 and the first three months of Phase 2 will be considered pilot periods. The Study Team will decide whether to use data on households enrolled in the Demonstration during the pilot periods of each site in the impact analysis based on a site-by-site assessment of fidelity to random assignment procedures and the mobility-related services interventions. Absent a determination that a site is not implementing with fidelity during the pilot, the households that enroll in the Demonstration from that site during the pilots will be included in the analysis sample.

Not available

Computer

Household

Yes

10 providers of mobility-related services (one of the nine sites has separate providers of mobility-related services for the two PHAs)

15,875 households

CMRS:6,444 households
SMRS: 3,077 households
Control: 6,354 households

We have calculated minimum detectable effects for the outcome of “new lease-up in an opportunity area in the first 12 months after random assignment” at each of the three reporting timepoints for the CMRS versus Control comparison. For existing voucher families, a new lease-up is defined as leasing-up with a voucher in a move to a new unit. For waitlist families, a new lease-up is defined as a lease-up with a voucher. The sample sizes for this 12-month outcome allow for a minimum of 6 months of follow-up after random assignment. For families with less than one year of observation since RA, the observation window will be the maximum time observed (6 to 11 months). With no adjustment for multiple comparisons, for the Rapid Cycle Evaluation Report, the minimum detectable effect for all families (CMRS n=842; Control n=828) is expected to be 4.3 percentage points. For existing voucher families (CMRS n=797; Control n=797), the minimum detectable effect is expected to be 4.4 percentage points. For waitlist families (CMRS n=45; Control n=31), the minimum detectable effect is expected to be 20.9 percentage points. With no adjustment for multiple comparisons, for the Phase 1 Impact Evaluation Report, the minimum detectable effect for all families (CMRS n=3,366; Control n=3,312) is expected to be 2.2 percentage points. For existing voucher families (CMRS n=3,186; Control n=3,186), the minimum detectable effect is expected to be 2.2 percentage points. For waitlist families (CMRS n=180; Control n=126), the minimum detectable effect is expected to be 10.3 percentage points. With no adjustment for multiple comparisons, for the Phase 2 Impact Evaluation Report, the minimum detectable effect for all families (CMRS n=6,444; Control n=6,354) is expected to be 1.6 percentage points. All of these minimum detectable effect calculations assume 80% power for a two-tailed test significant at the 10% level and that 15 percent of the control group will lease-up in opportunity areas, as was the case in CMTO (Bergman et al. 2020). If the control proportion is lower than 15 percent, the minimum detectable effect will be smaller.