Shaping Housing and Community Revitalization Practices
Shaping Housing and Community Revitalization Practices
For over 40 years Abt Associates has been a major contributor to housing policies and programs that strengthen neighborhoods, communities and cities. Our research and technical assistance expertise have helped shape community revitalization initiatives, housing voucher and homeownership programs, and efforts to address homelessness. We are experts on subsidized housing, homeownership, mortgage lending practices, and asset-building tools for low income families.
Conducting a six-year experimental impact evaluation of how Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) affect savings behavior
Insight: We conducted a random assignment study over four years that tracked over 1000 participants in an IDA program in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We found that IDAs had a dramatic and favorable impact on a participant's ability to buy a home, a stated goal of a majority of program participants. IDAs also had favorable effects on small business start-ups and retirement savings. The sole area that showed negligible impact was educational advancement.
Client Impact: As this study was the first controlled experiment to look at how different savings plans affect people's overall wealth accumulation, it provides policy makers and researchers with crucial information about how IDAs can help people save to buy a home, start a business, pursue education, or fund retirement.
Designing and implementing a new and comprehensive tool to capture data nationwide on homeless individuals and families for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Congress
Insight: We developed data standards and data collection methods to capture unduplicated information, as opposed to previously used "point-in-time" counts, to collect reliable information on homeless persons and the services they receive.
Client Impact: A nationwide picture of homeless individuals and families based on unduplicated data collected by local communities using consistent standards and methods. For the first time HUD and Congress will have reliable data on which to make decisions on funding on programs to address homelessness.
Helping the Dayton, Ohio Metro Housing Authority build mixed-finance development capacity and support implementation of HOPE VI grant
Insight: We worked with the Metro Housing Authority to manage a complex $50 million mixed-finance project to revitalize three public housing developments. As project manager, we helped guide the master planning process and the redevelopment plan.
Client Impact: With the Assistance of Abt Associates, the Metro Housing Authority has strengthened its capacity to plan, develop and manage complex mixed-finance revitalization projects.
Assisting the city of Memphis, Tennessee with a $35 million HOPE VI grant application and a 100 block redevelopment effort
Insight: Working with city officials, we developed a comprehensive revitalization plan and prepared a HOPE VI application to enable a major redevelopment of a large city neighborhood.
Client Impact: Our experts assisted the city in securing the HOPE VI grant, preparing the revitalization plan, the land acquisition process, and numerous other aspects of the project. One distressed public housing property has been demolished and a second renovated. New public housing for market rate and subsidized tenants is being constructed. One 22-acre development surrounds a new park, and the street grid has been restored, reconnecting the site to the neighborhood.
Applying the Capacity Exchange Framework to support community transformation and address chronic problems such as crime, inadequate housing, unemployment and poor health care
Insight: We developed the concept of capacity exchange to assist community-based organizations as they seek to improve service delivery and address community issues. Capacity exchange helps groups identify and share or "exchange" already existing capacities — resources, services, human capital — to provide long-term improvements that will persist even after direct philanthropic or government investment ends.
Client Impact: Using the Capacity Exchange Framework clients are able to improve resource utilization, interagency cooperation, service delivery and to strengthen community-based organizations.
