Furman Center Spring Speaker Series: Jared Schachner

Please join the NYU Furman Center for a lunchtime presentation:

Assessing Racial Heterogeneity in “Housing First” Supports’ Effectiveness among Older Adults Experiencing Homelessness: Evidence from Los Angeles County

with

Jared Schachner

Research Scientist
USC Price School of Public Policy
 

Date: Monday, April 15, 2024
Time: 1:00 - 2:15 p.m. ET
Location: Vanderbilt Hall, Seminar Room 202
40 Washington Sq S, New York, NY 10012

Lunch will be served. There will be an option to join remotely. 

RSVP to attend in-person here

RSVP to join remotely here

Description:
Two major demographic trends– the rapid aging and racial diversification of the U.S. population– have collided with spiraling housing costs to rapidly increase the number of older adults of color experiencing homelessness. Despite the growing size and acute vulnerability of this group, research typically documents the disproportionate risk, and negative health consequences of, homelessness experiences for racial minorities or older adults, separately, rather than both simultaneously (cf. Paul, et al. 2020). The current study applies an intersectional lens to quantify the risk of returning to homelessness after receiving Continuum of Care services faced by older adults of color (aged 55+) and the effectiveness of housing-based interventions intended to reduce it.

Using individual-level deidentified data from Los Angeles County’s Homelessness Management Information System, Schachner and co-authors first estimate how race and age jointly shape risk and find a significant interaction, whereby Black adults aged 55-64 exhibit the highest rates of returning to homelessness. The authors then assess whether specific “Housing First” interventions like permanent supportive housing (PSH) or rapid rehousing (RRH) are especially effective in reducing risk for older adults of color. Crucially, the data permit individual-level fixed effects models, yielding a plausibly causal interpretation of interventions’ impact estimates because they adjust for difficult-to-observe differences in individuals’ risk acuity, which shapes both selection into treatment and the risk of returning to homelessness. Multivariate models suggest that both PSH and RRH considerably diminish the risk of returning to homelessness across age-race subgroups; the latter intervention may be particularly effective for Black adults aged 55-64.

About the Presenter:

Jared is currently a Research Scientist at the USC Price School of Public Policy and an affiliated researcher with the Homelessness Policy Research Institute, UChicago Consortium on School Research, Los Angeles Education Research Institute, and Herting Neuroimaging Lab. Before USC, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago's Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation and a Ph.D. in Sociology & Social Policy at Harvard University. His research examines whether and how housing, neighborhood, and school conditions mediate the intergenerational transmission of cognitive skills, physical and socioemotional health, and social status. Recent work has been published in Annual Review of Sociology, Demography, Social Forces, Child Development, Cognitive Developmental Neuroscience, JAMA Network Open Journal of Health & Social Behavior, American Educational Research Journal, Urban Affairs Review, and Housing Policy Debate. Funders of his work include the National Science Foundation, the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the Hilton Foundation, and the Weingart Foundation.