Six new studies will dig into how housing affects social, health, and economic outcomes of families and communities.
The MacArthur Foundation announced it is awarding $2.8 million to support the research. With the new grants, MacArthur has supported 42 studies over five years with important implications for a new generation of housing policies.
Selected through a competitive process from a pool of more than 300 proposals, the latest grants complete a five-year, $25 million investment in the foundation’s How Housing Matters to Families and Communities initiative.
"MacArthur-supported How Housing Matters research has already revealed that stable, quality housing matters in ways critical for children's emotional and physical development, improves school performance, and diminishes psychological stress,” said Julia Stasch, MacArthur’s vice president for U.S. programs, in a statement. “Future research findings will arm policymakers and practitioners with evidence of what works and what does not, which is vital to drive innovation and more effectively target scarce resources to meet the housing, social, and economic needs of families and communities.”
The Ohio Housing Finance Agency is one of the latest grant recipients. It will use its $460,000 award over three years to examine housing and employment impacts of foreclosure prevention programs.
The National Center for Healthy Housing received a $650,000 award for a cost-benefit study that will look at potential savings in government spending on health care through affordable housing.
This year’s other recipients are:
- Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin—Madison;
- Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University;
- Luskin School of Public Affairs, University of California at Los Angeles; and
- Shimberg Center for Housing Studies and Program for Resource Efficient Community, University of Florida
Visit the MacArthur Foundation site for more information about the How Housing Matters grants.
