Over the past two years, the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority (MPHA) has been working with the Harvard Kennedy School’s People Lab to study the barriers to landlord participation in the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program. With property owner participation in the HCV program falling nationwide in recent years, the study looks to provide MPHA with insights into what barriers exist for landlord participation and how to improve the experience of voucher-holders.
“We hope that these efforts, along with other programming, help us to provide meaningful choice to our participants and to support housing stability in our community,” said Mikaela Binsfeld, MPHA Manager of HCV, Participant Engagement and Research. “Our ultimate goal with this project is to provide real choice to our voucher participants.”
“We hope that by shedding light on the diverse perspectives and experiences of landlords and tenants across Minneapolis, this project will offer insights that MPHA can use to continue expanding access to affordable housing,” said Jessica Lasky-Fink, People Lab researcher of Harvard Kennedy School.
Since inception in 2021, the study has evolved, adding new phases to further understanding of the issue. In the first phase of the study, all Minneapolis landlords (those who worked with MPHA and those who did not) received surveys to gauge the perceptions of the HCV program. More than 1,000 landlords responded, hundreds taking the time to write in comments, providing rich responses about where additional information may be useful.
In the second phase, the team sent a series of HCV program postcards to local landlords asking if they were interested in attending an info session or learning more information. Three different messages were sent out at random, each addressing one of the common concerns identified in the previous phase. Responses to the various postcards were tracked via interest form submissions. This phase did not render any significant improvements in interest rates across the various messages.
The study took its final step forward last week, with three researchers from the People Lab of Harvard Kennedy School visiting Minneapolis to conduct one-on-one interviews with landlords and voucher-holders on their experiences with renting and their opinions of the HCV program. Questions ranged from how landlords received information from each other to what voucher-holders heard during the housing search when they told a landlord they had a voucher.
Interview results are anticipated in the coming months. These results will be analyzed by the HCV team to see what improvements could be made to the HCV program to align with the research outcomes.
