Harvard Report Takeaways on the State and Effectiveness of Home Repair Programs

Want more on housing advocacy and research? Sign up for Updates.

Earlier this month, a comprehensive report prepared by Carlos Martín and Sophia Wedeen (HJCHS), Alan Mallach (Center for Community Progress), Todd Swanstrom (University of Missouri-St.Louis), and Austin Harrison (Rhodes College) was released providing a thorough landscape of home repair programs. The report explores the state of housing deterioration in the United States and the effectiveness of home repair programs aimed at improving housing conditions for low-income and vulnerable populations.

Key points include:

Housing Conditions and Need: Renters, households with lower incomes, households of color along with those occupying older homes and manufactured homes had the highest incidents of repair needs and the steepest repair costs. 

“Manufactured homes had the highest incidence of repair needs of any building type, at 43.5 percent, compared to 32-34 percent of multifamily and single-family units. Manufactured homes also had the highest median repair costs, at $1,900 per unit, compared to $1,300-$1,400 for multifamily homes and $1,700 for single-family homes.”

Housing Deterioration Effects: Housing deterioration disproportionately affects non-white working-class neighborhoods, is a barrier to building inter-generational wealth, and has detrimental environmental effects and health impacts. 

“The ‘cost of doing nothing’ includes a toll on the mental well-being of residents in homes and neighborhoods with higher rates of housing deterioration.”

On Programs, Providers, and Budgets: There are poor overall funding rates for all programs, and is further complicated by the fact that each program has different criteria and administrative challenges.

“The funding that is ultimately available for beneficiary households, including the administrative costs for federal, state, and local stakeholders, is approximately $13,000 on average for [CDBG and HOME repair programs]. After subtracting those administrative costs, most homes receive the equivalent of $4,000 to $8,000— constraining projects to repairs rather than extensive retrofits.”

On Repair Program Outcomes: Many important benefits of home repairs/modifications cannot be monetized because of lack of data and because other outcomes (such as spillover effects of increased property values, benefits of improved hygiene, ability to transfer wealth, increased social cohesion) simply cannot be translated into a dollar amount.

Policies and Policy Levers: Home repair programs are generally small in scale, reaching only a small percentage of households in need. Two major barriers of federal programs that administer home repair funds are 1) the program criteria and qualification requirements and 2) conflicting and inconsistent standards and requirements.

"While the principal and most obvious source of additional funds is likely to be the federal budget, state governments also represent realistic sources of funds for home repair, and in some cases may be more readily enlisted in this effort."

The paper concludes with the findings from the three workshop discussions held to complement the research, anchoring the urgency to catalyze a movement to improve housing conditions through more effective and well-resourced home repair programs. 

• Federal Repair Programs: A very limited pool of resources exists for home repair programs, including funding for adequate technical assistance between the federal government and grantees and coordination between these programs. 

• State and Municipal Programs: The "over-subscription" of eligible applicants is a major challenge – households begin to distrust these programs, even if put on waiting lists which can lead to a reduction in public support for home repair programs.

• Civil Sector Organizations: A core asset is the relationships and trust built among these organizations and the communities they serve. Collaboration among other programs is essential with the very limited resources that are available.  

*The Coalition for Home Repair was one of various organizations to receive an invitation and participate to share a civil-sector perspective.

Two reasons for lack of policy attention to improving the conditions of the existing housing stock are “the limited quantity of housing quality data, and the lack of a more robust effort to monitor and evaluate different interventions” and because the issue is largely invisible to the public, as it relates to the interior conditions of the home. The Coalition for Home Repair recognizes the growing need for investment into preserving the existing housing stock and seeks to proactively address this “leak” in homeownership support, through its national advocacy platform. 

Opportunities to continue uplifting housing preservation:

• Review/share the recording of The State and Ambition of Home Repair Programs in the U.S. highlighting the work of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grantees on their perspectives and expertise in the field of home repair.

• Join the Advocacy Task Force, and actively participate in our bi-monthly sessions aimed at boosting collaboration among a variety of sectors and fueling a movement towards understanding the importance of housing preservation and the critical role it plays at all levels (individual/household/neighborhood; local/state/federal). Our next planned meeting is for Thursday, October 17th.

• Attend Reframe Conference taking place from November 13 to November 15, 2024 in Detroit, Michigan. Share space and ideas with like-minded leaders committed to housing preservation.