First Annual Report of the Housing Assistance Supply Experiment

Progress to date, preliminary findings, research problems, and plans for the coming year of RAND's Housing Assistance Supply Experiment, part of HUD's Experimental Housing Allowance Program. Designed to simulate a national program of housing allowances for low-income families, the experimental allowance program operates in two metropolitan housing markets. The supply experiment measures the program's effects on (1) suppliers of housing services, (2) market intermediaries and indirect suppliers, (3) residential mobility, and (4) nonparticipants. As of October 1974, the two experimental sites (Brown County, Wisconsin, and South Bend, Indiana) had been selected and HUD had committed funds for ten-year allowance programs in each. In Brown County, some low-income households were enrolled and receiving payments, and baseline field surveys had been completed. In South Bend, baseline surveying would soon be under way, with enrollment in the allowance program scheduled to begin in December 1974.