Federal homelessness policy: A robust political economy approach

David S. Lucas ()
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David S. Lucas: George Mason University

The Review of Austrian Economics, 2017, vol. 30, issue 3, No 2, 277-303

Abstract: Abstract In the wake of the financial crisis, the United States government introduced a new large-scale initiative to address homelessness. The policy mandate is marked by both an unprecedented increase in federal funding and a dramatic reallocation of resources toward Housing First, a service model emphasizing immediate housing subsidization. Although this service paradigm has received support from a sizeable literature, our knowledge of its success to date has been limited. This paper sheds light on the unobservable or unmeasured costs of this new centralized approach to ending homelessness. I argue that federal homelessness policy under the Housing First approach 1) generates resource misallocation, 2) exacerbates the Samaritan’s dilemma, and 3) invites rent seeking.

Keywords: Homelessness; Housing first; Public policy; Robust political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B53 H53 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11138-016-0356-x

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