Homelessness

Ayse Imrohoroglu and Kai Zhao

No 103, Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Abstract: We present a dynamic general equilibrium model of homelessness calibrated to the U.S. data and evaluate the effectiveness of several policies in the fight against homelessness. The model is designed to capture the most at-risk groups, producing a diverse homeless population that includes a significant portion experiencing short-term homelessness due to labor market shocks and a smaller portion facing chronic homelessness mostly due to health shocks. Our policy experiments reveal that the existing housing voucher program effectively reduces homelessness especially when the general equilibrium effects are accounted for. We show that increasing the reach of the program for eligible individuals can lead to further declines in the aggregate homeless rate relative to alternative forms of subsidies. However, policies targeted to help decrease homelessness are not as popular as general poverty reduction tools such as cash subsidies, which generate a larger welfare gain in our experiments.

Keywords: Income Shock; General equilibrium; Health shock; Homeless; Housing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E20 H20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-10-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge and nep-hea
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Related works:
Working Paper: Homelessness (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedmoi:99008

DOI: 10.21034/iwp.103

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