Housing & Asset Building
Abt promotes stable, decent, affordable, and inclusive housing in the U.S. by building evidence for effective housing policy, community development, and asset-building strategies. Our evaluation work in the 1970s informed the creation and implementation of the Housing Choice Voucher program, the nation’s largest tenant-based rental assistance program. Today, our focus is homelessness, including management of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Annual Homelessness Assessment Report. We support initiatives to increase both the overall housing stock and the supply of affordable homes and to advance fair housing. All pose complex challenges for policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels.
Abt has extensive experience with program evaluation, data collection, technical assistance, and collaboration with those most affected by the housing crisis. Our expertise helps lay the foundation for innovative approaches to promote an adequate, diverse housing supply, fair housing, and housing equity to meet the needs of all Americans.
First clear evidence about the best policies to help families experiencing homelessness through our evaluation of HUD’s Family Options Study
Co-developed LocalHousingSolutions.org, which offers tools and training for cities, towns, and counties to improve their housing strategies
Evaluating the impact of the Community Choice Demonstration program to enable families with housing vouchers to move towards better opportunities
Featured In Housing & Asset Building
Evaluating Guaranteed Income Programs
Guaranteed income (GI) refers to recurring cash payments made directly to individuals with no strings attached. The concept—along with universal basic income—has regained traction in recent years as a way to address systemic economic inequities. Mayors…
Using Homeownership to Advance Racial & Health Equity
Americans from diverse backgrounds dream of owning a home. Homeownership can provide a sense of independence, financial and housing stability, and a pathway to building wealth for current and future generations. However, despite these widely shared…
Abt’s Evaluations of Compass Working Capital’s Innovative Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) Program
Family Self Sufficiency (FSS) is a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program designed to help housing assistance recipients increase their earnings and build savings to make progress toward economic security. The standard FSS program…
Moving to Work: Incentivizing Landlords in the Housing Choice Voucher Program
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program provides voucher subsidies that enables low-income households to select the type of housing and location that meets their needs. However, the HCV program…
Evaluating JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Challenge and PRO Neighborhoods Competition
Through the AdvancingCities Challenge and PRO Neighborhoods Competitions, JPMorgan Chase leverages a spectrum of solutions. Whether focused on neighborhood-level interventions or city-wide systems change, these initiatives encourage applicants to embody…
Research to Address Homelessness in California
As affordable housing shrinks and poverty persists—particularly in the wake of COVID-19—California continues to face a complex homelessness crisis. To get a true understanding of the scope and nature of the challenge, the California Legislature passed a…
Can Children’s Savings Account Programs Help Black and Latine Families Better Access College?
A new blog examines how children’s savings account programs can support access to college for Black and Latine students.
Migrating from Adobe ColdFusion: How Abt Can Help
This paper outlines the reasons government agencies will need a digital plan to transition out of ColdFusion and different migration paths they can take.
My Kids Deserve the World: How Children in the Southeast Benefit from Guaranteed Income
This brief provides early insights from parents into how guaranteed income pilot programs improving outcomes for their families.
Addressing Soaring Homelessness in America Among Senior Citizens. What Can Reverse the Trend?
Experts from Abt and Miriam’s Kitchen highlight the soaring number of older adults experiencing homelessness and discuss how to tackle the crisis.
Why We Should Be Talking about Rapid Re-housing When We Talk About Guaranteed Income
Guaranteed Income and Rapid Re-Housing programs both support low-income families; we explain how each can borrow ideas from the other to improve outcomes.
Abt Conversations: A Growing Number of Older Adults Are Unhoused. How Can We Help?
Abt’s Brooke Abrams talks to DC-area Miriam’s Kitchen’s April Veney and Adam Rocap about the increasing number of elderly people experiencing homelessness.
Latest in Housing & Asset Building
Shelter from the Storm: Addressing the Dual Crisis of Extreme Weather and Homelessness
Homeless response systems need support to strengthen their resilience to extreme weather shocks and the disproportionate harm that extreme weather has on people experiencing homelessness.
Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management (APPAM) 2024 Fall Research Conference
Experts from Abt Global will be presenting at the Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management (APPAM) 2024 Fall Research Conference.
Understanding Homeless Encampments in Long Beach, L.A. River Basin, and San Fernando Valley
A Conrad N. Hilton Foundation-funded, Abt-led evaluation studied three encampments in Los Angeles.
Our Experts: Housing & Asset Building
Principal Associate and Director of Housing and Community Initiatives, Social & Economic Policy
United States
Vice President, Technical Assistance & Implementation and Housing and Asset Building
United States
Affordable Housing Supply
Faced with limited housing supply and soaring rents and home prices, more people, particularly with low incomes, struggle to find or keep an affordable, safe place to live. Ripple effects of the affordable housing crisis include increasing health challenges, declining educational outcomes, and surging homelessness. Abt’s decades of rigorous evidence-building work with federal, state, local, and non-profit partners—combined with our training and technical assistance expertise—inform today’s efforts to make housing more affordable. We continue to shape rental assistance programs like Housing Choice Vouchers and public housing, policies to boost production and preservation of affordable housing, and initiatives to help make homeownership feasible. Our partners and teams with lived expertise enrich our cross-sector, data-driven approach with first-hand insights, enabling us to advance housing affordability for all.
Asset Building & Financial Capability
Abt studies the drivers of economic inclusion. Our insights lead to more effective policies, programs and interventions. How can consumers make better purchasing decisions? What is their experience with credit? How can housing counseling support sustainable homeownership? How can financial literacy programs encourage asset-building and promote equity across populations? We see answers to questions like these as vital to the well-being of low-, moderate-, and middle-income Americans.
Homelessness
Abt’s rigorous research, insights and technical assistance enable policymakers and practitioners to understand the scope of homelessness in America and identify what works to prevent and reduce it. Our team partners with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to produce national estimates of homelessness. With federal, state, and non-profit clients, we also examine the disparate effects of homelessness across races, ethnicities, ages, and abilities, including on military veterans, families, and youth. We help federal grantees, communities and nonprofits build capacity to manage prevention and assistance programs to move people from the streets into stable housing. And we partner with those same communities, as well as people with lived experience, to design scalable, equitable systems that meet their needs and preferences.
Value for our Clients
Our work for public, private and non-profit organizations reflect our shared values and steadfast commitment to quality standards, best price, and lasting impact.
Our Clients In Housing & Asset Building
Join Our Team
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Featured Jobs in
Clinical Services Lead Proposal
Afghanistan
Abt Global is preparing for an upcoming USAID-funded health activity (project) in Afghanistan that aims to improve the quality of health and nutrition services, increase access to health services, improve healthy behavior and care-seeking practices, and strengthen the health system to enhance resilience. The activity will focus on increasing equitable access to and utilization of quality health and nutrition services and adoption of health behaviors, especially for women and children, in both the public and private sectors.
Private Sector Partnerships & Investment Director, Morocco EcoRise Activity
Abt Global (Abt) seeks a Private Sector Partnerships and Investment Director for the anticipated USAID-funded Morocco EcoRise Activity. The activity will leverage the private sector for sustainable, inclusive economic growth and strengthen Morocco’s resilience to shocks and long-term stressors, including water scarcity and drought. Interventions will seek to improve the enabling environment for investment and business growth for a sustainable economy, assist early-stage entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through access to finance and technical support to create and scale innovative solutions increasing economic resilience, and promote a skilled workforce to support the development and growth of a sustainable and equitable economy.