Emergency Assistance for Housing Stability

Minnesota’s Emergency Assistance (EA) program is designed to help families resolve one-time financial crises related to their housing needs, covering expenses such as back rent, mortgage payments, and utilities. While EA is funded statewide through the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) Consolidated Fund, it is administered by individual counties and Tribal nations giving them wide discretion to set different maximum benefit amounts, eligibility criteria, verification requirements, covered expenses, or other program policies. This evaluation sought to better understand the impact of EA on housing stability and other measures of household well-being.

We completed this project in two phases. First, in our descriptive analysis report we explored characteristics of approved and denied applicants, denial reasons, as well as local variation in program implementation to better understand the current program and to inform future policy decisions. Using administrative data records and information found in local agency EA plans, we identified three primary themes. First, applications increased substantially from 2016 to 2023, as well as the denial rate. Second, total EA spending across the state decreased by almost half from 2016 to 2023, but average payments per household stayed relatively flat. Third, there are large differences in EA policies across the state—with potentially large implications for participation.

Second, in our impact evaluation we assessed the causal effect of EA for approved applicants relative to similar denied applicants on housing outcomes after 12 months. Overall, we found that EA has positive impacts for approved households. First, EA decreased the likelihood of moving by 6 percentage points for families approved to stay in their current homes. Second, it substantially increased the probability of moving by 42 percentage points for families approved to relocate to different housing. Third, it reduced instances of severe housing instability (defined as either moving two or more times in a year or receiving an eviction judgment) across the entire approved applicant sample. These impacts were stable across subgroups by race, geography, and household size. We found no measurable impact of EA on eviction judgments alone or on preventive health care use (which we use as a measure of household capacity, where EA might enable families to focus on other household priorities).

We also looked at differences in the effects of EA by the average caseworker application processing time. Contrary to prior expectations, we found that approved cases assigned to faster workers (processing time of 30 days or less) versus slower workers (over 30 or more days) had similar outcomes. For households approved to receive assistance with a security deposit or moving expenses, longer average processing time was associated with a higher likelihood of moving.

We suggest five policy implications of our impact evaluation, informed by our results along with conversations with EA practitioners and prior literature:

  • Collect data on the original application reason for all applicants, allowing for deeper understanding of how outcomes link back to why families applied in the first place.
  • Encourage case workers and applicants to discuss the family’s preferences for how to resolve the emergency in a sustainable way; consider whether moving to a new unit is feasible and aligned with applicant preferences.
  • Collect qualitative data from caseworkers to identify practices that aid applicants in reaching their preferred housing outcomes.
  • Consider developing policies for when it is appropriate to allow cases to pend for more than thirty days, particularly in situations when additional time may be necessary for a family to complete a move to a new housing unit.
  • Consider state and local government policy options to expand access to EA for similarly situated denied families given evidence of positive outcomes and ongoing unmet demand.

Prior to these reports, we also collected all local agency EA plans on file with DCYF through 2024. Our team catalogued them for over 30 different policy and program elements, including eligibility criteria, emergencies covered, verifications required, maximum benefit amount, and more. We used these data in the descriptive report to describe local variation in EA policy and practice. These data are available in an Excel spreadsheet, linked below. The spreadsheet contains an overview of how the data were collected and coded, a data dictionary, and a tab each for EA plans currently in effect and historical EA plans.


Impact Evaluation - Full Report

Descriptive Analysis - Executive Summary

Descriptive Analysis - Full Report

Descriptive Analysis - Appendices

Local EA Plan Data (Excel)

Project Status: 

Complete

Evaluation Priority Area: 

Human Services; Housing