Housing assistance and Medicaid in Seattle

Examines the association between voucher receipt, Medicaid enrollment and health care use among children

Background: Housing vouchers, which subsidize the costs of rent and utilities and enable low-income families to rent homes on private market, are the nation’s largest housing assistance program. As policy-makers and practitioners consider ways to optimize the use of existing vouchers and seek support to expand the overall supply of affordable housing, there is a critical need for research that investigates the link between housing choice vouchers and health.  

Approach: Working with two public housing authorities (Seattle Housing Authority and King County Housing Authority) and a health department (Public Health –Seattle & King County), the team has been investigating the association between the receipt of a housing voucher on children’s enrollment in Medicaid and patterns of health care use. The proposal uses a synthetic difference-in-differences approach to compare Medicaid use, well child visits, and emergency department use among children whose families received housing assistance versus those whose families were on the voucher waitlist.

Team: The study team incudes Craig Pollack (PI) Matthew Eisenberg, Amanda Blackford, Rebecca Smith, and Julia Kim at Johns Hopkins and Alastair Matheson and Amy Laurent at Public Health –Seattle & King County.

Funding: The project was supported by the National Institute for Nursing Research (R21HD105143).