What Interventions Work Best for Families Who Experience Homelessness? Impact Estimates from the Family Options Study

What housing and service interventions work best to reduce homelessness for families in the United States? The Family Options Study randomly assigned 2,282 families recruited in homeless shelters across 12 sites to priority access to one of three active interventions or to usual care in their communities. The interventions were long‐term rent subsidies, short‐term rent subsidies, and transitional housing in supervised programs with intensive psychosocial services. In two waves of follow‐up data collected 20 and 37 months later, priority access to long‐term rent subsidies reduced homelessness and food insecurity and improved other aspects of adult and child well‐being relative to usual care, at a cost 9 percent higher. The other interventions had little effect. The study provides support for the view that homelessness for most families is an economic problem that long‐term rent subsidies resolve and does not support the view that families must address psychosocial problems to succeed in housing. It has implications for focusing government resources on this important social problem.     

Voter‐weighted environmental preferences

This article examines the political economy of preferences with respect to the environment using a new stated preference survey that presents the first benefit values for national water quality levels. The mean valuation greatly exceeds the median value, as the distribution of valuations is highly skewed. The study couples the survey valuations with unique and extensive information on respondent voting patterns. Preferences of registered voters are similar to the preferences of the population at large, but median voters value water quality more than nonvoters. The strongest contrast related to voter‐weighted preferences is among voters for different candidates, as those who voted for Gore in the 2000 presidential election have the highest environmental values. © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

A Reconnaissance of Alternative Measures of Effective Property Tax Rates

Informed policy discussions on local property tax reform initiatives require accurate and reliable information about the tax's current use. This paper reviews two popular measures of property tax burden and their limitations. The paper then reports the results of a reconnaissance of measures of effective property tax rates and how they vary across the 50 states. The paper also reports the findings of a 50-state survey that indicates how states calculated and reported effective property tax rates. These comparisons lead to a suggested framework for certain methodologies for calculating effective property tax rates.     

Effect of Victimization on Impulse Control and Binge Drinking among Serious Juvenile Offenders from Adolescence to Young Adulthood

A vast literature has found longitudinal effects of early life stress on substance use and self-regulatory processes. These associations may vary by period-specific development among youth involved in the juvenile justice system. The current study used an accelerated longitudinal design and auto-regressive latent trajectory with structure residuals (ALT-SR) model to examine the within-person cross-lagged associations between binge drinking, impulse control, and victimization from 15 to 25 years of age. A large sample (N?=?1100) of justice-involved youth were followed longitudinally for 7 years (M _{age baseline} ?=?15.8, M _{age conclusion} ?=?22.8). In general, the sample was ethnically diverse (41% Black, 34% Hispanic, 21% White, 4.3% Other) and primarily male (87.2%). Participants reported on their frequency of binge drinking, impulse control, and frequency of victimization at each time point. The results indicated that, during adolescence, victimization and binge drinking attenuated impulse control, which resulted in more binge drinking and victimization during young adulthood. The current study highlights the importance of assessing developmental processes and period-specific transitions among at risk youth, especially for youth experiencing early life stress.     

Not in isolation: the necessity of systemic heuristic devices in all development practice

This brief essay is a response to the article by Cooke (Cooke, 1997) in which he sets out the case for a clinical model of development practice. Developing the theme that any methodology taken in isolation will become self-fulfilling in its activity and taking up Cooke's ‘challenges for Development Studies’ whilst building off the criticism set out by Blunt (Blunt, 1997) and upon an earlier work, I set out the imperative for inclusive and systemic tools to aid our understanding of development contexts. Paradigms of scientific thought (the prisons of Blunt) and tyrannies of methodology are unwholesome and ultimately self-destructive devices. It is argued that only by adopting a holistic systems approach, including the wealth of potential tools for problems solving and developing our creative thinking in partnership, can development studies achieve real understanding of what must otherwise always be seen as remaining an unknowable and mysterious context. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Methods and mindsets: Towards an understanding of the tyranny of methodology

This article attempts to examine familiar things through a different comparative focus. The results given here are preliminary and intended for comment and further development. The article takes as its basis the tradition which has arisen from the export of methods to developing countries in all manner of scientific and technical development projects. In the area of global development the traditions of technology transfer and development intervention by donor agencies and their related consultancy groups is well documented. Not so well covered in the literature is the related issue pertaining to the export of the methods which accompany and, to some extent, confer respectability upon all manner of technology, intervention and work towards nation building. The article is concerned with what might be called the ‘tyranny of methods’, which, it is argued, are applied often uncritically in development work. The mindsets which are invoked by traditional western scientific methods are reviewed using a psychological model. Following from this, the article investigates two areas of existing experience in the adoption of methods and then goes on to develop a critical perspective of one particular form of information systems development method, drawing on the experiences related. The article briefly investigates traditional, linear methods and makes links to the experiences of fanning systems research and rapid rural appraisal. Although no definitive conclusions are made, observations relating to an action plan are provided. The core of this relates to self-analysis and points to be conscious of in the export of any method.     

Adapting to Changing Legal Frameworks: Mozambican Refugees in South Africa

This paper argues that legal frameworks to manage immigrationand refugee rights need to be understood from below, namely,how they are interpreted and used locally by the immigrantsaffected and by the host communities, in their specific historicalcontext. Using the case of Mozambican refugees in South Africa(1985–2006), the paper outlines why many of the policiestargeted at or affecting this group of immigrants have had counterproductiveeffects (from the perspective of policy makers) because of thedisjuncture between the goals and assumptions of the legal frameworkand the reality experienced and desired by the refugees. Thesituation of Mozambican refugees in South Africa over the pasttwenty years has been shaped by a radically changing legal context.These changes are charted and matched with how Mozambican refugees,especially those settled in the rural border areas, have adaptedto, made use of and subverted the various legal constraintsand opportunities provided by the South African state and itslocal representatives.