Does behaviorally-informed outreach increase rental property owners’ interest in housing voucher programs?
Project Summary
Housing voucher programs help tens of thousands of low-income households in Massachusetts afford housing on the private market. The success of voucher programs depends on rental property owners’ willingness to participate by accepting tenants with vouchers. Yet, these programs have traditionally struggled to attract and retain landlords. The People Lab is working with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing & Livable Communities (EOHLC) to co-design and test the impact of different outreach messages on rental property owners’ engagement with voucher programs.
Why is this issue important?
Housing voucher programs provide subsidies for low-income families to afford housing on the private rental market. Voucher programs have been found to reduce homelessness and housing instability. However, tenants with vouchers often have trouble finding rental property owners willing to accept their vouchers, despite a state law prohibiting discrimination based on a tenant’s source of income. This can restrict their housing options, limit mobility, and even lead to them losing their voucher if they cannot secure a unit within the allotted time. As such, increasing the number of rental property owners who participate in housing voucher programs is currently a top priority for local, state, and federal policymakers.
What are we doing?
In collaboration with EOHLC, we co-designed and tested ten different behaviorally-informed outreach messages among more than 120,000 presumed rental property owners across the Massachusetts. In a field experiment, all property owners were randomly assigned to receive a single mailer that varied along two dimensions: (1) the type of motivation included and (2) the number of motivations included. Specifically, we tested the impact of message content that emphasized the financial benefits of the program, the community benefits of the program, or the benefits of leading to tenants with vouchers, or that aimed to correct misperceptions about the process of participating. Additionally, owners were randomly assigned to receive outreach via letter or postcard.
We then evaluated the impact of outreach on rental property owners’ engagement with an informational website about housing voucher programs, interest in receiving more detailed information about these programs, and likelihood of advertising vacancies on a rental website geared toward low-income tenants.
What have we learned?
Message content (type of motivation) did not have a consistently significant impact on engagement, but the most effective message increased engagement with the communication by 68% relative to the least effective message. Overall, however, the number of motivations included significantly impacted engagement: mailers with one motivation yielded 24% more engagement than mailers that included two motivations. Additionally, we found that mailer modality strongly affected engagement: property owners that received a letter were 82% more likely to engage than those that received a postcard.
What comes next?
Additional research is needed to better understand the impact of message content on engagement, and to explore which messages are most effective for whom. We are currently working on developing additional studies to answer these questions.