JOURNAL ARTICLE: Mitigating the Stress of Housing Instability: The Impact of Housing Choice Vouchers on Social Supports, Behavioral Health, and Criminal Justice Involvement Published in Housing Policy Debate, Nov 25, 2025.
The Housing Choice Voucher program is the largest low-income housing subsidy program managed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Research shows that vouchers improve housing affordability and stability and access to higher quality housing units and safer neighborhoods. However, less research considers how housing supports affect a household’s health and well-being and participation in other social services, and there has been even less research on the impact of vouchers in non-urban areas.
This study fills some of those gaps by focusing on a Housing Choice Voucher lottery that took place in September 2019, in Sonoma County, California. The study uses linked administrative data from eight Sonoma county agencies to track the impact of being randomly selected for a voucher on health and support services, as well as criminal justice involvement.
During the pandemic, fewer people moved or stopped their voucher use, meaning there were fewer vouchers becoming available for new households. As a result, it took much longer for eligible households selected for a voucher to be offered the voucher, and longer still to find a unit to lease with the voucher. Shelter-in-place orders and general fear of exposure during the pandemic may have reduced everyone’s participation in behavioral health and support services, leading to lower participation rates for the broader population as well as people using housing vouchers. This study shows that for people living in this rural and suburban county, there were some improvements in outcomes for people who were randomly selected for a voucher, particularly for men.
Key Findings
1. The 12,500 voucher applicants were predominantly female (72%), almost half were senior, disabled, or both (47%), and only 41% lived in Sonoma County when they applied for the voucher program. Using a lottery, 500 applicant households were randomly selected to have their eligibility assessed, and if eligible, receive a voucher (4% of the total applicant pool). Only 202 households were ultimately offered a voucher.
2. During the pandemic, using a voucher to secure housing was difficult. Of the 202 randomly selected households that were offered a voucher, fewer than half (95 households) were able to secure a lease using the voucher. The median time to lease-up was 273 days, though there was considerable variation. Households with seniors and/or disabled people were prioritized for vouchers first and had much shorter average lease-up times.
3. There was no difference in the use of substance use or mental health services between people who were randomly selected for a voucher and those who were not in the 20 months following random selection. However, very few voucher applicants used these services before they applied for a voucher (only 3-5%), suggesting limited need for these services.
4. More than one-fifth of voucher applicants were enrolled in safety-net benefits in the two years before they applied for a voucher. While selection for a voucher did not change benefit enrollment among the full treatment group, subgroup analyses show that men who were selected for a voucher enrolled in more benefits programs afterwards than men who were not selected.
5. Overall, people who were selected for a voucher were less likely to be convicted of a crime afterwards, with stronger desistance effects for people who lived in Sonoma County at the time of application and for people who successfully secured a lease.
Suggested citation: Lacoe, J., Hogg, J., Lens, M., & Palos Castellanos, K. (2025). Mitigating the Stress of Housing Instability: The Impact of Housing Choice Vouchers on Social Supports, Behavioral Health, and Criminal Justice Involvement. Housing Policy Debate, 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/10511482.2025.2578944