By James (Jim) Riccio PHD, Principal Research Fellow at MDRC, New York

Summary

This paper summarizes the origins and evolution of JobPlus in the US and highlights the special opportunities it has as a place-based intervention to engage social housing residents in efforts to improve their employment outcomes. It also points to some of the challenges that operating this ambitious model entails. The paper suggests the potential value of a transatlantic learning exchange to continue to strengthen the model and its implementation in Britain and in the US.

Introduction

In the mid-1990s through early 2000s, six US public housing developments (publicly owed housing estates for families with low incomes) located in communities of concentrated poverty, set out to help their residents achieve better employment outcomes through an innovative and distinctively place-based initiative called JobsPlus. In those estates, many residents did not work or worked inconsistently, typically at low-wage jobs, and many relied heavily on various social welfare benefits.

JobsPlus was designed and tested as part of a research demonstration project funded by the US Department and Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Rockefeller Foundation, and other private philanthropies. MDRC (a nonprofit, nonpartisan social policy research organization) provided technical assistance to help guide local implementation of the model and evaluated the model’s operation and impacts. At the local level, the model called for leadership not just by the local housing agencies, which had little expertise in delivering employment services, but also by local government workforce and welfare agencies and various nonprofit organizations that, through their own programmes, served many of the same residents living those housing developments. Resident leaders, whose voices and support for the new intervention were deemed essential to it become embraced by their community, were critical leadership partners.

As described in a separate article in this volume by Stephen Evans, JobsPlus takes a comprehensive approach: it combines on-site employment-related assistance within the housing estate with financial rewards tied to employment outcomes, along with neighbor-to-neighbor and other social network support. As a “saturation” intervention, it offers assistance to all residents in the designated community.

MDRC’s initial evaluation of JobsPlus in six sites showed that, where fully implemented, the programme increased the earnings of residents living in the targeted housing estates relative to the earnings of families living in similar estates that served as a comparison group. Those results persisted over many years and led to efforts to replicate JobsPlus in other communities. HUD now selects a small group of housing agencies across the US each year to receive time-limited federal grants to implement the programme, and New York City uses local funds to support ongoing JobPlus programmes in various parts of the city.

A rich body of research has accompanied and inspired these replication efforts. The findings provide evidence that this model can be adapted to many different local settings. They also show the challenges of operating model well and boosting employment outcomes, underscoring the importance of continuous improvement efforts and further evaluation. The decision to pilot JobPlus in the UK can further these aims and is a welcome step.

Taking Full Advantage of “Place”

Any effort to replicate JobsPlus should fully capitalize on the distinctive place-based nature of the model. The fact that JobsPlus offers services to all adults who live in (and, in the UK version, live adjacent to) designated social housing estates gives the programme certain advantages not available to more typical employment models. These include:   

Many factors make putting these ideas into practice difficult, and the time, effort, resources, and creativity required should not be underestimated. There is no simple script for “dropping” a programme into a housing estate and getting residents to quickly beat a path to its door. Many JobsPlus sites have struggled to get a large proportion of residents to engage with the programme. Some have struggled to take full advantage of the unique opportunities that a place-based intervention offers. Or they have been challenged navigating the social dynamics or culture of the place, including conflicts among certain groups of residents, or in offering services that residents want. Truly integrating a programme like JobsPlus into a community, where residents become familiar with it, see value in what it offers, and come to trust it, and where the programme becomes part of the fabric of community life is an ambitious and complex undertaking that can takes years before its full potential is realized. It also requires collaborating with residents in meaningful ways to adapt the design of the model to local circumstances, to troubleshoot problems and work toward solutions, and to build a sense of resident ownership over this important intervention in their communities. But success is possible, and the years of operating JobsPlus in the US offer important insights and lessons for the UK.

A Transatlantic Learning Opportunity

The continuing operation of JobsPlus in the US and the rich evaluation literature that has been built up over time offer opportunities for the UK to learn from the US experience. But, just as importantly, the UK’s creative adaptations of the JobsPlus model in Britain offer a learning opportunity for the US, as American administrators and practitioners continue to strive to strengthen the implementation of the model across a wide range of settings. Although the institutional structures, labour markets, and housing and benefit systems differ in important ways across the two countries, the ways of intervening in public housing and social housing communities and taking full advantage of the place-based ways of supporting residents’ efforts to enter work, remain stably employed, and advance in their careers, have much in common. Sharing creative ideas and lessons from experience would enrich efforts to strengthen JobsPlus in both countries and better serve individuals and communities struggling to get ahead. Efforts are now underway to build such a transatlantic dialogue.

For more information on JobsPlus in the US, see Jobs-Plus Community Revitalization Initiative for Public Housing Families | MDRC.