Since fall 2022, Philadelphia has been giving no-strings-attached cash to 301 households randomly selected from the Philadelphia Housing Authority’s wait lists for public housing and federal subsidies. The PHLHousing+ program was scheduled to end in June, but because of new findings about the program’s success, it has been extended until June 2026. A report analyzing the first two years of the program by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and staff at the Philadelphia Housing Development Corp. found that the PHLHousing+ program has been helping to keep families housed. PHDC is discussing what the next phase of the program could look like, said Rachel Mulbry, the organization’s director of policy and strategic initiatives and a coauthor of the report, but “we’re in a much stronger position now that we have results like these.” Households that received cash were less likely to be evicted or become homeless than households without assistance, according to the report. Households that got cash also had fewer concerns about the quality of their homes. Philadelphia is the first city in the country to run a trial of cash-based rental assistance since the idea of rental assistance was first formalized in the 1970s when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development created the Section 8 program.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer; 9/3/2025