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The US affordable housing crisis has exploded since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, spurring increased interest in low-income housing subsidies (Section 8). However, potential Section 8 beneficiaries can lose eligibility, or their spot in line, when family size changes, especially if they do not provide the appropriate paperwork to the public housing authority. We identify two external concerns for Section 8: the disparity between programme demand, available vouchers, and housing stock, and the challenges domestic violence victims face in securing housing assistance. These challenges compound for poor families fleeing violence, and more so since the Dobbs decision. In many states, abortion trigger bans severely limit household family planning, creating a triple-bind for poor families seeking housing and women fleeing violence. We identify several policy recommendations to address these concerns in both the short- and long-run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US prison system has exploded since 1970, dramatically reshaping social, political, and economic life in rural communities. Since 2000, roughly one in five rural Americans resides in a prison town. The prison boom is the largest public works project perhaps since the New Deal. Despite a growing interest in prison building, there is a dearth of research examining prison impact – the economic, political, and social costs and benefits for communities that result from building a prison. In this paper, we fill this gap by studying the relationship between prison impact – measured as binary prison presence and cumulative prison count – on violent crime, specifically, intimate partner and domestic violence homicide (IPV/DV). We explore the theoretical foundations for this relationship, including the economic, geographic, and social effects of prisons and correction officers as a high-risk group for perpetrating IPV/DV. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find evidence of a negative association between prison impact and IPV/DV homicide, with an additional prison in the county corresponding with 0.04–0.12 fewer homicide events. While we are not advocating for prison building as a violence nor crime reduction strategy for communities, our findings complicate the policy consequences of the prison boom, especially in rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is a growing literature investigating the causes and consequences of the US prison boom—the tripling of prison facilities between 1970 and 2000—much less is known about current patterns of prison closures. We use novel data capturing the universe of prison closures (N = 188) from 2000 to 2022 to identify and characterize what we term "the prison bust"—the period since 2000 when prison closures began to climb and eventually eclipse new prison building. We show that the prison bust is, in part, a consequence of development-oriented prison-building policies that aggressively used prisons to stimulate struggling local economies. The bust is primarily concentrated in the counties that pursued prison building most aggressively, reflecting a highly cyclical and reactionary pattern of prison placement and closure. We also show that, relative to counties with at least one prison but no closures, closures are concentrated in metro counties with stronger local economies and multiple prisons. Overall, we highlight the prison bust as an important new era in the history of US punishment and provide a new dataset for investigating its causes and consequences. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and policy implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safe and secure housing is a pressing concern for survivors of domestic violence (DV). Domestic Violence Housing First (DVHF) is a policy that serves DV survivors' needs by removing barriers to housing stability via flexible financial assistance, mobile advocacy, trauma-informed practice, and partnerships with community housing providers. In this paper, we outline a study protocol developed to evaluate the efficacy of the Wisconsin Domestic Violence Housing First Pilot Program (WI-DVHF). Funding was provided to 9 social service programs across the state and implemented in novel ways. We develop a multi-site, multi-level, longitudinal analysis of WI-DVHF at the individual, site, and community levels. WI-DVHF includes 4 elements differentiating it from previous studies, including analysis of DVHF in rural and urban locations, unique implementation across different sites, and access to a WI rental education program. We also include data from comparable non-WI-DVHF sites and clients served during the study period. This will address concerns about comparing survivors within a site as DVHF funding may free up funds that can benefit other survivors at that site and to better understand the general challenges and trends these organizations face during the study period. The US housing crisis emphasizes the importance of identifying unique and flexible ways to meet the housing needs of DV survivors. This study highlights the potential for DVHF to improve the lives of survivors, and its adaptability to previously understudied cultural groups and across the rural-urban divide. Further, WI-DVHF funds may positively benefit other programs and participants within a site by freeing up valuable space in DV shelters and other resources., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.