UCLA

This dissertation examines the role that social scientific experiments played in the transformation of US housing assistance policy from project-based to voucher-based forms relying on free market supply during the 1970s. It looks in particular at EHAP, the Experimental Housing Allowance Program, which was authorized by Congress in 1970 and conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and subcontractors including RAND Corporation and Abt Associates. EHAP represented an early instance of the application of traditional and military science technologies and techniques to urban social problems. Over a decade in twelve cities across the United States, the program provided cash assistance for housing directly to more than 30,000 low-income families, testing the approach as an alternative to government-built housing projects. EHAP analyzed the impact of the approach on recipients, participating communities, housing markets and the bureaucracies that implemented the program. Using the experiment as a lens, the dissertation also examines the impact of the shift to market-based subsidies on access to civil rights protections for women and people of color. This project not only offers the first scholarly historical narrative of one of the largest social scientific experiments conducted in the United States, it uncovers how the relationship between government agencies and research institutes shaped and often politicized the production of knowledge about low- income housing. Further, it illustrates how the way in which that knowledge was produced determined, and sometimes undermined, the impact of the knowledge itself. Finally, the analysis suggests the need for a larger examination of the civil rights repercussions of the shift towards reliance on the free-market in government assistance programs for low-income families.