The Evaluation of New Destiny Housing’s Emergency Housing Voucher Aftercare Program: Activities, Outputs, and Preliminary Effectiveness demonstrates that domestic violence survivors strongly benefit from individualized case management services and mental health counseling post housing placement.
Domestic violence survivors often need tailored support to achieve housing stability because of the physical, mental, and emotional trauma of abusive relationships, especially when the home’s finances have been wrecked by a controlling perpetrator. Launched in January 2022, the EHV Aftercare Program was a large-scale initiative that offered voluntary “light touch” case management services to all domestic violence survivors who received a special EHV Section 8 rental subsidy and layered on mental health services for survivors and their children, who needed the additional support to find stability.
The EHV Program provided rental assistance to people across the country struggling to make rent due to the economic hardships inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development issued 70,000 of these EHV vouchers nationally and then gave localities the discretion to direct these vouchers to the homeless and at-risk individuals and families that were most devastated by the pandemic. In New York City, 1,168 of these vouchers were designated for individuals and families fleeing abuse. New Destiny, as the local subcontractor to find housing for these domestic violence households, paired this federal funding with philanthropic dollars to add the case management and clinical mental health services needed to ensure that the survivors in this program received the support needed to maintain their housing and find health and stability.
This independent evaluation was conducted by Kristie A. Thomas, PhD, MSW, and a team of researchers at Simmons University. Through a range of rigorous data collection methods, the analysis revealed statistically significant improvements in a host of critical areas of EHV Aftercare Program participants’ lives, including housing stability; their ability to meet basic needs, such as food, medication, and childcare; and notably, an increase in safety-related empowerment—a measure used by social scientists to assess perceived agency and resourcefulness when dealing with abuse. This evaluation underscores that aftercare services give domestic violence survivors a real chance at safety, stability, and healing.
University Settlement, a social services agency in New York City, offered mental health therapy to referred participants. This program was designed by New Destiny and made possible with private funds from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, which included the funding for this report.