Benefits Program: Housing
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Access Denied: Faulty Automated Background Checks Freeze Out Renters
This reporting explores how algorithms used to screen prospective tenants, including those waiting for public housing, can block renters from housing based on faulty information.
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Project Snapshot: Comprehensive Careers and Supports for Households (CCASH)â„¢
MITRE developed the Comprehensive Careers and Supports for Households (CCASHâ„¢) tool to help individuals understand and manage federal benefits and employment services, transitioning from a consumer-focused tool to a policy analytics system. By integrating data from sources like the U.S. Census and the Policy Rules Database, MITRE created a model that allows users to analyze and compare benefits eligibility across states, supporting evidence-based policymaking.
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Helping People with Low Incomes Navigate Benefit Cliffs: Lessons Learned Deploying a Marginal Tax Rate Calculator
This report details findings and lessons from a project to develop a calculator to help people anticipate how a change in earnings from employment would affect their net income and information on their estimated effective marginal tax rate.
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Cutting Child Poverty in Half and More: Pandemic-Era Lessons From Child and Family Advocates and Organizers
This paper discusses the country’s chronic underinvestment in children and resulting outcomes, including new data on poverty rates among young children, is inextricable from the prospects of young children; and the remarkably comprehensive pandemic-era response policies, including which changes contributed most to reducing child poverty.
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MyFile Code Repository
This repository contains the technical documentation and deployment scripts for the My File document storage and sharing platform.
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Takeoff Velocity and Rocket Fuel: How to Continue Forward Momentum at BenCon 2024
NYC's My File NYC and New Jersey's unemployment insurance system improvements demonstrate how successful digital innovations can be scaled across various programs, leveraging trust-building, open-source technology, and strategic partnerships.
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Project Snapshot: PolicyEngine
PolicyEngine is a nonprofit that provides a free, open-source web app enabling users in the US and UK to estimate taxes and benefits at the household level, while also simulating the effects of policy changes. By combining tax and benefits data, PolicyEngine helps individuals and policymakers better understand the impacts of existing policies and proposed reforms, using microsimulation models built from legislation and enhanced survey data.
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Screened & Scored in the District of Columbia
This report by EPIC investigates how automated decision-making (ADM) systems are used across Washington, D.C.’s public services and the resulting impacts on equity, privacy, and access to benefits.
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The Government Is Helping People Pay Rent, But Something’s Gone Wrong
This report describes the rent relief challenges during the pandemic, as well as a few possible fixes to help the next round of aid distribution.
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Project Snapshot: ACCESS NYC & Benefits Screening API
The NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity (NYC Opportunity) developed the NYC Benefits Platform, including ACCESS NYC, to help residents easily discover and check eligibility for over 80 social programs.
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Simple Changes Can Make a Big Difference for Clients Accessing Government Benefits
Our work with Pennsylvania to implement user experience and user interface changes shows that innovation can be easier to implement than it might seem.
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Benefits Cliffs Coaching with the Atlanta Fed’s CLIFF Tools: Implementation Evaluation of the National Pilot
The Atlanta Fed’s CLIFF tools provide greater transparency to workers about potential public assistance losses when their earnings increase. We find three broad themes in organization-level implementation of the CLIFF tools: identifying the tar- get population of users; integrating the tool into existing operations; and integrating the tool into coaching sessions.