same agencies also provide secondary prevention services to those already home-
less. For example, prevention programs funded by the Emergency Shelter Grants
(ESG) program in fiscal year 1991 offered back rent and utility payments (82% of
providers), mediation for disputes between landlords and tenants (41%), and legal
services for indigent tenants (20%) who faced evictions or utility cutoffs. Many
providers also offered payments or loans to families facing foreclosure on their
own homes (40%) and security deposits or first month's rent to obtain new housing
for people about to be displaced (or, presumably, for people in shelters or shared
housing with nowhere to go; 78%). Finally, 25% of providers offered referrals and
counseling, although it is not clear to what group of clients (p. 114).
ESG-funded providers" at a cost of about $200 in ESG funds per case (Feins et al.,
1994a, p. 186), although the authors of the report acknowledge that it was beyond
the scope of the study to assess the impact of homelessness prevention activities
directly (p. 206). The actual data represent agency reports of activities, in one-
quarter of cases without any follow-up of the people helped (Feins, Fosburg, &
Locke, 1994c, p. A-91). Nor is it clear whether agencies corrected their counts for
people who later entered shelter or were lost to follow-up or for those who would
have become or remained housed in the absence of intervention. Further, costs may
be understated because they include only ESG funds, even though the authors
acknowledge that other funds must have been used as well (Feins et al., 1994c,
p. 182). If these figures are even approximately correct, this is a collection of
extraordinarily promising and cost-effective prevention programs, but without
more rigorous experimental evaluations, it is hard to credit the results. Case studies
of individual programs funded under the ESG program provide little data on the
outcomes of prevention efforts (Feins et al., 1994b).
back rent for up to the lesser of 2 months or $1,200. Eligible recipients were
welfare families threatened with eviction for nonpayment of rent whose housing
was deemed to be habitable, permanent, and affordable (D. C. Schwartz, Devance-
Manzini, & Fagan, 1991). Households were screened and referred to the program
by the Department of Human Resources. About half of the cases resulted in medi-
ated agreements between landlords and tenants; surprisingly, in many cases, no
financial help from the program was needed. The primary reason for failure (and
referral back to the Department of Human Resources) was the client's inability to
afford the current rent and secure the tenancy even if back rent were paid (p. 19).
The program provided impressive cost-effectiveness figures: In New Haven, the
average back-rent payment was $960 per family, compared to $7,000 for sheltering
a family for the allowable maximum of 100 days. In Hartford, 46 families were