[coffeecheque]

The study paper is linked and seems to say there were 115 participants identified and then assigned into various groups. Table 1 shows the differences in the cash and non cash group.

So the control group met the same conditions - they just missed out via randomisation.

“We screened 732 participants from 22 shelters from four shelter organizations across Metro Vancouver. Our preregistered screening criteria were: age 19 to 65, homeless for less than 2 y (homelessness defined as the lack of stable housing), Canadian citizen or permanent resident, and nonsevere levels of substance use (DAST-10) (21), alcohol use (AUDIT) (22), and mental health symptoms Colorado Symptom Index (CSI) (23) based on predefined thresholds (see SI Appendix, Table S1 in SI Appendix, section 1.3.2). These screening criteria were used to reduce any potential risks of harm (e.g., overdose) from the cash transfer. To ensure accurate responses, the screening survey was conducted under a cover story without any mention of the cash transfer. Of the 732 participants, 229 passed all criteria (31%). Due to loss of contact with 114 participants despite our repeated attempts to reach them, we successfully enrolled 115 participants in the study as the final sample (50 cash, 65 noncash; see Table 1). The sample size was modest but was nonetheless adequately powered to detect statistically significant effects from the preregistered power analysis”

[listenallyall]

The researchers are basically telling you that they initially pruned out 70% of the homeless population for being "unqualified" and then half of the remaining 30% because they were unable or unwilling to maintain contact with a new person in their life. Therefore, only the top 15% of homeless people, in terms of responsibility, are even included in the study, and the other 85% are discarded.

This was interesting near the end... while the cash provided immediate benefits, control participants eventually “caught up” over time. This is consistent with prior work

In my opinion, if the $7500 was truly a game-changer, it would have immediate effect that would accelerate a person's re-introduction to stable society and therefore have multiplicative effects further down the road as they leveraged stable housing, clothing and food to get a job, perhaps attract a partner, etc. The fact that the non-cash recipients "caught up" suggests the exact opposite, seems a bit problematic.

[enragedcacti]

> The fact that the non-cash recipients "caught up" suggests the exact opposite, seems a bit problematic.

The control recipients still received benefits designed to help the homeless so it isn't surprising that they also improved. What is exciting is that the cash:

1) gave much more immediate results, therefore reducing suffering

2) generated net savings via reduced social service use

So we have a method that is better and cheaper for a screen-able subset of the homeless population, it might not be a "game changer" but its an improvement over the status quo worth exploring further.

[listenallyall]

It isn't that the control group "improved," it's that they entirely caught up. The immediate cash did not have long-term (and we're only defining "long-term" as a few months) benefits when compared to the non-cash recipients. Further, this isn't an anomaly, it is consistent with prior work.

And again, the study ignores 85% of the homeless population, you simply cannot extrapolate these results from the highly-responsible/functional group to the wider population.

Finally, the "net societal gain" of $777 was only about 10% of the distributed cash, but ignores the cost of administering such a program and the costs of, and compensation to, the coaches and workshops (the $777 was simply based on "reduced shelter use"). Fully loaded, those costs would almost certainly exceed the modest reported savings.

[enragedcacti]

> you simply cannot extrapolate these results from the highly-responsible/functional group to the wider population.

I didn't?

> Finally, the "net societal gain" of $777 was only about 10% of the distributed cash, but ignores the cost of administering such a program and the costs of, and compensation to, the coaches and workshops (the $777 was simply based on "reduced shelter use"). Fully loaded, those costs would almost certainly exceed the modest reported savings.

Half of the cash group didn't receive coaching, and part of the control did, so some of the cost and effect of coaching is priced in. Its unfortunate that the study couldn't include analysis of all four original conditions but its possible the coaching and/or workshops had little effect on outcomes. It would be hard to gauge administrative costs from a small study but cash transfers generally have low administrative costs.

I don't think its a slam dunk but its definitely interesting enough to explore further, either for different levels of intervention or for other parts of the homeless population.