Browsing by Author "Larson, Kerstin"

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    Heading Home Hennepin Housing First Program Evaluation
    (Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, 2009-05-13) Barry, Tim; Bashir, Naima; Esmaeili, Mittra; Larson, Kerstin; Reneau-Major, Tim; Trupke-Bastidas, Julie
    At the start of 2009, Hennepin County entered the third year of its ten-year plan to end homelessness. This bold collaborative effort began amidst a broader national movement to end homelessness that has been gaining momentum in states and counties across the country. Hennepin County.s plan, Heading Home Hennepin, built upon these national best practices and laid out a comprehensive plan with definitive benchmarks to end homelessness by the year 2016. The present study evaluates one component of the Heading Home Hennepin plan: housing first programs targeting single adults who are long-term homeless. For the purposes of this report, these programs are collectively referred to as the “Housing First” program. While distinctions exist among the individual programs, all align with a common approach which focuses on immediate placement into housing combined with the availability of supportive services. The evaluation utilizes a mixed-method approach that incorporates both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The first component of the quantitative analysis uses administrative data on county shelter use to assess whether the composition of shelter users has changed since the Housing First program began. Using rolling three year windows, it computes the number of nights and episodes of shelter stays of all individuals in shelters from 2005-2008. It also compares prior shelter days and episodes of shelter use of individuals placed into housing to those not placed into housing to assess whether the program effectively targeted the long-term homeless. The second component of the quantitative analysis draws on four different administrative data sets to estimate the impact of the Housing First program on participants. shelter use, access to health insurance, and encounters with police. This analysis uses a matched comparison group of individuals who were not placed into housing, but were similar in terms of age, gender and prior shelter use to control for economic or programmatic changes that may have coincided with implementation of the Housing First program. All outcomes were assessed during three-, six-, and twelve-month intervals before and after placement into housing.
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    Joint development as a value capture strategy for public transit finance
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2012) Zhao, Zhirong Jerry; Das, Kirti Vardhan; Larson, Kerstin
    Synthesizing relevant experiences in US and some Asian countries, this article reviews joint development as a value capture strategy for funding public transit. The review starts from the concept of joint development in transportation, its rationale, and the extent of use. We then provide a classification of joint development models with respect to ownerships and transaction methods. These models are illustrated with case examples from multiple countries. After that, we assess the efficacy of joint development with a set of criteria for transportation finance evaluation, including economic efficiency, social equity, revenue adequacy & sustainability, and political & administrative feasibility. Finally, we conclude and provide recommendations for policy consideration.
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    Value Capture for Transportation Finance: Technical Research Report
    (Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2009-06) Lari, Adeel; Levinson, David; Zhao, Zhirong (Jerry); Iacono, Michael; Aultman, Sara; Vardhan, Das; Junge, Jason; Larson, Kerstin; Scharenbroich, Michael
    As vehicles become more fuel-efficient and overall levels of travel stagnate in response to increases in fuel prices, conventional sources of revenue for transportation finance such as taxes on motor fuels have been put under increasing pressure. One potential alternative as a source of revenue is a set of policies collectively referred to as value capture policies. In contrast to fuel taxes and other instruments that impose charges on users of transportation networks, value capture policies seek to generate revenue by extracting a portion of the gains in the value of land that result from improvements to transportation networks. In this report we identify a set of eight policies that contain elements of the value capture approach. These policies include land value taxes, tax increment financing, special assessments, transportation utility fees, development impact fees, negotiated exactions, joint development, and air rights. We evaluate each of the policies according to four criteria: 1) efficiency, which relates to how well the policies allocate scarce resources, 2) equity, which describes the fairness of resource allocation among different strata of society, 3) sustainability, which refers to the ability of the policy to serve as an adequate, reliable source of transportation revenue, and 4) feasibility, which refers to the degree of political and administrative difficulty associated with each policy. Since these policies are targeted toward use at the state and local level in Minnesota, we conclude by examining some legal and administrative issues related to the implementation of each policy with special reference to Minnesota.