Thank you for visiting this site to learn about the MacArthur Foundation’s competitive housing research grant program on How Housing Matters to Families and Communities. This webpage provides complete information for submitting a proposal as part of the 2010 competition, along with background material to help applicants develop strong and responsive proposals. Context for the competition, along with the technical information necessary to apply, are outlined below. Visitors will also find information on previous winners.

Context

The MacArthur Foundation’s interest in housing dates back more than 20 years. By 2012, we will have invested over $300 million in housing — more than two-thirds since 2000. This commitment is an expression of concern about both people and place and a rich blend of research, policy, and practice. The Foundation’s investments have played a key role in addressing the housing and housing-related challenges facing our home city of Chicago and the nation.

In particular, MacArthur has enhanced Chicago’s capacity to respond with solid facts to questions about the progress of its Plan for Transformation of public housing and its impact on residents. In addition, recognizing a national trend in a dwindling supply of quality affordable rental housing, MacArthur made a $150 million commitment known as Window of Opportunity: Preserving Affordable Rental Housing. The initiative is designed to demonstrate that preserving affordable rental housing is a cost-effective way to extend the significant past public and private investment in housing, to strengthen families and communities, and encourage a wide mix of public and private institutions and partnerships to invest and participate in the preservation of affordable rental housing. By accomplishing its objectives, the initiative will yield the evidence, models, momentum, and leadership needed to generate policy reforms aimed at a bold goal: preserving one million units of affordable rental housing in a decade, which is intended to ensure that every new unit of affordable housing is a net addition to the affordable inventory.

Background: How Housing Matters

How Housing Matters to Families and Communities is a five-year, $25 million research effort that expands the Foundation’s commitment to affordable housing. This research initiative seeks to broaden the literature on the impact investments in affordable housing have on a host of other social and economic outcomes beyond merely providing shelter. If this research program achieves its goals, instead of justifying billions of dollars that the federal government spends on housing subsidies through anecdotal and largely unsubstantiated claims about the effects of housing investments, policymakers will be better able to direct increasingly scarce public resources to enhance housing outcomes and to achieve broader goals of healthier, better educated, and more successful families and communities.

How Housing Matters is intended to explore the notion that affordable housing may be an essential “platform” that promotes a wide array of positive human outcomes in education, employment, and physical and mental health, among other areas. A rigorous program of near-term and longer-term research, focused on questions of interest to policymakers, will make it possible for housing policy to achieve a greater return on investments in these important areas of concern.

The research initiative has two components: a proposed interdisciplinary research network, for which no proposals are being solicited through this call, and a research competition. The research network, composed of select experts in housing, child development, and other disciplines, will develop original concepts and hypotheses and test new housing-human development relationships — about how housing matters to young children in the contexts of their immediate and extended families, neighborhoods, and schools — that have never been explored systematically, and for which good data has not previously existed. The competitive research program, which this call for abstracts describes, attempts to build upon and deepen evidence in a broader range of areas in which empirical research has previously established what the hypotheses should be and the likely pathways and mechanisms through which housing effects are transmitted.

Current Grantees

Two rounds of the research competition have already been completed. First, in 2008, seven invitational grants were made to provide concrete examples to the research and policy communities of the rigor, approach and breadth that would be expected in the competitive portfolio. These grants demonstrate the Foundation’s interest in proposals from public agencies and collaborations between housing scholars and experts from non-traditional disciplines, such as health, education and labor, among other important fields.

In the first quarter of 2009, the Foundation initiated the formal competitive grant program through a public call for three-page research summaries to be submitted to the Foundation. After receiving 217 summary proposals and an intensive internal review process, a total of 31 research summaries were invited for participation in the second phase of the competition. A formal request for proposal (RFP) was sent to each finalist. A total of 29 proposals were received by the posted deadline, and ultimately 13 projects were selected for awards totaling more than $5.8 million.

2010 Call for Research Abstracts

In the 2010 competition, the MacArthur Foundation seeks to expand further the body of empirical evidence on the difference that living in decent and affordable housing makes in the lives of children, their families and communities; and with a special emphasis on how such evidence can be put to use by decision-makers to strengthen policies and programs.

In this year’s competition, in order to maximize the impact that funded research will have on policy, the Foundation requires that every applicant clearly identify the specific policy audience or level of government that will be able to utilize the research to improve or enhance a specific policy intervention and improve outcomes being studied.

Technical Information

1. Applicants should submit electronically an abstract of the proposed research by March 22, 2010 (6 p.m. Central Standard Time). The abstract should not exceed three single-spaced typewritten pages (12-point font, one-inch margins) and identify the specific housing problem and non-housing outcomes or issues that the empirical study would address, and its relevance for policy.

   Specifically, the abstract should include a brief description of each of the following:

   1. the hypotheses to be tested;
   2. data sets required;
   3. the proposed methodology;
   4. anticipated outcomes; and
   5. the policy audience and justification for the project, and how the research results would meet known policy needs.

   NOTE: Should an abstract lead to an invitation to submit a full proposal in the second phase of the competition, additional information will be required not only about a project’s link to policy, but also how the results will be communicated to policymakers and can be used in the policy process.

2. Research abstracts should also state the desired terms of the grant.

   1. The Foundation will consider supporting studies of one-, two-, or three-year duration.
   2. The summary should indicate total budget and project term requested and desired allocation of grant payments over that term. No detailed line-item budget is required at this time.
   3. The total cost to the Foundation over the project term may not exceed $1 million. More costly projects are also eligible for consideration if resources are available from other funders, who should be identified in the submission.
3. Individuals can only submit or participate in a single proposal.

4. Research abstracts should be submitted by e-mail to housingmatters@macfound.org with the subject line “HHM Proposal.”

   1. Abstracts must be attached to the email, in Microsoft Word.
   2. The e-mail text must include a preferred contact’s full name, title, institution, address, and telephone/fax numbers.

   NOTE: The Foundation will use the email address from the submission and the contact information for all communications dealing with the competition. Only one preferred contact may be provided for each research summary submitted.

5. Applicants will be notified whether they have been selected to submit a full proposal no later than May 17, 2010. Applicants will be notified of the Foundation’s decision via the email address provided from the research abstract submission.
6. Complete proposals must be received by the Foundation by 11:59 p.m. Central Standard Time, July 2, 2010. Further guidelines and required supplementary materials will be provided to successful applicants who are invited to submit full proposals through the Foundation's RFP process, including transmittal instructions. All RFP responses will be subject to an external peer review process.

Who Is Eligible to Apply?

Applicants must be affiliated with a nonprofit entity and comply with the Foundation’s indirect cost policies that generally limit such costs to no more than 15 percent of total direct costs. U.S. and non-U.S. citizens are eligible to apply, as are studies by non-U.S. based researchers and that deal with non-U.S.-based housing-family and community linkages, as long as they meet all program guidelines. Units of government are also eligible to apply for a grant as long as such entities are permitted by their applicable law to receive a grant. Previous award winners are eligible to apply.

Frequently Asked Questions

The following FAQs are in response to questions we received from applicants through the posted deadline of March 5th. In order to insure that all applicants have access to the same information as they prepare proposals we have posted our responses here. No further questions or inquiries will be addressed before the March 22nd proposal submission deadline.

1. Question: Is an academic institution allowed to submit more than one proposal?

   Answer: An academic institution can submit more than one proposal from different academic units, centers or departments, as long as the proposals are wholly separate and distinct from one another and are staffed with different principal investigators or researchers. An individual cannot be listed as principal investigator or researcher on multiple proposals from multiple academic units, departments or research centers. Furthermore, a graduate research assistant should not be used by his or her mentor to submit another proposal, in effect allowing the same lead researcher to submit more than one proposal.

2. Question: Are research projects reporting on programs and policy outside the United States considered eligible for funding?

   Answer: Yes, studies by non-U.S. based researchers and those that deal with non-U.S.-based housing-family and community linkages are eligible for funding as long as they meet all of the program guidelines. Any funding must also be in accordance with applicable IRS requirements.

3. Question: Are non-profit organizations, institutions of higher education and government entities outside the United States considered eligible for funding?

   Answer: Yes, so long as the program guidelines are met, all non-profit organizations and institutions of higher education located outside of the United States are eligible for funding in accordance with applicable IRS regulations. Similarly, governmental units outside the United States are also eligible for funding provided they meet all program guidelines and IRS regulations.

4. Question: The Foundation seemed to fund certain topics during the previous rounds of the competition. Does this signal the Foundation’s interest in those particular areas to the exclusion of others?

   Answer: No, the Foundation is not pre-disposed to consider or reject proposals based solely on the topic proposed.

5. Question: Is the “policy audience” considered to be only policymakers at a particular level of government or could it include a broader set of actors?

   Answer: The policy audience could be very specific and targeted to a particular level of government (e.g., the Housing Preservation and Development Department in New York City) or it could be very broad and include, for example, the multifamily housing finance industry along with bank regulators, the Administration, Congress, and state and local elected officials. In either case, the policy audience should be clearly identified along with the policy question or issue with which the specified policy audience is engaged. The Foundation cannot, however, support lobbying activities as defined by applicable law.

6. Question: Are research projects using qualitative methods eligible for consideration under the How Housing Matters research program?

   Answer: Yes, research projects using either quantitative or qualitative research methods, or both, are eligible for consideration.

7. Question: Does the 3-page maximum also apply to references cited and other supporting material?

   Answer: The total research abstract and package should not exceed three pages.

8. Question: The call for proposals indicates that the Foundation will fund no more than a total of $1 million for the project. Does this include indirect costs? Also, does the Foundation allow indirect costs, and if so, is there a maximum indirect rate?

   Answer: Depending on the specifics of the project, the Foundation may fund indirect costs in amounts up to 15 percent of direct project costs. The total cost to the Foundation cannot exceed $1 million for the project including indirect costs.

9. Question: Can the Foundation provide a sample proposal for applicants’ reference?

   Answer: There is no set format we are looking for from applicants in the research abstracts, just that the research abstract does not exceed 3 pages and addresses the criteria and guidelines listed above.

10. Question: Will the research abstracts submitted March 22nd be externally reviewed?

    Answer: We expect that the research abstracts submitted in this initial round will be reviewed only by Foundation staff.

11. Question: When will the Foundation make final decisions regarding the full proposals to be invited for submission in July 2010?

    Answer: We expect to communicate final decisions to awardees in December 2010.

12. Question: Will there be a fourth round of research funding under the How Housing Matters research program in 2011?

    Answer: While the Foundation anticipates funding a subsequent round of the How Housing Matters research program in 2011, that decision has not yet been made final.

Updated March 12, 2010