Housing Counseling Process Evaluation and Design of ... - HUD User

Exhibit 6-3.
Average Number of Hours of Services Per Client by Predominant Approach
Used by Agency to Serve Pre-Purchase Clients
Average Hours of
Services Per Client
Predominantly
Workshops
Only
8.4
Predominantly
Counseling
Only
Share of Agencies with Average Hours of Services Per Client of:
7.2
Predominantly
Both
Workshops
and
Counseling
8.9
Mixed
Approach
9.2
All
Agencies
8.5
=12 15% 16% 20% 24% 19%
Source: Abt Associates survey of HUD-approved counseling agencies.
Note: Based on survey responses of 891 agencies.
Exhibit 6-3 also shows the distribution of agencies by the average hours of service received by each
client. Most commonly, agencies provide between 4 and 7.9 hours of services, with 38 percent of
agencies in this category. A fairly significant number of agencies provide substantially more than 8
hours, with 25 percent providing between 8 and 11.9 hours and 19 percent providing 12 hours or
more. Only 17 percent of agencies provide fewer than 4 hours of services. Agencies that
predominantly only provide one-on-one counseling are most likely to fall into this category, with 33
percent of these agencies providing fewer than 4 hours of services on average.
Clients’ Homeownership Readiness Status
One of the factors that may affect an agency’s approach to providing assistance to pre-purchase
clients is how close their typical client is to being ready to purchase a home. A common distinction
used in the industry to categorize clients’ readiness to purchase a home, and adopted on HUD’s 9902
form for FY 2007, is whether clients will be ready to purchase a home within 90-days of counseling
(near ready), within 90 to 180 days (short-term ready), or in more than 180 days (long-term ready).
The counseling agency survey asked respondents to estimate the share of the pre-purchase clients
falling into each of these categories at the time they initially seek services. As shown in Exhibit 6-4,
across all agencies, on average an estimated 25 percent of clients were near ready, 21 percent were
estimated to be short-term ready, and 42 percent were estimated to be long-term ready. The
homeownership readiness status of the remaining 12 percent of clients was unknown to agencies. So
clients were roughly divided between those that would be ready in less than 6 months (46 percent)
and those that would be ready in more than 6 months (42 percent).
82
Chapter 6. Characteristics of Education and Counseling Services