HUD announces a new competition for access to data from two of the most important randomized social experiments ever conducted, the Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing (MTO) demonstration and the Family Options Study (FOS). HUD has partnered with the U.S. Census Bureau to make the experimental data more available to qualified researchers and more readily matched with other administrative data. By making these data more accessible to qualified researchers, HUD expects to continue the process of evidence building using MTO experimental data to assess the impact of neighborhoods on the lives of low-income families with children and using FOS experimental data to assess housing and services interventions for families with children experiencing homelessness.

This request for proposal marks the start of what we hope will be a long-term relationship with the U.S. Census Bureau to make data from HUD-sponsored randomized social experiments available to researchers for ongoing evidence-building efforts.

HUD and U.S. Census Bureau program and/or research staff will review each proposal with up to three winners being announced in December 2018. For each winner, HUD and Census will cover all project costs for the first year of the project, exclusive of the cost to access a Federal Research Data Center (RDC). Included in the award are the cost to obtain special sworn status for researchers; to draft, route, and review the project agreement; to ingest, process, and provision any outside data; to provide technical and administrative assistance during the analyses, and to assist with disclosure review for the final analyses. The estimated value of the prize is $30,000. 

The application deadline is 11:59:59 p.m. Eastern time on November 2, 2018. Proposals and subsequent amendments must be received no later than the deadline.

For more information and eligibility rules, visit https://go.usa.gov/xP2ar.

Find out more about the U.S. Census Bureau data linkage infrastructure at https://census.gov/datalinkage. 

Questions and proposals can be submitted to ERD.Data-Linkage@Census.gov