How to Strengthen the Housing Choice Voucher Program

A webinar hosted Monday by the Bipartisan Policy Center explored reforms, many of which have bipartisan support in Congress, to increase efficiency and utilization in the federal Housing Choice Voucher Program.

The program helps more than 2 million low income families affordably rent high quality homes at a time when housing is in short supply across the nation. “But despite the program’s importance, rising housing costs, administrative hurdles, and low voucher utilization limit the program’s impact,” said Kristen Klurfield, a senior policy analyst for BPC’s J. Ronald Terwilliger Housing Policy Center.

The HCV program “is arguably one of the best, if not the best, housing program out there,” said Hunter Kurtz, founding partner at Gate House Strategies and a former assistant secretary, Public and Indian Housing, at HUD. “But, you know, even something that’s almost perfect, there’s still a lot of room to make it perfect.”

Experts participating in the event agreed that the difficulty local housing agencies have fully utilizing their voucher along with the program’s administrative burden, both for landlords and potential renters, are areas that need reform.

Only about 60% of people eligible housing vouchers are able to use them, said Christi Economy, a research associate for the Turner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California Berkeley. Economy is one of the co-authors of a new report done in partnership with Rand Corporation, and supported by the Cooper Housing Institute, that looks at utilization in the housing choice voucher program.

The reasons for the lack of utilization range from a lack of affordable housing to landlord hesitation to voucher holder difficulties applying for places and covering the costs associated with those applications. “This is very challenging for households but it also causes challenges for the housing authorities administering the program,” Economy said.

For landlords, the voucher program can be unattractive because of the layers of bureaucracy they must go through, particularly the inspection process, said Bernard Fulton, Vice President of Legislative Advocacy at the National Multifamily Housing Council.

“People might think this was easy money ,” Fulton said. “Well, it’s not easy money. It’s not free money. Every landlord has to spend money to make an apartment or a rental attractive to the tenant, but they also have to spend money to comply with local and state regulations.”

Possible reforms suggested for the housing voucher program included:

• Including a $3,500 service fee with housing vouchers that housing authorities could use to help facilitate housing navigation or landlord outreach programs.
• Passage of the Choice in Affordable Housing Act,which would reduce the inspection process and also allow the local housing authority to get an inspection on a property before the voucher is issued. Some of the bill’s provisions were included in the Road to Housing Act recently passed by the Senate.
• A potential tax incentive program, to be housed at HUD, that would provide matching grants for local tax credits, incentives or abatements that encourage construction of affordable housing.
• Converting the voucher program into an electronic benefit transfer system like SNAP that would not have federal lease or inspection requirements. “This would put a voucher holder in the same situation as any other person,” said Fulton. “If it were you or I, with our own paychecks, we would go to look for apartment, we would rely only on our inspection regime. We would only rely on our ability to read and understand a lease. And that works for most of us. I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work for a housing choice voucher recipient.”

Webinar participants agreed that a central issue looming over any potential reforms is the need to do whatever is possible to create more affordable housing. “The more supply we have, the lower the rents will be, the easier for voucher holders to find a place to live that’s within the government’s guidelines,” said Fulton.