Testimony: How to Promote Housing Integration and Choice through the Section 8 Voucher Program. The Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program is by far the nation’s largest low- income housing program. More than 2. 2 million housing vouchers have been authorized by Congress and allocated to the approximately 2,4. It is also the housing program that is the most targeted on the lowest income families: 7. As a result, it is falling short of its potential to improve the lives of the families it assists. Failing to provide voucher holders access to high opportunity areas may leave them concentrated in a small number of increasingly poor neighborhoods. I have spent much of the last 1. I want to briefly highlight recommendations in three areas — and then address the important issue of housing stability raised by Xav Briggs in his testimony. Policy changes are needed that would —Empower families to make mobility moves; Create the right incentives for agencies; and. Increase participation by owners. Or framed more broadly, we need to jettison the now- discredited assumption that the housing market would work for poor and minority families if they just had the means to pay the rent, and reform the program and its administration to overcome the imperfect knowledge, prejudices and other barriers that continue to limit access to opportunity. Empower Families To Make Mobility Moves. Payment standards — Families may be willing to pay somewhat more than 3. 2 FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Arlette Mussington, Office of Policy, Programs and Legislative Initiatives, PIH, Department of Housing and Urban Development, 451 7th Street, SW., (L’Enfant Plaza, Room 2206), Washington. What is the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program? The Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program is the federal government's major program for assisting very low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled to afford decent, safe. Program : Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program: Alternative Name(s) Housing Choice Vouchers; Section 8 Leased Housing: Abbreviation: HCV: Benefit Classification : Supply or Demand: Demand: One-Time or Ongoing: Ongoing. Program payment standards — the maximum subsidy payable in a particular area — must be sufficiently high to make it financially feasible for families to choose units in better neighborhoods. Conversely, the subsidy should not be overly generous in neighborhoods where voucher holders may otherwise concentrate, and that already are too poor. Several policy changes would help achieve these objectives. Fair Market Rent areas should be smaller. Each year HUD sets “Fair Market Rents” for each metropolitan area and non- metropolitan county, using data for the entire geographical area. These FMRs are the basis of the voucher subsidy levels set by individual housing agencies: housing agencies have discretion to set payment standards only within 1. HUD- determined FMR. Rents typically vary substantially between opportunity areas and poverty- concentrated neighborhoods within each FMR area. If FMRs were based on smaller geographic areas they would be more accurate and not be overly generous in lower- cost areas, and the 1. The more detailed data available through the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey makes it easier to regularly update FMRs for smaller areas.
What are housing choice vouchers? The housing choice voucher program is the federal government's major program for assisting very low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled to afford decent.The Section 8 Voucher Reform Act (SEVRA) would require HUD to do this. In 2. 00. 0, HUD issued a new policy by interim rule to expand housing choice in certain large metro areas where data indicate that voucher use is overly concentrated. To enable families to use vouchers in outside of these concentrated areas, the policy increases the metropolitan area FMRs by basing the FMR on the midpoint — or 5. The Bush Administration never issued a final rule. Initially, 3. 9 metro areas with a substantial share of the nation’s population qualified for higher FMRs — and hence higher payment standards — under the interim rule. By 2. 00. 8, the number of qualifying areas had fallen to 2. HUD dropped many areas to the 4. Boston Center for ndependent Living, Inc. The Alternative Housing Voucher Program DHCD Line Item 7004-9030 Established in 1995, the Alternative Housing Voucher Program (AHVP) provides rental vouchers to applicants with. Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program And Alternative Housing Voucher Program What are the MRVP and AHVP Programs? The Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program (MRVP) and the Alternative Housing Voucher Program (AHVP) are. The Section 8 rental assistance program, also known as the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, was created by the Federal Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 to assist low-income families obtain a place to live at. For 2. 00. 9, HUD has reduced the number of qualifying areas to 1. Based on the last 8 years of experience, it is important to evaluate the statistical and other criteria in the interim rule and refine the policy in a final rule to better achieve the goal. Federal law does not prescribe a limit on the search period, however, and when agencies set it too short — the minimum is 6. Flexible search policies are essential to increasing the mobility potential of the voucher program. The policy challenge now is to encourage more agencies to use this flexibility, or to require longer search periods under certain circumstances. Even with more flexible search periods, however, many families will need assistance to look in unfamiliar areas. Housing agencies rarely provide such direct assistance unless they have special funding for this purpose. Provision of detailed briefing materials is more common, but it is unclear whether this more economical approach is effective. HUD should investigate the effectiveness of such information- oriented search assistance. Additional funding for direct search assistance could be more cost- effective than broad scale increases in voucher subsidy payments, and could potentially be designed so that programs could be relatively short- term but with lasting benefits. HUD never published the evaluation of the specially- funded Regional Opportunity Counseling programs, but anecdotal evidence indicates that those programs had mixed results. Before seeking funding for a new generation of ROC programs, HUD should redesign the program based on the experience of ROC grantees and other agencies that have operated mobility programs to implement litigation settlements and for other reasons. Portability policies — The administrative geography of the voucher program — its balkanized operation in most metropolitan areas — creates substantial barriers to families moving from poorer and more racially concentrated areas to areas with greater opportunities. Boston is one of the worst examples: more than 6. There are more section 8 agencies in Massachusetts than in California! When different agencies administer the voucher programs in different parts of a metropolitan area, families need to use the “portability” feature of the voucher program to move from one area to the other. Families may not understand their right to make such moves, and agencies may discourage such moves through lack of information or other policies. Unfortunately, HUD rules governing portability moves create financial and administrative disincentives for agencies, as they may incur higher costs and receive less administrative funding when families “port.” This problem can be addressed in two ways: by reducing the administrative barriers, or reducing the number of agencies. SEVRA takes the first approach, by transforming “portability” policy so that families can move to areas served by other agencies and the “receiving” agencies generally must accept them (and receive additional funding for this purpose). The House and Senate bills differ somewhat on this key policy, and the approach in both bills remains controversial in some quarters, in large part due to a lack of trust in how HUD would administer it. In my opinion, statutory changes are not necessary for HUD to revamp its rules so that portability would work more efficiently and effectively. But Congress should act if HUD fails to do so. The alternative would be to reduce the number of agencies operating within metropolitan areas and expand their geographic scope, but this would pose a far more difficult political challenge. Moreover, there is little evidence at this point to help policy- makers decide whether enlarging agencies’ service areas would lead to more families moving to opportunity areas. HUD commissioned exploratory research on this issue in the mid- 1. The report found that virtually the only agencies operating across metropolitan regions were state agencies. Reforming portability policies, as challenging as it will be, is a far easier means to the goal of promoting mobility than attempting to consolidate a number of small agencies with longstanding political allies into a single entity serving an entire state or metropolitan area. If portability policy changes combined with the additional recommendations discussed below do not produce adequate results, however, this option should be reexamined. Keeping the bulk of vouchers tenant- based, while increasing flexibility to project- base vouchers in opportunity areas — Currently, agencies may “project- base” up to 2. The Housing Act requires agencies to choose locations that are “consistent with the goal of deconcentrating poverty and expanding housing and economic opportunities.”. The problem is its implementation: it appears that there is no HUD oversight of whether an agency has in fact considered the required factors in identifying neighborhoods where project- basing is permitted or encouraged. It may be appropriate for the Office of Fair Housing to review project- basing plans, at least on a sample basis, and to determine whether further policy changes are required. SEVRA would allow housing agencies to increase the share of vouchers that may be project- based to 2. The across- the- board increase to 2. Senate Banking Committee. It may make sense to condition such an increase on use of the authority in objectively- defined opportunity areas. Families would be much more likely to move to an area where vouchers are harder to use if they could bypass the difficult search process by moving to a project that is voucher- assisted. It is also important to ensure, if exceptions are allowed to the 2. HUD has allowed agencies in the Moving to Work (MTW) demonstration to project- base an unlimited number of vouchers, and to administer the subsidies without a mobility option, like old- fashioned project- based assistance programs. Given the size and the degree of racial concentration in some of the cities where agencies have MTW status (e. Chicago, Baltimore, Atlanta), this policy change is important. Create the Right Incentives for Agencies. Many of the policy changes discussed above also would facilitate and encourage agencies to make program design choices that would better promote mobility. From the perspective of the administering agencies, however, there are two key sets of policy changes that will help make it possible and practical for them to make these program choices. Voucher renewal funding policies must not force agencies to make long- term trade- offs between the adequacy of assistance to help some families live in areas with greater opportunities and the number of families served.
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