[Expanding Program Would Reduce Hardship, Improve Equity]
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FAMILIES WAIT YEARS FOR HOUSING VOUCHERS DUE TO INADEQUATE FUNDING  
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Sonya Acosta, Erik Gartland
July 22, 2021
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
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_ Expanding Program Would Reduce Hardship, Improve Equity _

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Due to limited program funding, families struggling to afford housing
that manage to get off the waiting list for a Housing Choice Voucher
must typically wait for years before receiving a voucher, CBPP
analysis of Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) data
shows. Among the 50 largest housing agencies, only two have average
wait times of under a year for families that have made it off of the
waiting list; the longest have average wait times of up
to _eight _years. On average nationally, families that received
vouchers had spent close to two and a half years on waitlists first,
exposing many to homelessness, overcrowding, eviction, and other
hardship while they wait. (See the Appendix for data on average wait
times by state and among the largest agencies.)

Moreover, these figures understate the unmet need for assistance.
Millions of other families eligible for rental assistance never
receive it because their names never rise to the top of the waiting
list or they live in communities where the housing agency has closed
or doesn’t keep a waiting list. Also, because of insufficient
funding, local housing agencies often prioritize specific groups for
available vouchers such as veterans, working families, or people
fleeing domestic violence or experiencing homelessness. Setting
priorities in the face of limited funding makes sense, but it means
that families that need help paying for housing but fall outside the
priority groups may never get assistance. For all of these reasons, an
agency’s average wait for people _receiving_ vouchers does not
reflect the average wait for someone who puts their names on a waiting
list for one.

Significantly expanding the federally funded voucher program would
help more people access rental assistance when they first need it
instead of facing years of hardship.
[[link removed].]Significantly
expanding the federally funded voucher program, which helps households
with low incomes rent a modest unit of their choice in the private
market, would help more people access rental assistance when they
first need it instead of facing years of hardship. A top priority for
policymakers in the upcoming recovery package should be to provide
substantial, multi-year funding for new housing vouchers.

The state and local housing agencies that administer the voucher
program use virtually all the voucher assistance funds they receive,
but a shortage of resources for rental assistance leaves the vast
majority of eligible households without aid. In 2019, for example, 2
million households used vouchers to rent housing but more than 16
million _unassisted _renter households paid more than 30 percent of
their income for housing or lived in substandard or overcrowded homes.
(The federal government considers housing unaffordable if it exceeds
30 percent of income.) Households on agency waiting lists typically
continue to experience homelessness, overcrowding, or other housing
insecurity for years before receiving a voucher. And many other
households needing vouchers either don’t get on a waitlist — 53
percent of agencies had closed their waiting lists to additional
applicants, a 2016 survey found — or drop off without ever obtaining
assistance, even after waiting years.

Housing vouchers, when available, are highly effective at reducing
homelessness, housing instability, and overcrowding and at improving
other outcomes for families and children, rigorous research shows.
They also give people with low incomes greater choice about where they
live, enabling them to move to neighborhoods with lower poverty rates
and more resources. Expanding the program could lift millions of
people out of poverty. It also would reduce racial inequity: the
housing affordability challenges that vouchers address are heavily
concentrated among people with the lowest incomes and, due to a long
history of racial discrimination that has limited their economic and
housing opportunities, among people of color.

Inadequate Funding Creates Long Waits

The Housing Choice Voucher program, the nation’s largest form of
rental assistance, offers a proven, evidence-based tool to address
housing hardship. Currently it enables roughly 2.3 million households
with low incomes to afford decent, stable housing. The family pays
about 30 percent of its income for rent and utilities, a widely used
standard for the amount a household can reasonably be expected to pay
for housing. The voucher covers the rest, up to a cap based on HUD
estimates of typical market rents in the local area.[1]
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Despite the demonstrated benefits of rental assistance and
effectiveness of vouchers specifically, resources fall far short of
need. Only 1 in 4 households eligible for rental assistance receive it
due to funding limitations. Because the need is so much greater than
the supply of vouchers, housing agencies establish waitlists for
households interested in receiving assistance, and for each agency HUD
publishes the average time someone who received a voucher had to first
wait for assistance. While these data leave out millions of people in
need who never get a voucher (see discussion below), they provide a
useful indicator of the inadequacy of federal rental assistance
funding by showing how long even people who succeed in obtaining a
voucher must endure hardship before receiving help.

The Appendix tables show average wait times for people who used a
voucher in 2020 by state and housing authority.[2]
[[link removed]] Wait
times among assisted households vary across the country but average
close to two and a half years (28 months) nationally. Averages by
state range from nine months in Nebraska and West Virginia to five
years in Alabama. The average wait time for individual housing
agencies is much more variable; many agencies report years-long waits.
Of the 50 largest housing agencies, only two — the housing
authorities in Dallas, Texas, and Columbus, Ohio, have wait times
under one year (specifically, eight months). But in many cases —
including in Dallas and Columbus — shorter waiting times do not
reflect ready availability of assistance. Families interested in
applying for assistance in Dallas must first submit a preliminary
application that will then be randomly selected to be placed on the
waiting list.[3]
[[link removed]] People
who ultimately get assistance spend a relatively short time on the
waiting list, but their overall wait time is much longer since they
first had to wait to get on the list. Households in Columbus can apply
directly to the waitlist but join a list of more than 25,000 others,
indicating that most households seeking assistance today would almost
certainly face a wait time much longer than eight months.[4]
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The longest wait times among these large agencies are more than seven
years in San Diego County, California, where there were 56,737
families on the waitlist at the end of 2020,[5]
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eight years in Miami-Dade, Florida, where the housing agency is
processing applications it received during its most recent open
enrollment period _13 years ago_, in 2008.[6]
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Importantly, long waiting times are not due to agencies failing to
spend their voucher funding. Over the past decade they have spent
virtually every dollar that lawmakers have provided for vouchers. In a
given year, an agency might sometimes spend modestly less than 100
percent of its voucher funding for the year and sometimes modestly
more (by drawing down reserves), but from 2011 to 2020, agencies
overall spent 99.9 percent of the funding they received, on average.
Even in 2020, when the pandemic disrupted program operations, they
spent 99.3 percent.[7]
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Extended Waits Prolong Hardship, Risk Lasting Harm

Households waiting for a voucher continue to lack a decent, stable
home, which can cause serious hardship even when the wait is
relatively short. Many of these families are paying large shares of
their income for housing, which leaves them with less for food,
medicine, child care, and other necessities and places them at risk of
losing their home if faced with an unexpected expense or income
decrease.

Many families and individuals on voucher waiting lists may face
eviction and end up doubling or tripling up with other households,
moving between friends and relatives’ homes, or experiencing
homelessness. This instability causes stress,[8]
[[link removed]] can
interrupt children’s learning (especially if they have to change
schools), and can make finding and holding a job far more difficult.
Homelessness has lasting impacts; among children it is associated with
increased likelihood of cognitive and mental health
problems; physical health problems such as asthma, physical assaults,
and accidental injuries; and poor school performance.[9]
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wait of several years could expose children to hardship through much
or all of their early childhood, with potentially far-reaching damage
to their development and chances of academic and financial success.

Though the demographics of people on waitlists vary by the housing
agency’s location and size, households with extremely low incomes
— defined as below the federal poverty line or 30 percent of the
area median income, whichever is higher — are consistently the
majority (74 percent across all agencies) of those waiting. On
average, 60 percent of households on waitlists are families with
children, 11 percent are older adults, and 18 percent include at least
one person with a disability.[10]
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Black, Latino, and Native American people are disproportionately
likely to experience housing insecurity[11]
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homelessness[12]
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to a long history of racist housing policies[13]
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racial discrimination that has limited their economic opportunities,
and one survey shows that Black households are disproportionately
represented on waitlists, on average. In fact, 66 percent of
households on waiting lists at large housing agencies (those with
3,000 or more units) are Black.

Wait Times Understate How Long Households Seeking Housing Assistance
May Have to Wait for Help

Data on waitlists do not show the full extent of need or demand. Many
housing agencies have closed their voucher waitlist because
applications far exceed the number of vouchers they can administer. In
fact, one 2016 survey found that 53 percent of voucher waiting lists
are closed to new applicants, nearly two-thirds of which had been
closed for at least a year.[14]
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addition, many low-income households may not put their name on a
waitlist even if they are facing some form of housing instability
because they know any help would be years away.

Also, data on average wait times only reflect how long people who
ultimately _received _a voucher had to wait for assistance. Given
the lengthy waits, some families may drop off the list without ever
obtaining assistance, even after waiting years.

Furthermore, more than 60 percent of housing agencies prioritize their
vouchers for certain populations, such as veterans, people fleeing
domestic violence, working families, older adults, or those
experiencing homelessness, to best fit their communities’ needs.[15]
[[link removed]] Households
in these populations may have a shorter wait for vouchers, but the
wait for other households served by that agency may far exceed the
agency’s average. Indeed, households that don’t fall into a
priority category may never come off of the waiting list.

Unfortunately, HUD does not keep systematic data on the number of
people on waiting lists, the average wait for people currently on
waitlists, or which agencies have closed their lists altogether. Such
data would show that many of those still on a waiting list have
already waited far longer than the average wait times for people who
are selected to receive a voucher.

Expanding Vouchers Would Reduce Wait Times, Housing Insecurity

Some 16 million renter households paid more than 30 percent of their
income for housing or lived in overcrowded or substandard housing in
2019.[16]
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5.7 million of them are working households. Because many jobs do not
pay enough to enable workers to afford housing and housing costs have
outpaced income growth,[17]
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1 in 5 working renter households paid over half their income for
housing in 2018.[18]
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addition, 580,000 people experienced homelessness in January 2020,
according to HUD’s annual point-in-time count.[19]
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housing problems are linked to cascading harm in other aspects of
families’ lives, including adverse effects on children’s health,
development, and educational success.

Vouchers offer a proven solution and expanding Housing Choice Vouchers
would help more people receive assistance when they first need it.
Rigorous research shows that Housing Choice Vouchers sharply reduce
homelessness, housing instability, and overcrowding. By lowering
rental costs, vouchers also allow low-income people to spend more on
other basic needs like food and medicine,[20]
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well as on goods and services that foster their children’s healthy
development.[21]
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also provide people with low incomes greater choice about where they
live, allowing them to make decisions based on what works best for
them. When families choose to use their voucher to move from a
neighborhood with a high poverty rate and lack of investments to a
neighborhood with low poverty rates and more resources, research shows
the children have substantially higher college attendance rates and
adult earnings than peers who grew up in neighborhoods with
concentrated poverty. Adults in these families have improved mental
health and lower rates of diabetes and extreme obesity.[22]
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Providing vouchers to all eligible households would lift 9.3 million
people above the poverty line and cut the child poverty rate by a
third, a Columbia University study estimated.[23]
[[link removed]] It
also would shrink the gaps in poverty rates between white and Black
households (by over a third) and between white and Hispanic households
(by nearly half). And it would significantly reduce poverty
disparities for people with disabilities. (See Figure 2.)

Recovery Legislation Offers Opportunity to Help More Households Afford
Housing

As Congress crafts an economic recovery package, a top priority should
be to expand vouchers to more people in need. The COVID-19 pandemic
and recession have caused even greater housing hardship, and while the
federal government has provided substantial emergency housing
assistance, this is not designed to address the overwhelming need that
existed before the pandemic.[24]
[[link removed]] Ultimately,
housing vouchers should be available to everyone who is eligible, as
President Biden proposed during the presidential campaign. At a
minimum, recovery legislation should make a sizeable down payment
toward this goal.

Recovery legislation should invest both in housing vouchers and in the
supply of affordable housing, for new construction and renovation.
While supply investments can help communities with too few reasonably
priced units to expand access to affordable housing, supply
investments by themselves don’t create housing that is affordable to
the lowest-income households, which need assistance to afford even
those lower priced units. Moreover, in many communities, there is an
ample supply of reasonably priced housing (that is the price reflects
the cost of operating the housing and hasn’t been bid up by a lack
of supply), but households with low incomes need help bridging the gap
between their income and the cost of rent.

End Notes

[1]
[[link removed]] CBPP,
“Policy Basics: The Housing Choice Voucher Program,” updated April
12,
2021, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

[2]
[[link removed]] The
tables do not include data from agencies participating in the Moving
to Work (MTW) demonstration program. Since participating agencies are
subject to different program and reporting rules, much of their data
on waiting times is missing from HUD’s database.

[3]
[[link removed]] Dallas
Housing Authority, “Learn About the Housing Choice Voucher
Program,” [link removed]
[[link removed]] .

[4]
[[link removed]] Columbus
Metropolitan Housing Authority, “5-Year PHA Plan,” January
2021, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

[5]
[[link removed]] Housing
Authority of the County of San Diego, “Public Housing Agency
Plans,” July
2021, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

[6]
[[link removed]] Miami-Dade
County Public Housing and Community Development, “5-Year PHA
Plan,” October
2019, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

[7]
[[link removed]] Will
Fischer, “Rental Markets Can Absorb Many Additional Housing
Vouchers,” CBPP, May 28,
2021, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

[8]
[[link removed]] LaDonna
Pavetti, “Children in Distress Due to Increased Hardship: An
Interview With Dr. Philip A. Fisher,” CBPP, February 23,
2021, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

[9]
[[link removed]] Sonya
Acosta, Anna Bailey, and Peggy Bailey, “Extend CARES Act Eviction
Moratorium, Combine with Rental Assistance to Promote Housing
Stability,” CBPP, July 27,
2020, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

[10]
[[link removed]] Andrew
Aurand _et al_., “The Long Wait for a Home,” National Low Income
Housing Coalition, Fall
2016, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

[11]
[[link removed]] CBPP,
“Majority of Low-Income Renters with Severe Cost Burdens Are People
of Color,” May 13,
2021, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

[12]
[[link removed]] Meghan
Henry _et al_., “The 2020 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR)
to Congress,” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development,
January
2021, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

[13]
[[link removed]] Richard
Rothstein, _The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Government
Segregated America, _Liveright, 2017.

[14]
[[link removed]]Aurand _et
al_., _op_. _cit_.

[15]
[[link removed]] Public
and Affordable Housing Research Corporation, “Housing Agency Waiting
Lists and the Demand for Housing Assistance,” February
2016, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

[16]
[[link removed]] CBPP,
“Three in Four Low-Income At-Risk Renters Do Not Receive Federal
Rental Assistance,” updated July
2021, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

[17]
[[link removed]] Erik
Gartland, “2019 Income-Rent Gap Underscores Need for Rental
Assistance, Census Data Show,” CBPP, September 18,
2020, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

[18]
[[link removed]] Joint
Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, “America’s
Rental Housing 2020,” Appendix Table
W-2, [link removed]
[[link removed]].
“Working” is defined here as having been employed for at least one
week during the prior 12 months.

[19]
[[link removed]] Henry _et
al_., _op_. _cit_.

[20]
[[link removed]] Will
Fischer, Douglas Rice, and Alicia Mazzara, “Research Shows Rental
Assistance Reduces Hardship and Provides Platform to Expand
Opportunity for Low-Income Families,” CBPP, December 5,
2019, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

[21]
[[link removed]] Sandra
J. Newman and C. Scott Holupka, “Housing affordability and
investments in children,” _Journal of Housing Economics, _June
2014, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

[22]
[[link removed]] Fischer,
Rice, and Mazzara, _op_._ cit_.

[23]
[[link removed]] Sophie
Collyer _et al._, “Housing Vouchers and Tax Credits: Pairing the
Proposals to Transform Section 8 with Expansions to the EITC and Child
Tax Credit Could Cut the National Poverty Rate by Half,” Columbia
University Center on Poverty and Social Policy, October 7,
2020, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

[24]
[[link removed]] Will
Fischer, Sonya Acosta, and Erik Gartland, “More Housing Vouchers:
Most Important Step to Help More People Afford Stable Homes,” CBPP,
May 13,
2021, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

_[MODERATOR: PLEASE VIEW ORIGINAL ARTICLE
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FOR APPENDIX]_

_SONYA ACOSTA is a Policy Analyst with the Housing Policy team. Prior
to coming to the Center, she worked on disaster recovery, Native
housing, appropriations, and benefits cuts at the National Low Income
Housing Coalition. She also worked at several fair housing
organizations in the Chicago area and completed two terms of
AmeriCorps service._

_Acosta holds a B.A in history and international studies from the
University of New Mexico and a Master of Science in Public Policy and
Management from Carnegie Mellon University._

_ERIK GARTLAND is a Research Associate in the Housing Division. Prior
to joining the Center, he was a Data Management Analyst at the
Wisconsin Department of Justice, where he created a data catalog and
promoted effective data management policies. He has also worked at the
Institute for Community Alliances, the Wisconsin Department of
Children and Families, and Epic Systems._

_Gartland holds a B.A. in economics and political science from St.
Olaf College and a Master of Public Affairs from the University of
Wisconsin._

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