[President Biden promised to expand the Housing Choice Voucher
program so that everyone who qualifies for a voucher gets one. What
exactly would that change entail, and how long could it be before we
see it happen? ] [[link removed]]

UNIVERSAL HOUSING VOUCHERS: A PROMISE OR A PIPE DREAM?  
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Shelby R. King
August 19, 2021
Shelterforce
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_ President Biden promised to expand the Housing Choice Voucher
program so that everyone who qualifies for a voucher gets one. What
exactly would that change entail, and how long could it be before we
see it happen? _

, iStock user cerro photography

 

Once again, the clock is ticking as states scramble to distribute
billions in federal emergency rent relief to stress-weary,
increasingly panicked tenants and landlords before the national
eviction moratorium expires. If the money doesn’t get out in time, a
rush of evictions and foreclosures
[[link removed]]
could be in store this fall.

Would the nation be in such a precarious predicament if everyone who
qualified for a housing voucher got one?

Over the last year and a half, tenants who receive income-dependent
rental assistance—like housing vouchers—had their rent
responsibility reduced
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when their incomes fell, and their landlords were still paid
[[link removed]].
But housing vouchers’ eviction-preventing effects were limited to
households lucky enough to get a voucher, since the underfunded
Housing Choice Voucher program reaches just one in five households
[[link removed]]
that qualify.

There are more than 8 million families that qualify for a voucher but
can’t get one.

Had the voucher program been adequately funded before the pandemic
ravaged the jobs sector, not only would thousands of tenants have
likely remained housed, landlords would have pocketed guaranteed
income
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from unemployed or underemployed renters, allowing property owners to
keep current on their mortgages, pay local property taxes that support
essential services, and even pay their own employees.

Fixing the mismatch between funding and need has long been
[[link removed]]
on housing advocates’ agendas. Surprisingly—and at least in part
thanks to the existing-but-pandemic-exacerbated nationwide housing
affordability crisis—fully funding the voucher program has gained
mainstream support, and was even one of President Joe
Biden’s housing goals when he campaigned
[[link removed]] for office.

What would it mean to fund the housing voucher program so that it
covers every eligible applicant? And when, if ever, might that happen?

UNIVERSAL VOUCHERS EXPLAINED

To make the Housing Choice Voucher program, better known as Section 8,
“universal,” Congress would need to fund it with enough money to
issue a voucher to anyone who meets the income requirements. To do
this, the program—currently funded at the whims of Congress each
year—would need to be made into an entitlement
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(where eligible recipients automatically receive the benefit). SNAP,
Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security Disability all function this
way; housing assistance does not.

Turning Section 8 into an entitlement isn’t a new idea, though
it’s one that’s been historically unpopular with conservatives
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at least in part because it’s expensive: Post-pandemic predictions
put the cost at almost $100 billion each year
[[link removed]].

“It’s going to take a significant number of resources to scale up
this program,” says Shantae Goodloe, spokesperson for the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Katherine O’Regan, faculty director of the New York University’s
Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, agrees. “Distinct
from the dollar figure you have to think about the way we fund it,”
says O’Regan, who served as President Barack Obama’s assistant
secretary for policy development and research at HUD. “HUD’s
budget comes out of the discretionary side of the budget. So we will
have to finance this differently.”

To do that, a portion of HUD’s budget would need to “come out of
the mandated side of the budget, the way SNAP and Medicaid do,” says
O’Regan.

As it stands, the Section 8 program gets about $24 billion
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year from Congress and provides housing vouchers to approximately 2.3
million households. In June, HUD issued $1.1 billion worth of
Emergency Housing Vouchers
[[link removed].]
meant to keep an additional 70,000 renters housed at least until 2030.
Another 125,000 vouchers could be in the pipeline
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if Congress lets them remain in the proposed fiscal year 2022 HUD
budget.  

HUD distributes federal money to local public housing agencies (PHAs),
which administer their area voucher programs. Renters who earn no more
than 80 percent of area median income (AMI) for their household size
can receive Section 8 help, according to federal rules, but PHAs
generally set eligibility at 50 percent of AMI or less (considered
“very low income”). Additionally, PHAs are statutorily required to
give 75 percent of their total voucher allocation to applicants whose
incomes are 30 percent or less than AMI (considered “extremely low
income”). 

Households that receive a voucher are free to look for housing
anywhere in the private market, as long as the landlord accepts it
[[link removed]].
These households pay 30 percent of their income toward their unit’s
rent, while their PHA pays the difference via subsidy, up to what is
considered fair market rent (FMR). (If the rent is more than FMR, the
tenant makes up the difference.)

Because the Section 8 budget is chronically shorted by Congress, 8.2
million households
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meet the income requirements but can’t get a voucher. Many
qualifying applicants languish for years
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on waiting lists or are turned down altogether, told their local PHA
isn’t accepting
[[link removed]]
new applicants because the waiting list is too long. Making Section 8
vouchers universal—presuming eligibility standards stayed the
same—would at least provide housing protections for those 8.2
million eligible renters
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who can’t get a voucher. Without help, those families must decide
which bills to pay and which to let stack up. Struggling renters skimp
on buying necessities like food, personal hygiene products, and
transportation.

The extra stress of living in poverty
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decreases one’s decision-making abilities, coping skills, and
emotional well-being, and those choices can be nearly impossible to
make. Take, for example, a single mother of one child who lives in
Kansas City, Missouri, earns minimum wage ($10.30
[[link removed]]), and is working full time. Her
gross monthly earnings would be $1,785, making her family “extremely
low income” by her county’s FMR standards and therefore eligible
for a housing voucher. The MIT Living Wage Calculator
[[link removed]] for her area estimates she
needs $1,510.50 each month for basic non-housing-related expenses
(food, childcare, medical coverage, and transportation). That means
this employed single mom has just $274.50 to spend on rent after her
monthly expenses. Fair Market Rent puts a two-bedroom apartment in
Kansas City at $978 per month, leaving her short by more than $700
every month, even with a full-time job.

“The rents that we pay today are based on whatever the market will
allow. And what the market has allowed is 10-plus years of exponential
rent hikes that have completely changed the face of housing, not just
in cities, but in suburbs and rural communities and small towns, as
well,” says Tara Raghuveer, director of tenants’ rights at KC
Tenants, in Kansas City. “We need to actually get serious about the
ways in which we need to meet the needs of people instead of
consistently putting profits before people’s lives.”

POSSIBLE AND PROBABLE LEGISLATION

So could a universal voucher program happen?

President Biden campaigned on several bold promises
[[link removed]] to address the nation’s affordable
housing crisis, including earmarking billions to develop and rehab
affordable housing stock, revamp exclusionary zoning laws, and
strengthen fair housing and anti-discrimination laws. Those are
ambitious goals, but fully funding the Housing Voucher Choice program
was perhaps his loftiest, with a February 2020 campaign proposal
[[link removed]]
that “guarantees Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers to every eligible
household so these households will not have to pay more than 30
percent of their incomes on rent and utilities.”

The administration has a lot on its plate, including doling out
billions in unpaid rent relief and defining and repairing
[[link removed]]
the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. While housing is one of
Biden’s top priorities, Republican opposition and pushback from
moderate Democrats means expanding Section 8 at all isn’t a sure
thing in the short term, and universalizing vouchers is a long way
off.

The administration’s 2022 discretionary funding request
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to Congress was a full 8 million families short
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of Biden’s campaign promise. And even that request was reduced. In
late July the House Appropriations Committee approved its FY 2022
spending bill, which included funding for 125,000 additional vouchers,
75,000 less than the administration requested.

“It’s a substantial amount of vouchers, but it’s only a small
fraction of what’s needed and it’s just a one-year investment,”
says Will Fischer, senior director for housing policy and research at
the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

There’s also concern among advocates that the provision will get
squashed in the Senate, where it will need 10 Republican votes to
pass.

“Republicans have leverage to push for lower spending levels,”
says Jen Butler, NLIHC’s spokesperson. “That’s why it’s
critical that Congress use the upcoming reconciliation bill, which
only needs Democratic votes, to expand rental assistance.”

Butler’s talking about the resolution Senate Democrats pushed
through
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on Aug. 10 for Biden’s massive $3.5 trillion infrastructure spending
plans, which asks for as much as $332 billion for housing
[[link removed]]—the
largest federal investment in housing since the 1990s. But the plan
didn’t address fully funding the voucher program, and it’s unknown
whether additional vouchers will make it onto the final bill. The
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs will iron out
spending details when the Senate reconvenes after summer recess. Once
committees hash out money matters, the final bill will be considered
during “reconciliation
[[link removed]],”
a process that allows budget bills to pass with a simple
majority—meaning all Senate Democrats have to stay on board to move
it forward.

“What’s going to be important is that this upcoming recovery
legislation include a multi-year voucher expansion that scales up to
meet a larger portion of the need,” says Fischer.

There is a bill that proposes an expansion of the Housing Choice
Voucher program over an eight-year period, but Fischer says it
probably won’t advance during the current legislative session.  

The Ending Homelessness Act of 2021 (H.R. 4496
[[link removed]]),
introduced by Rep. Maxine Waters in July (and similar to a resolution
she proposed in 2019
[[link removed]]),
would transform the voucher program into an entitlement. The bill has
60 or so Democratic co-sponsors and Butler says there’s been growing
support for the proposal. “The pandemic has underscored just how
critical housing is to health, and more policymakers are recognizing
that the lack of a housing safety net made the pandemic worse,”
Butler says.

NOT A “UNIVERSAL” FIX

Right now, universalizing housing vouchers is one of the most powerful
tools [[link removed]]
we have to combat poverty, but making vouchers available to everyone
who’s eligible isn’t a universal solution. The nation needs more
affordable housing
[[link removed]].
Numerous studies have shown
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there aren’t enough voucher-eligible, affordable units available.

“There are housing markets where even if everyone who was eligible
had a voucher, where are they going to use those vouchers?” says
Andrew Aurand, vice president for research at the NLIHC. “We need to
preserve that housing that’s at fair market rent or below so it’s
available to the voucher holders, and we need to invest in our housing
programs to a greater extent.”

But also, the current housing affordability crisis has made
market-rate rent unaffordable for even non-minimum wage workers.
Today, the average full-time employee must earn almost $25 an hour to
afford a modest, two-bedroom rental
[[link removed]]. Conventional affordability
indicators
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state that anyone spending more than 30 percent of their income on
housing is considered “cost burdened.” Under those standards,
America had 20.4 million cost-burdened renters
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in 2019, with Black and Brown households disproportionately
represented in that statistic.

[RELATED: HOW SHOULD WE MEASURE HOUSING AFFORDABILITY?
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It’s possible, though hardly a sure thing, that money in the $3.5
trillion infrastructure proposal would be used to increase the
affordable housing stock. But other changes, such as adjusting Fair
Market Rent or creating a federal tenants’ bill of rights
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would be needed to realize the full promise of universal vouchers.
We’ll be exploring those needed changes further in a future
_Shelterforce_ piece. In the meantime, housing advocates keep pushing
for an overhaul of the way we house humans.

“We live in the richest country in the history of the world, and we
can and we must guarantee that everyone has a home,” Raghuveer says.
“Of course, that’s a simple idea on one hand, but it’s hugely
complicated by what we like to call a ‘conspiracy of the
profiteers’ that has limited our public and political imagination
about what is actually possible.”

_Shelby R. King is Shelterforce's investigative reporter. She began
her reporting career in 2010 covering cops/public safety and has been
writing about housing and community development since 2014._
 
 

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