Housing Choice Voucher Research Articles

The Choice to Discriminate: How Source of Income Discrimination Constrains Opportunity for Housing Choice Voucher Holders

The “choice” in the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program signals the mobility offered to voucher holders. However, some landlords use source of income (SOI) discrimination to exclude voucher holders—limiting their locational choices. We propose several factors likely to influence this landlord strategy including, market competitiveness, stereotypes, and racial discrimination. We examine the prevalence of express SOI discrimination and the effectiveness of SOI antidiscrimination laws. We utilize a novel dataset of 1,107,110 rental listings from the Craigslist pages of 77 mid-sized US cities. We find significant amounts of express SOI discrimination, even where there are SOI antidiscrimination laws. Using multilevel models, we find that landlords are more likely to expressly discriminate in lower-opportunity neighborhoods and when they own market-competitive units. We also find that these factors are moderated by the concentration of voucher holders. These findings underscore how landlord strategies can combine to undermine the choice afforded to voucher holders.

Exploring Transiency in Four Urban Forest Patch Neighborhoods: Atlanta, Georgia, USA

This exploratory study begins to unpack the association between involuntary neighborhood transiency (i.e., forced household moves) and civic environmental stewardship, focusing on four neighborhoods adjacent to urban forest patches in the City of Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The patches emerged on the sites of former public housing communities after the city razed housing projects in the first decade of the 2000s. Given intense competition for city land, e.g., affordable housing needs versus greenspace preservation, we might expect neighborhood-level inquiry regarding plans for these properties; however, there is no indication of popular interest in the sites. We suggest that such engagement is inhibited, in part, by involuntary neighborhood transiency as the neighborhoods surrounding the patches are inhabited mostly by low-income African American renters, a highly transient population. This is the first phase of a study that will eventually examine the association between transiency and greenspace civic engagement. In this exploratory step, we examine involuntary neighborhood transiency as an a priori social condition that necessarily influences people’s engagement with urban greenspaces. Building on input from community members, research by Stephanie DeLuca and colleagues, and Matthew Desmond’s work on evictions in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, we operationalize transiency in terms of Housing Choice Voucher units and eviction rate to assess the extent to which these indicators localize in the four urban patch neighborhoods. A geospatial cluster analysis indicated that both measures concentrate in the neighborhoods adjacent to the forest patches, and they are positively associated. Given these associations, we recommend further research examining how various forms of involuntary moving may ultimately inhibit civic environmental stewardship.

Does Homeownership Reduce Wealth Disparities for Low-Income and Minority Households?

Abstract We use the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Housing Choice Voucher program as a setting to evaluate the interaction of homeownership and race on the wealth accumulation of low-income households. Using a within-treatment difference-in-differences framework, we establish that low-income households that receive assistance in owning a home experience increased wealth accumulation relative to their tenure as renters. These wealth gains are not present among low-income minority households. Our findings provide evidence that homeownership is a driver of wealth formation for low-income households and that homeownership does not inherently reduce racial disparities in wealth. (JEL G51, J15, R21).

Caring for Older Adults Experiencing Homelessness in the Inpatient Psychiatry Setting: Challenges and Recommendations

The older adult population is rapidly growing in the United States and across the globe. The Institute of Medicine estimates that the number of older adults with mental health or substance use disorders will reach 10.1 million to 14.4 million people by 2030. A particularly vulnerable subgroup within this aging population is the subset experiencing homelessness. According to a 2017 report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, homeless adults >50 years old increased from 22.9% to 33.8% between 2007-2017. Moreover, the number of people >62 years old living in shelters or transitional housing increased during the same time period to 76,000, a growth of 69%. This challenge is likely to worsen in the next decade as adults >65 years old experiencing homelessness is expected to triple between 2017-2030. Amongst the general population of adults experiencing homelessness, there is a higher prevalence of mental health and substance use disorders compared to the general population. Mental health care of older homeless adults can be negatively affected by systemic issues associated with homelessness. Such factors include victimization while being homeless, involvement in the criminal justice system, medication nonadherence, and complex case management issues. Homeless individuals, especially women, with mental illnesses experience higher levels of victimization compared to their housed counterparts. A systematic review found that the on-year prevalence of criminal victimization among adults with major mental disorders was up 35% for violent victimization and 28% for nonviolent victimization. Additionally, the lifetime victimization rate ranged between 74% and 87%. Data also show that 63% to 90% of homeless individuals with severe mental illness have been arrested at least once, 28% to 80% have been convicted of a crime, and 48% to 67% have been incarcerated. These issues may affect rapport building by the treatment team and disposition planning. Furthermore, not attending an outpatient mental health appointment after a psychiatric hospitalization is associated with an increased risk for rehospitalization. A 2007 study determined that patients who attended a follow-up appointment had a 1 in 10 chance of being rehospitalized, whereas patients who did not attend (or were not offered) an appointment had a 1 in 4 chance of rehospitalization. At San Francisco General Hospital, a chart review during a 4-week period between February and April 2020 revealed that 83% of unhoused patients did not show up for their outpatient mental health appointment following discharge from a psychiatric unit. Proposed solutions to help older adults who first experience homelessness late in life include developing more affordable housing, boosting rental assistance (Housing Choice Vouchers), increasing wages, Supplemental Security Income, Social Security Disability Insurance, and state supplemental income. Another proposal is Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH), a program that provides housing paired with supportive services such as case-management, individual and group therapy, and peer support. Veteran-specific PSH has been used to reduce homelessness in chronically homeless veterans (United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, 2018). PSH is also less restrictive and less expensive than nursing home placement of chronically homeless individuals. The At Home/Chez Soi randomized controlled trial from Canada, showed that rent supplements and mental health support services improved housing stability for homeless adults with mental illness.

Advancing Choice in the Housing Choice Voucher Program: Source of Income Protections and Locational Outcomes

Advancing Choice in the Housing Choice Voucher Program: Source of Income Protections and Locational Outcomes

Housing vouchers reduce residential crowding

Prior research shows that expanding the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program has varying price effects on different parts of the rental housing market. While recipients will certainly benefit from the added vouchers, there is ambiguity in the impacts on quality of life for non-recipients in the broader housing market. Excessive crowding in homes, dubbed overcrowding, is one measure of quality of life because overcrowding can lead to adverse outcomes such as stunted child development, adverse mental health, and an increased risk in spreading infectious diseases such as COVID-19. This paper makes use of an exogenous increase in the supply of Section 8 housing vouchers in a panel setting to ascertain the effectiveness of a program provided at the federal level in tackling housing overcrowding throughout the nation. Estimation of a linear probability model shows that adding vouchers reduces the incidence of overcrowding: a 10% increase in the supply of vouchers reduces the likelihood that a housing unit is overcrowded by 0.081 percentage points. The mechanism behind the effect is shown to correspond with anecdotes about overcrowding: households experiencing misfortune, financial difficulties, or other tenuous circumstances double-up with higher-income households. Hence, a voucher enables the troubled household to move into more suitable living arrangements.

Association of Childhood Asthma With Federal Rental Assistance

To assess the relationship between type of participation in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rental assistance programs with childhood asthma outcomes, such as emergency department (ED) or urgent care center (UC) use, diagnosis, and asthma exacerbations.The population studied includes 2992 children, representative of the US population, between 0 and 17 years old who were receiving rental assistance (HUD) or who had not yet applied (WLG) to receive rental assistance between January 1, 1999, and December 31, 2014. These records were linked to the National Health Interview Survey. HUD assists children through 3 programs: public housing, multifamily housing, and housing choice vouchers.This was a retrospective survey study of linked data from the National Health Interview Survey and the National Center for Health Statistics. Deidentified data were used.In the HUD and WLG groups, some asthma outcomes were higher than those seen in the general low-income population. For HUD and WLG children, 23.2 and 24.1%, had an asthma diagnosis, 43.6 and 45.6% of those had an asthma exacerbation in the past year, and 45.4 and 60.7% of those children visited the ED for asthma, respectively. In the general population with incomes <150% of the federal poverty level, without an HUD history, percentages were 12.8, 44.3, and 38.7, respectively. Participation in any rental assistance program was associated with an 18.2% (25% relative reduction) lower use of ED or UC for asthma in children who had an asthma attack in the past year. This association for ED and UC visits was significant in children participating in public or multifamily housing (decreased by 36.6%; 95% confidence interval: −54.8 to −18.4) but not housing choice vouchers (decreased by 7.2%; 95% confidence interval: −24.6 to −10.3). No significant differences were noted in asthma attack or diagnosis rates.There was an 18.2% decrease in ED use for asthma among children who received rental assistance, when compared with children waiting to enter a housing program. Differences were not explained by demographic factors, neighborhood characteristics, or primary care access.In this publication, the authors highlight important structural factors, like housing stability and affordability, that may affect health outcomes in pediatric allergic patients. In previous studies, authors have noted mixed associations between pediatric asthma outcomes and voucher assistance given to public housing residents, with some variation by sex. The underlying factors that lead to differences in health outcomes on the basis of housing access and stress are poorly understood but may be affected by housing codes and percent of income spent on rent, which vary by housing assistance subgroups. Additional studies are necessary to understand whether these differences have any impact on clinical practice. One important limitation of this study is that only 36.8% of subscribers were eligible for health and housing data linkage (did not refuse and answered demographic and rental questions relevant to linkage); this may represent a selection bias for certain characteristics.

You Can’t Get There from Here: Mobility Networks and the Housing Choice Voucher Program

The Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program represents the largest subsidized housing program in the United States. While families with vouchers can, in theory, lease any housing of reasonable quality renting below a rent ceiling, the empirical evidence suggests that they rarely use their vouchers to move to lower poverty neighborhoods. This paper examines the question of how spatial boundaries impact the residential possibilities of HCV subsidized families, both the visible boundaries of Public Housing Authority (PHA) catchment areas and the invisible boundaries of racial and economic segregation. I use administrative data supplied by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which includes all moves by HCV families between 2005 and 2015 in the Baltimore, MD, Cleveland, OH, and Dallas, TX, metropolitan areas. Using a Louvain method of network cluster detection, I subdivide each metro into distinct mobility clusters—sets of census tracts within which voucher holders move but between which they rarely do. I find that the empirical mobility clusters at the metropolitan level are highly defined by PHA’s catchment areas. Even though families are technically allowed to “port” their voucher from one PHA catchment area to another, such behavior is rare. Within the PHA catchment areas, HCV mobility clusters are defined by patterns of race, income, and history. These findings suggest that patterns of racial and economic segregation seem to partially define the mobility clusters within PHA catchment areas, but not across them.

Access to transportation, residential segregation, and economic opportunity

AbstractThe Housing Choice Voucher Program assists low‐income families to afford decent housing and provide them with better economic opportunities. There is growing evidence that public transportation plays an important role in shaping the residential location choices of low‐income households. However, transportation has not been a major focus of the research related to housing voucher programs. We develop a general equilibrium model of a city with multiple districts, decentralized employment, multiple commuting modes, and locally financed education. We compare housing vouchers with transportation vouchers with respect to poverty deconcentration, educational quality in each district, unskilled employment in the suburbs, and welfare.

Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs) on the Geographic, Socio-economic, and Public Policy Periphery: A Critical Case Study of Blocked Mobility in the City of San Diego, California

This article examines the geographic and socio-economic distribution of housing choice vouchers (HCVs) in the city of San Diego, California. It focuses on how the concentration of HCVs on geographic, socio-economic, and public policy peripheries forms a nexus that limits housing options for low-income residents. The analysis is based on a unique database that combines three datasets. One includes data for 13,973 individual HCV recipients measuring head of household characteristics (race, Hispanic ethnicity, gender, and age) and housing unit characteristics (unit size, rents, public subsidy levels). Another data set includes population and housing characteristics at the ZIP code level from the American Community Survey (ACS). The third data set includes small area fair market rents (SAFMRs) for ZIP codes and fair market rents (FMRs) for metropolitan San Diego. Data are displayed using GIS and analyzed using logistic hierarchical regression models. The results indicated that the public housing authority (PHA) that administers HCVs in the city of San Diego implemented the HCV program in a manner that reinforced the concentration of program participants in low-income areas and impeded moves to higher opportunity areas. The results expand our understanding of how geography, socio-economics, and public policy shape the production and reproduction of the periphery.

Audit Studies of Housing in the United States: Established, Emerging, and Future Research

Housing audits have a long and important history, beginning with the the Housing Market Practices Survey (HMPS) conducted in 1977 and followed by additional large-scale audits each decade by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In recent decades, researchers have undertaken numerous correspondence audits of housing. The housing audit literature is broad and robust and a number of reviews already exist. In this chapter, we build on existing reviews and focus more attention on emerging areas of inquiry and suggest new avenues of research pursuits. We begin by briefly reviewing the long history of housing audits including in-person HUD audits and correspondence audits of home sales and housing rentals. Next, we discuss three emerging areas of housing audit research -- housing choice vouchers, short-term rentals, and roommate searches -- and highlight important findings, new innovations, and areas of weakness. Finally, we conclude with a discussion on future directions of housing audits including a focus on (a) context and the conditions under which housing discrimination occurs, (b) methodological issues in housing audit design, (c) the inclusion of additional data from outside the audit itself, and (d) new means of housing discrimination.

Survivors Achieving Stable Housing: Implementation, Challenges, and Lessons Learned.

There is a movement toward permanent housing as an alternative to emergency shelter for survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV). Through a case study, this article illuminates the challenges survivors encountered at multiple levels after being offered one of 25 permanent housing choice vouchers (HCVs) as part of the Survivors Achieving Stable Housing project. Obtaining an HCV is a complicated and lengthy process; survivors transitioning from emergency shelter may face time limits on shelter stays while awaiting this permanent housing option. This article identifies challenges, such as difficulties with landlords, moving costs, and a lack of affordable housing, similar to issues reported in previous research. However, specific to IPV survivors, intersecting U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 (S. 47) policies led to challenges in implementing and interpreting rules and guidance for IPV survivors. Survivor safety from an abusive partner and across other aspects of their lives is of particular concern to survivors as they consider housing options. Given the overlap of homelessness and IPV, social workers in both systems must be knowledgeable about the intersecting issues survivors face as well as the policies affecting them so they can advocate effectively for their clients.

It Is Not Always Sunny in San Diego for Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Holders: The Reproduction of Racial and Socioeconomic Segregation under the Choice Communities Initiative

This article examines residential mobility patterns of housing choice voucher (HCV) holders in San Diego, CA. It focuses on whether HCV holders moved to higher opportunity ZIP codes following the adoption of the Choice Communities Initiative by the San Diego Housing Commission (SDHC) in 2018. This initiative was designed to incentivize moves to high opportunity ZIP codes using tiered rent subsidies. The analysis is based on a dataset that combines two sources. One includes data obtained from the SDHC measuring: race, ethnicity, gender, household characteristics, rent subsidy levels, and residential mobility for 11,126 HCV recipients. The other includes small area fair market rents (SAFMRs) for ZIP codes in San Diego. Data were analyzed using GIS maps and logistic regression. The results indicate that patterns of racial and socioeconomic segregation have been reinforced in San Diego. Most HCV moves happened within the lowest opportunity ZIP codes, regardless of races. Moves to higher opportunity ZIP codes were impeded due to the inversion of rent subsidies. Rent subsidies were set relatively higher in low opportunity ZIP codes when compared with high opportunity ZIP codes. The findings identify areas where specific policies related to the setting of rent subsidies can be strengthened in order to promote opportunity moves. In a broader context, they highlight the importance of fidelity to programmatic goals in the policy implementation process.

Source of Income Discrimination and the Housing Choice Voucher Program

Source of income (SOI) housing policies prohibit discrimination against prospective renters on the basis of the source of income they report on rental applications. Such policies, which have been implemented in 20 states and more than 100 local jurisdictions as of 2021, are primarily intended to prevent discrimination against applicants receiving public assistance, but these policies vary in terms of the particular sources of income they cover. In this paper, I examine the effects of SOI policies which explicitly protect housing choice vouchers as a protected source of income. Using county- and housing agency-level data, I exploit time-variation in the implementation of SOI policies across jurisdictions to identify the effects of these policies on renters using housing choice vouchers and the local housing agencies that administer the voucher program. I find that such policies are associated with reductions in average wait times prior to moving into rental units for voucher recipients. Additionally, I provide evidence that SOI policies increase the fraction of vouchers under lease for housing agencies with lower average utilization rates. These findings are robust to the implementation of alternative estimation strategies proposed in light of recent concerns about the internal validity of the traditional OLS with two-way fixed effects approach to estimation for difference-in-differences research designs.

Predicting Neighborhood Change Using Publicly Available Data and Machine Learning

Gentrifying and declining neighborhoods affect nearly all major cities in the United States. Although gentrification tends to increase the economic value of a neighborhood, its subsequent impact on demographics and affordability often draws criticism from the local population. Additionally, decline in living conditions create socioeconomic stress across affected neighborhoods. Current rules-based approaches for identifying these neighborhoods are backwards-looking and do not allow local policymakers to get ahead of neighborhood decline and gentrification to mitigate their effects. This paper proposes a methodology for identifying neighborhood change in near real time by using machine learning. We define four neighborhood change types – gentrifying, declining, inclusively growing, and unchanging – and leverage publicly available US Census American Community Service (ACS) data, Zillow home value and rent data, and US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) data to predict which of these categories a census tract is likely to be a part of in the coming year. We train individual models across eight different metropolitan core based statistical areas (CBSA). The average performance of our models was 74% accuracy and 74% precision, an improvement over the rules-based baseline of 61% accuracy and 61% precision. These results suggest a promising application of the data to enable community intervention to produce more inclusive urban development strategies. The approach outlined in this paper can also be expanded to other metropolitan areas, to determine whether these results hold for those areas. The methodology enables supplementing data from the study with more Metropolitan area focused data, when available, to improve the precision of the models. This can provide reliable results for the policymakers looking to mitigate adverse consequences associated with neighborhood changes.

How Well Do Housing Vouchers Work for Black Families Experiencing Homelessness?: Evidence from the Family Options Study

We investigate whether racial disparities exist among homeless families with priority access to the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program. The families we studied moved from emergency shelter into subsidized housing and sometimes left the HCV program, and our results suggest that the HCV program works as well for Black families as it does for White families. The rates at which families used the vouchers to lease a housing unit are similarly high for each group. The rate at which families exit from the HCV program does not differ between White and Black families, but the factors that predict exit do differ by race. For all families, access to a voucher reduces returns to homelessness, doubling up, and moving. These results confirm that in the United States—a country with a history of racial disparities in housing—the HCV program can help alleviate the effects of severe poverty and provide housing opportunities that advantage both White and Black families.

The Effect of Relaxing Local Housing Market Regulations on the Number of Recipients of Federal Rental Housing Assistance Programs

The majority of U.S. households that qualify for federal rental housing assistance do not receive it. In the absence of an entitlement to housing assistance for all who qualify, an underexplored cause of the shortfall is that higher rents in some areas driven by supply-constraining local regulations drive up program costs, leaving fewer funds available to serve additional families. In this paper, we first show that because the federal government bears the full cost of any incremental increase in market rents in assisted housing units, stringent local regulations can substantially increase the federal cost of covering a fixed number of families. We then simulate the effect of deregulation that reduces home prices to the cost of producing a home in 11 substantially supply-constrained metropolitan areas, which we translate into reduced market rents and ultimately cost savings for federal rental housing assistance programs. We estimate that post-deregulation, the Housing Choice Voucher program and Section 8 Project-based assistance program could save a combined $3.9 billion, which could serve 13 percent (424,000) more families.

Failing the Least Advantaged: An Unintended Consequence of Local Implementation of the Housing Choice Voucher Program

ABSTRACT Although scholars have acknowledged that shrinking federal resources for low-income housing programs increase economic inequality across the U.S. society as a whole, the question of how the allocation of these resources affects inequality among the poor has received little attention. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study examines local administrative practices of distributing scarce housing resources and the potential redistributive effects of those choices. Analyses of administrative and qualitative data collected from local housing agencies suggest that local administrative practices of managing a waitlist disadvantage residentially unstable applicants. Juxtaposing this finding with results from the Survey of Income and Program Participation suggests that among those who are income-eligible for program participation, poorer individuals have a greater likelihood of experiencing residential instability, thus compounding their disadvantage in the competition for a housing voucher.

Affordable housing program tenants and their access to public transportation and employment

This research examines the level of access to public transportation and job resources specific to tenants residing in rental assistance program units in Harris County, TX, USA. It evaluates the share of the subsidized housing renters from public transit facilities using preset distances and the availability of jobs from the renters’ homes using the job accessibility index. Particularly, this research compares the residential outcomes of the two major rental assistance programs—Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) as a tenant-based program and Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) as a project-based program—and the degree of access to public transportation facilities—light rail transit (LRT) stations and transit centers. Furthermore, it assesses spatial distributions of the assisted housing program units and jobs that are available to low-income earners. The research finds that the HCV program tenants reside in neighborhoods with greater accessibility to light rail stations and transit centers based on the network distance using the street routes and connections. It also finds that the inner-city HCV residents have a higher level of low-paying job accessibility than their LIHTC counterparts, whereas the suburban areas offer equal or less favorable job opportunities to the HCV tenants than the LIHTC counterparts.

“It Takes a While to Get Used to”: The Costs of Redeeming Public Benefits

AbstractScholars have examined how administrative burden creates barriers to accessing public benefits but have primarily focused on the challenges of claiming benefits. Less is known about the difficulties beneficiaries face when using public benefits, especially voucher-based public assistance programs. I argue that the costs of learning how to redeem benefits can discourage program use and undermine policy goals. To enrich the administrative burden framework, this study draws from a qualitative analysis of 43 participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) to develop a new subset of learning costs—redemption costs. I argue that two conditions: limited portability and reliance on third-party agents create redemption costs for beneficiaries. I apply these two conditions to two other voucher-based programs: the Housing Choice Voucher Program and the Child Care Subsidy. Examining redemption costs can help clarify when and where beneficiaries experience burdens, reasons behind discontinuity in program participation, and why public programs fail to meet objectives.