Affordability remains one of the biggest challenges facing consumers in the housing market—buyers and renters alike. Despite a slowing in the rate of rent increases, single-family rent prices remain 23%-plus higher than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic. Reports in 2022 showed that Americans spend as much as 30% of their income on rent, and while renting remains an overall more affordable option than buying, these price increases detract from its purpose as an alternative option for consumers.
Public action has ranged from proposals to enshrine greater protection for renters (dubbed “the Renters of Bill of Rights”) to direct cash assistance.
One of these federal programs, launched in 2021 alongside other pandemic relief efforts, was the Emergency Housing Voucher (EHV) program. Directed by Public Housing Authorities (PHAs), these vouchers were designed to assist with housing individuals who were homeless, at risk of homelessness, fleeing domestic violence or other such situations by covering rent and utility costs beyond 30% of their adjusted monthly income. During the pandemic, 70,000 EHVs were deployed.
Two years after the program’s launch, the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, delved into its success during a webinar on Wednesday, May 17, 2023. The webinar was moderated by Joy Moses, vice president of Research and Evidence at the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
Hosted by Ryan Finnigan—senior research associate with the Terner Center—the webinar opened with a 15-minute segment where Christi Economy, a project policy analyst, presented the Terner Center’s findings on EHVs. An hour-long panel followed during which experts in public housing talked about the findings and their ongoing efforts.
Panelists included:
- Mary-Margaret Spikes Lemons, president, Fort Worth Housing Solutions
- Emilio Salas, executive director, Los Angeles County Development Authority
- Robin Walls, executive director/CEO, King County, Washington Housing Authority
What did their findings uncover, and what did these experts have to say?
Implementation challenges
Economy explains that what set EHVs apart from typical housing subsidies was the role PHAs played. Each voucher came with $3,500 designed to help the authorities secure units, while PHAs were required to identify eligible applicants via local homeless networks.
The Terner Center found that 75% of EHVs have been leased nationwide, but there is an uneven level of success across states. So while 50,000 houses avoided homelessness, 25,000 households that were granted EHVs are still looking.
In looking for on-the-ground stories in relation to the program’s implementation, the Terner Center focused its research efforts on California, due to the state’s high homelessness rates and tight local markets.
Economy cited a quote from one interviewee: “We’ve got to stop pretending that our folks can just go shop for a unit and then pick one up.”
The research pinpointed three main challenges to the program’s implementation:
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- Identifying recipients. The EHV model demands coordination between PHAs and Continuums of Care (COC), in turn requiring strong relationships between the two institutions. In some places, those relationships were not already in place, though the EHV program created an opportunity to forge them.
- Locating units. Subsidies are only half the picture when it comes to housing individuals at risk of homelessness, and EHVs can’t solve inventory shortage. Some applicants were forced to rely on housing navigation networks to locate units.
- Recruiting landlords. Even with California’s laws prohibiting discrimination against renters’ source of income, EHV participants reported landlords who were reluctant to rent to households at risk of homelessness or engage with bureaucratic processes of this program. At least one PHA created a “landlord bonus program” to incentivize participation.
While EHVs “can be a really powerful tool at ending homelessness,” creating sufficient housing unit stock and strong partnerships between PHAs and local authorities are necessary for these vouchers to reach their full potential.
The conversation
Responding to questions from Moses and audience members, the three panelists explained how their organizations implemented the EHV program. They maintained that the organizations they represent had prior relationships with their local Continuums of Care.
For instance, Walls explained that the Washington Housing Authority maintains private units for housing the unhoused. Lemons added that Texas Housing Solution previously renovated a 190-unit former hotel in 2020 with CARES Act money. These prior relationships meant they had housing navigators on-hand to assist with the implementation of the EHV program.
Salas, who noted that the LA County Development Authority “over-issued” vouchers to ensure 100% lease-up, added that their EHV efforts were focused on the chronically homeless.
Fort Worth Housing Solutions, however, chose not to focus on that population. The chronically homeless require the greatest amount of service support after being leased, Lemons said, and her organization did not have the funds to support that demographic.
In discussing who they concentrated their efforts on, there was also the matter of racial disparities.
As Walls claimed, African Americans make up 4% of the population of Washington State, yet 70% of the state’s homeless population. Salas noted that this meant that the deployment of EHVs required acknowledgment of the reality of who is facing homelessness, despite complications this can cause to fair housing principles.
As for getting landlords onboard, the panelists mentioned that they tried to turn the marketing of EHVs on its head. For instance, Salas (who said many landlords were reluctant to house EHV applicants due to the eviction moratorium) argued that landlords wouldn’t risk losing rental payments even if the tenants lost their jobs; the vouchers mean that the federal government will continue footing their bill. Lemons added that while some of the EHV applicants had records of drug abuse, this was no different from college students landlords have housed. The only difference is that the government will pay the rent, not the students’ parents.
Replying to an audience question about maintaining staff, Walls noted the importance of adequate compensation: “Why are we losing so many staff in terms of navigators and partner support?” Lemons said that Fort Worth Housing Solutions offered benefits such as telework and a four-day work week for its support staff.
Asked about how both the local and federal government can assist with implementation, Salas noted the “alphabet soup” of housing institutions across California and the U.S. at large, arguing that “fungibility” of the programs is the key to success.
The full webinar can be watched here.
