Sequestration’s Rising Toll: 100,000 Fewer Low-Income Families Have Housing Vouchers
Congress Should Restore Vouchers in 2015 Bill
End Notes
[1] As the 2011 Budget Control Act requires, the Office of Management and Budget implemented across-the-board sequestration cuts in March 2013. This reduced funding for Housing Choice Vouchers by $938 million, including some $858 million for the renewal of vouchers then in use — equivalent to funding for some 110,000 vouchers.
[2] CBPP estimates from HUD data. The estimates do not include more than 40,000 new “tenant-protection” vouchers and veterans’ supportive housing (VASH) vouchers that HUD has awarded to state and local housing agencies, and agencies have issued to families, since December 2012. HUD issues tenant-protection vouchers to replace public or other assisted housing that has been demolished or eliminated for other reasons; our analysis of sequestration’s impact does not include these vouchers because they do not represent a net gain in the number of families receiving assistance. We also did not count new VASH vouchers, as Congress excluded VASH vouchers from sequestration.
[3] Joint Center for Housing Studies for Harvard University, “American’s Rental Housing: Evolving Markets and Need,” 2013, http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/americas-rental-housing.
[4] U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “The 2014 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress,” 2014, https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/AHAR-2014-Part1.pdf.
[5] National Center for Homeless Education, “Education for Homeless Children and Youth Consolidated State Performance Report Data: School Years 2010-11, 2011-12, and 2012-13,” 2014, http://center.serve.org/nche/pr/data_comp.php.
[6] Will Fischer, “Research Shows Housing Vouchers Reduce Hardship and Provide Platform for Long-Term Gains Among Children,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, March 10, 2014, https://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=4098.
[7] Jill Khadduri, “Housing Vouchers Are Critical for Ending Family Homelessness,” National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2008, http://www.endhomelessness.org/library/entry/housing-vouchers-are-critical-for-ending-family-homelessness.
[8] HUD, “2014 Annual Homeless Assessment Report.” Also see Will Fischer, “Rental Assistance Helps More Than 340,000 Veterans Afford Homes, but Large Unmet Needs Remain,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, November 10, 2014, https://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=4045.
[9] It is also important to increase funding for the Homeless Assistance Grants program, which provides grants to local agencies to provide financial and other types of assistance to prevent homelessness, as well as to assist homeless individuals and families in renting affordable homes.
[10] Congress set aside $103 million in voucher renewal funds in 2013 for adjustments to agencies’ allocations, including increases required to prevent terminations of families’ assistance. HUD’s effective distribution of the funds played a significant role in avoiding terminations.
[11] The Senate bill raises voucher renewal funding by $353 million (2 percent) over the 2014 level. Approximately $225 million of this amount will be required to renew some 28,000 new tenant-protection and VASH vouchers for which Congress provided first-year funding in 2014. The remaining $128 million would provide agencies with a 0.7 percent increase to help cover rising per-voucher costs due to increased rent and utility costs in the private market. This adjustment will likely be well below inflation in private rental costs, which have been growing at close to a 3 percent rate, according to the Consumer Price Index. Therefore, the Senate bill will likely be sufficient neither to renew all the vouchers that Congress funded in 2014 nor to fully restore all vouchers lost due to sequestration. But it will probably be sufficient to renew all vouchers in use at the end of 2014, according to our estimates, as well as to enable agencies to restore a modest number of additional vouchers. If Congress increases voucher funding in 2015, it will also face important choices about how best to allocate the funding to agencies; see the Appendix for discussion.
[12] This estimate assumes that per-voucher costs rise at a 2.7 percent rate next year, consistent with the recent trend in rental costs according to the Consumer Price Index.