Where Households Using Federal Rental Assistance Live

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Main Findings
• Metro Case Studies
  • Public Housing: Washington, D.C.
  • Project-Based Rental Assistance: Los Angeles
  • Housing Choice Vouchers: Milwaukee
• Policy Recommendations
• Appendix
  • Interactive Charts and Tables
  • Methodology and Data Sources
  • Limitations and Areas for Future Research

Federal rental assistance programs help people and families with low incomes afford good-quality, stable housing and make ends meet. Federal rental assistance provides vital support to over 10 million people in roughly 5 million households, primarily through three major programs — Housing Choice Vouchers, Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance, and Public Housing.^[1] Research shows that rental assistance sharply cuts homelessness, housing instability, and overcrowding, and improves a range of other outcomes for participants. But it also could do more to help people live in the community of their choosing, in a way that maximizes their health and well-being.

This analysis provides a window into how local patterns of economic and racial segregation shape where assisted people live across the 100 largest (most populous) metropolitan areas.^[2] These metro areas span the country, from coastal metros like New York (21 million people) and Los Angeles (13 million) to smaller metros in the Midwest and South, like Wichita, Kansas (655,000) and Jackson, Mississippi (575,000). Forty-three of the metropolitan areas in our analysis have populations of under 1 million people.

We examine whether federal rental assistance programs enable people receiving assistance to live in an economically diverse range of neighborhoods, as measured by the neighborhood’s poverty rate. We find that these programs help people afford housing in a wide variety of neighborhoods across central cities and their suburbs, often where the standard of living is high. But many assisted households — like other renter households with similarly low incomes — live in neighborhoods with high poverty rates, under-resourced schools, and a shortage of basic services like grocery stores. Place-based rental assistance, where rental subsidies are attached to particular properties, is especially likely to be in neighborhoods with higher rates of poverty.

To understand the location of assisted housing is to know that past and present racist policies are largely responsible for the prevalence of separate and unequal neighborhoods. Public and private practices such as stealing land from Indigenous people; racial covenants and redlining, which actively enforced segregation by preventing people from purchasing homes in certain neighborhoods based on race, ethnicity, and religion; and “urban renewal” programs that allowed governments to displace predominantly communities of color in the name of redevelopment and highway construction^[3] directly shape who gets to live where in the U.S.

But these historical practices are not the only culprits. Modern-day forces — gentrification, zoning regulations, immigration and asylum policy, community members fighting local affordable housing developments, landlord discrimination — also play a major role in the inequities in the metropolitan landscape.

This analysis looks at the location of households who use the three largest federal rental assistance programs — which account for 84 percent of all households receiving federal rental assistance — and compares them to the locations of all rental units and of rental units that are affordable to people using a housing voucher. We group households and rental units based on the neighborhood poverty rate, a proxy for the kind of schools, jobs, parks, and grocery stores the households likely will have access to. Neighborhoods with high poverty rates often have less access to highly resourced schools, job opportunities, public services, transit, and grocery stores,^[4] but a full analysis of additional neighborhood characteristics is beyond the scope of this report. We find that some rental assistance programs are better than others at providing households with more neighborhood choice, allowing them to live in areas best suited to their needs.

Meanwhile, high housing costs, housing instability, and homelessness disproportionately affect people of color, who — due to systemic racism in the nation’s economic, education, and housing systems — are more likely to have lower incomes and rent their homes. Providing enough funding to help every person who needs housing assistance is a key step in reducing harm to those experiencing housing instability or homelessness.

Housing justice requires repair, from both current and past harm. The harm caused by racist housing policies reaches back generations. Because people of color, particularly those with lower incomes, have been denied freedom of choice in the housing market, housing policies and programs must at minimum create the conditions for free choice now. Likewise, federal, state, and local policymakers should ensure that all people with low incomes can afford stable, good-quality housing, that they can freely decide to stay in their current neighborhood or move to another location of their choice — and that wherever they live, they have access to the community resources and amenities they need to thrive.

Rental assistance programs alone cannot undo the decades of racist policies behind today’s unequal neighborhoods or gaping income and wealth inequality. Needed housing policy steps include eliminating landlord discrimination and ensuring that people with low incomes can rent housing they can afford in a wide range of neighborhoods across every city, suburb, or small town. They also include policies that change cities themselves, until all neighborhoods provide opportunity and safety to everyone who lives there. Ultimately, making people whole will require a multifaceted set of solutions, from revitalizing neighborhoods to providing educational and economic opportunities to those historically denied them. This analysis offers a first step toward understanding what housing policy changes are needed as part of a larger strategy to achieve this goal.

Each of the 100 metropolitan areas in this analysis has a unique story. But by highlighting a handful of metro areas, as this piece does, we can illustrate major trends across the country. Readers can also explore data for all 100 metropolitan areas using our interactive mapping tool and the interactive tables in the appendix.^[5] The data can be used to identify the people and communities whom racial and economic segregation have most affected. It is then up to federal, state, and local policymakers to develop solutions in collaboration with these communities, ensuring that their needs and voices are heard and reflected.

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Interactive Mapping Tool: Where Households Using Federal Rental Assistance Live

Main Findings From 100 Metro Analysis: Some Programs Provide Greater Housing Choice

Our main findings for the 100 most populous metropolitan areas are:

Over half of public housing residents live in high-poverty neighborhoods, often reflecting local patterns of economic and racial segregation. The Public Housing program is the nation’s oldest form of federal rental assistance, dating back to the 1930s. Prevailing housing policies at the time of its inception, like restrictive covenants and redlining, fostered separate and unequal neighborhoods based on race and class. During much of the period when the government constructed the bulk of public housing, it segregated most developments, with separate, more favorable developments for white residents than for Black residents. Many white residents eventually moved out of public housing and went on to purchase homes, while policies like redlining and lending discrimination denied Black residents the same opportunities. Today, the majority of the 1.6 million people living in public housing are in neighborhoods with high rates of poverty. Just 12 percent of all occupied rental units in the 100 largest metros are in high-poverty areas. By comparison, 51 percent of all households assisted by public housing are. Because rental assistance in public housing is tied to the housing development, residents must continue to live in public housing to receive rental assistance, even if they would prefer to move to a different neighborhood.

Some 56 percent of families with children in public housing are in a high-poverty neighborhood. That is in part because discrimination has often made it especially difficult to build public and other affordable housing in lower-poverty areas if the housing would serve families with children. Resistance to developments serving this population is often motivated by racist stereotypes about low-income families with children, but other factors such as financial challenges to building larger units can also play a role. Today, little public housing is in low-poverty areas: Only 1 in 10 households assisted by public housing in the 100 largest metros live in low-poverty neighborhoods. (See Figure 1.)

Project-based rental assistance provides a critical source of rental assistance in a more diverse range of neighborhoods than public housing. Congress in 1974 established Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance (PBRA), under which private development owners sign rental assistance agreements with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Nearly 30 percent of developments receiving this assistance are in high-poverty neighborhoods. (See Figure 1.) However, roughly 1 in 5 households in the program live in low-poverty neighborhoods, meaning PBRA provides a greater range of neighborhood options than public housing. PBRA is especially critical for older adults with low incomes — who head over half of the 1.2 million households in the program — allowing them to age in place.^[6]

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Renters with a housing voucher are more likely to live in low-poverty areas, and less likely in high-poverty areas, than those with other federal rental assistance. Congress authorized the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program in 1974. Today it is the largest form of federal rental assistance, assisting roughly 5 million people in over 2 million households. Unlike Public Housing or PBRA, most housing vouchers are tenant based, meaning the voucher is issued to an individual or family to use in the private rental market. Households using vouchers are more likely to rent in neighborhoods where the poverty rate is 10 percent or less, despite sometimes facing discrimination from landlords that refuse to accept vouchers. Housing Choice Voucher program participants are equally likely to be in a low- or high-poverty neighborhood: about 1 in 5 households using vouchers live in low-poverty neighborhoods, a notably larger share than public housing residents.

Renters with a tenant-based housing voucher are the most likely to live in low-poverty, and least likely in high-poverty, areas. Nearly 1 in 4 voucher holders (23 percent) with a tenant-based voucher live in low-poverty neighborhoods, the highest share among all the federal rental assistance programs in this analysis. Some critics of the voucher program have expressed concern that voucher recipients tend to live in high-poverty neighborhoods. However, in the 100 largest metros, people using tenant-based vouchers are not significantly more likely to live in high-poverty neighborhoods than similar but likely unassisted renters. Nineteen percent of extremely low-income renters who pay over half their income for housing live in high-poverty neighborhoods.^[7] These renters would likely be unassisted but eligible and in need of rental assistance based on their income and high rent cost burdens.^[8] Where voucher holders live is often a reflection of pre-existing patterns of economic and racial segregation in a metro area, which constrains housing choice for all extremely low-income renters. While some households use their voucher to move to a new neighborhood, others use the voucher to make the home they are in more affordable. Just 21 percent of households with a tenant-based voucher live in high-poverty neighborhoods, compared to 19 percent of extremely low-income households (those below the poverty line or 30 percent of the local median income) who face severe rent cost burdens (pay more than half of their income for housing).^[9]

But it is important for renters to have choice. While most Housing Choice Vouchers are tenant based, meaning people can use them to rent any private apartment that meets program guidelines, project-based vouchers are attached to specific units. Project-based vouchers are distributed very similarly to PBRA. Thirty percent of project-based vouchers are in high-poverty neighborhoods, while 18 percent are in low-poverty neighborhoods.

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Over a third of all units affordable to renters using vouchers in the 100 largest metros are in low-poverty neighborhoods, but not all these units are available or accessible to voucher holders. Twenty-two percent of families using vouchers live in low-poverty neighborhoods, despite 36 percent of voucher-affordable units — units whose rents are low enough to be covered by the voucher subsidy — being located in low-poverty neighborhoods. (See Figure 2.) In some metros, low rental vacancy rates may partly explain this mismatch. Or, studio and one-bedroom units may be affordable with a voucher but too small for many families with children.^[10] But landlord discrimination also plays a role: in low-poverty neighborhoods, landlords are significantly more likely to refuse to rent to someone with a voucher, research shows.^[11] Some states and localities have passed “source of income” protections — which prohibit landlords from discriminating against potential leasers based on the kind of income they will use to pay rent — as a way to prevent this discrimination, but they do not always enforce them, and there is no national law against the practice.

Across Three Programs in Three Metros, Federal Rental Assistance Could Be Providing More Housing Choice and Access to Resources

Washington, D.C.’s Public Housing Reflects Deeply Entrenched Racial Segregation

Established in 1937, the Public Housing program is the nation’s oldest form of federal rental assistance. Early projects were usually segregated on the basis of race, a practice that was not officially outlawed until the 1960s.^[12] Today, most of the 1.6 million Americans living in over 800,000 households assisted by public housing (see Figure 3) live in neighborhoods with high rates of poverty.^[13] Most public housing developments are over 40 years old and in dire need of investment and repair. Public housing properties are operated by a network of about 2,700 state and local public housing agencies.

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The Washington, D.C. metro area’s deeply entrenched racial segregation reflects the lasting impact of racist housing policies intentionally designed to separate and isolate white and Black residents.

Racially restrictive covenants, widely adopted in the city in the early 1900s, legally prohibited people of color from buying or occupying homes in many white communities. Restrictive covenants were enforceable by courts until 1948, confining Black residents to certain parts of the city and allowing policymakers to provide less resources and investment than to neighborhoods where only white residents could live.^[14] Neighborhoods that used restrictive covenants reinforced racial segregation and depressed Black homeownership rates in those neighborhoods, with inequities persisting to this day.^[15]

D.C.’s public housing complexes were also racially segregated, with separate developments built for white and Black residents.^[16] By the time the developments were officially desegregated in the 1950s, much of the city had become highly segregated along intertwined lines of race and economic status, shaped by Jim Crow laws and New Deal-era federal housing policies. Created in the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) provided mortgages to homeowners, guided by maps it color-coded by perceived lending risk. HOLC largely relied on a neighborhood’s racial demographics to determine creditworthiness, deeming communities of color as “hazardous,” a practice known as “redlining” for the red marking these communities in HOLC’s maps.

While HOLC’s redlining maps institutionalized the idea that proximity to people of color increases lending risk and decreases property values, the GI Bill and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) cemented racially discriminatory lending practices in the decades that followed.^[17] The GI Bill helped white veterans purchase homes by providing low-interest mortgages but excluded Black veterans from receiving the same benefits. The FHA adopted a discriminatory rating system similar to HOLC that systematically excluded communities of color from the same homeownership opportunities afforded to white communities. The FHA insured home loans almost exclusively in white communities, helping spur an exodus of white residents to D.C.’s surrounding suburbs.^[18]

Between 1950 and 1970, over half (60 percent) of the white residents moved out of the city of D.C.^[19] In 1968, significant portions of the city burned, and many businesses were destroyed, during five days of civil unrest following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Due largely to lack of public and private investment, it took decades for many of these neighborhoods to bounce back. In the meantime, middle- and working-class Black residents also began moving out.^[20] These changes were also reflected in the D.C.’s public housing.

Today, Black renters are more likely to receive federal rental assistance compared to other racial/ethnic groups due to higher need stemming from the impact of past and present systemic racism, with households headed by a Black person making up over half of renters in the D.C. metro area living below the poverty line.^[21] Black people now make up 24 percent of the D.C. metro area’s overall population, while 92 percent of households living in its public housing are headed by a Black person.^[22] Nationally, Black people make up 12 percent of the overall population, while 42 percent of all households living in public housing are headed by a Black person.^[23]

D.C. Public Housing Residents Far More Likely to Live in High-Poverty Areas

Public housing remains a critical source of permanently affordable housing, particularly in the Northeast and Puerto Rico. Public housing can help prevent displacement as housing costs rise, enabling families and individuals with low incomes to continue living in the D.C. metro area as affordable housing options dwindle in the private market. Many public housing residents also develop a sense of community with other residents, building important social ties they rely on for support and safety.^[24] These connections can also be foundational in tenant organizing efforts, so residents can hold housing agencies accountable and leverage their lived expertise to improve living conditions.^[25]

However, public housing is not available in a wide range of neighborhoods, and is particularly scarce in low-poverty neighborhoods. A significant share of the D.C. area’s public housing stock — and therefore many of its assisted families — is located in areas of high poverty. For example, only 2 percent of people in the metro area live in high-poverty neighborhoods, yet a third (33 percent) of Black families with children assisted by public housing do.^[26] Living in high-poverty neighborhoods can worsen access to jobs, commuting costs, and access to fresh and reasonably priced food and other basic goods and services.

Families and individuals in the D.C. metro area living in public housing are much more likely to live in higher-poverty neighborhoods as compared to households participating in other federal rental assistance programs. Some 28 percent of households assisted by public housing live in high-poverty neighborhoods, compared to 13 percent of PBRA-assisted households and 9 percent of voucher-assisted households. Public housing residents are also less likely to live in low-poverty neighborhoods relative to PBRA-assisted households and voucher-assisted households in the DC metro area. While it can be difficult for renters with a housing voucher to find a landlord to rent to them, a much higher share of voucher holders are able to rent units in moderate- and low-poverty neighborhoods of their choosing.

Because so much public housing is in high-poverty neighborhoods in the D.C. metro area, residents who rely on it do not have the same choice about where they get to live. This is especially significant given the long history of housing policies that have limited where Black and other people of color can live. Given that over 90 percent of households living in D.C.’s public housing are headed by a Black person, this is deeply unjust.

Public Housing Is a Key Source of Affordable Housing, but D.C.’s Is Marred by Poor Conditions, High Vacancy Rates

Despite its shortcomings, many renters apply to live in public housing in the hopes of finding an affordable place to live. But insufficient funding creates long wait times to secure a unit; a group of residents admitted to D.C. Housing Authority (DCHA) public housing in 2022 spent an average of nearly 16 years on the waiting list before receiving assistance.^[27] Nationally, public housing residents waited an average of 20 months before receiving assistance in 2023.^[28]

Demand for public housing far outstrips supply: DCHA’s public housing assists roughly 5,350 households,^[29] yet over 24,000 households are still on DCHA’s waiting list for public housing as of 2023.^[30] Over three-fourths of families assisted by public housing in the metro area live in the city of D.C., partly due to most public housing complexes being built before the development of the surrounding suburbs.^[31]

Despite high demand, DCHA has the lowest public housing occupancy rate of any large housing agency, a recent HUD report found, with over 1 in 5 units currently vacant.^[32] (See Figure 5.) Units may sit unused due to poor conditions stemming from insufficient funding for repairs and renovation. Coupled with poor management, many of these vacant units are left dilapidated due to neglect, in some cases posing significant health and safety hazards.

During its inspection of vacant public housing units, HUD found multiple units with mold and moss growing on the walls and floors from active leaks. In 2019, DCHA reported that the vast majority of its units need significant capital improvements, such as new heating and cooling systems, roofs, and plumbing, requiring an estimated $2.2 billion to address.^[33]

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In Los Angeles, PBRA Largely Helps Asian, NHPI, and Older People Living Mostly in Higher-Poverty Areas

The Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance Program (PBRA) was established in 1974. Project-based assistance means the rental subsidy is tied to a unit in a building. The tenant will receive assistance as long as they occupy the unit. It is administered by private owners who enter into rental assistance agreements with HUD. Most owners are for-profit entities, but nonprofits and some public housing agencies own a significant share of Section 8 PBRA properties. By the mid-1980s, the program faced criticism for rising costs and concentrating assisted families in neighborhoods with high poverty rates.^[34] Although Congress stopped funding new PBRA contracts in 1983, the program still helps house roughly 2 million people in 1.2 million households. (See Figure 6.)^[35]

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Los Angeles is home to the largest Latine population of any metro area in the U.S.; it has the second largest Asian population and fourth largest Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) population. While Los Angeles is one of the most racially diverse metro areas, it’s also one of the most segregated, reflecting a long history of racist and exclusionary housing policies.

As in the rest of the country, starting in the early 1900s policies like redlining and restrictive covenants excluded people of color from homeownership opportunities and barred them from living in more affluent, predominantly white neighborhoods. Developers in Los Angeles frequently employed restrictive covenants and zoning restrictions that helped shape the racial segregation that persists today.^[36] Los Angeles also has one of the highest rental cost burden rates of any metro area: 56 percent of renter households are cost burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent each month, and nearly a third (31 percent) are severely cost burdened, meaning they pay more than half of their income on rent.^[37] California has long dealt with an acute housing affordability and homelessness crisis, driven by a deep shortage of housing affordable to renters with the lowest incomes.

For every 100 renter households in the Los Angeles metro area with extremely low incomes,^[38] there are only 21 affordable and available rental units.^[39] This makes housing insecurity all but inevitable for renters with the lowest incomes who do not receive rental assistance. Even California’s higher state minimum wage, $16 an hour, is not enough to cover the high cost of housing. A full-time employee being paid minimum wage would have to work 96 hours each week just to afford a modest one-bedroom rental unit in California.^[40]

Such severe housing affordability issues make PBRA a crucial source of affordable housing for over 39,000 families with low incomes living in the Los Angeles metro area. Asian and NHPI renters are most likely to be assisted by PBRA compared to other racial and ethnic groups in the area. Asian and NHPI people make up 17 percent of the metro area’s overall population, and 32 percent of PBRA-assisted households are headed by an Asian or NHPI person, a significantly higher share than voucher-assisted households and public housing residents.^[41]

This is partly driven by PBRA-funded properties located in neighborhoods where Asian and NHPI renters make up the overwhelming majority of residents. These neighborhoods also tend to have high rates of poverty: one-fourth of PBRA-assisted households headed by an Asian or NHPI person live in high-poverty neighborhoods, slightly higher than the one-fifth of all PBRA-assisted families in the metro area who do.

Over half (53 percent) of renter households headed by an Asian person in the Los Angeles metro area are cost burdened, and nearly 1 in 3 (30 percent) are severely cost burdened.^[42] Despite many Asian renters facing high housing costs, Asian renters are still less likely to be burdened by housing costs than Black and Latine renters both nationally and in the Los Angeles area. However, Asian and NHPI renters with low incomes are more likely to live in overcrowded housing. Among renters with low incomes living in cost-burdened households, Asian and NHPI renters are more likely to live with extended family in doubled-up and overcrowded households than most racial and ethnic groups.^[43]

Asian and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander renters often face distinct housing challenges that aren’t always captured when the two groups are combined, which typically happens for statistical purposes. For instance, while Asian people in California experience the lowest rate of homelessness, NHPI people have the second highest homelessness rate of any racial or ethnic group.^[44] This partly reflects the intergenerational impact of settler colonialism and the resulting displacement of NHPI communities in Hawai’i and U.S. Territories in the Pacific as well as the large share of NHPI residents living in expensive housing markets.^[45] This has shaped their unique experiences of homelessness and housing insecurity, which are distinct from those of Indigenous people in the contiguous United States.^[46] NHPI people in California have a higher poverty rate than Asian people in the state, and NHPI renters in California are more likely to be burdened by housing costs and live in an overcrowded household compared to Asian renters.^[47]

PBRA, Which Helps Many Older Angelenos, Can Provide Critical Supportive Housing Services

Older adults make up the overwhelming majority of those assisted by PBRA in the Los Angeles metro area: over 3 in 4 PBRA-assisted households (77 percent) are headed by a person aged 62 and older, a much higher share than voucher-assisted households and public housing residents.^[48] (See Figure 8.) While this aligns with national demographics of PBRA-assisted households, it’s a significantly higher share than the roughly half (53 percent) of PBRA-assisted households headed by older adults overall.^[49]

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This partly reflects properties providing housing to older adults through the Housing for the Elderly program (also known as Section 202) that are subsidized through the PBRA program.^[50] Section 202 housing typically includes service coordinators who help connect residents with other community services that support independent living, including physical and behavioral health services for those who want and need them. PBRA is a critical funding source for affordable housing for older adults, helping provide financing to preserve existing properties.

Rental assistance helps communities create a variety of integrated housing options for older adults — including supportive housing — so that people can choose the housing that meets their needs without being isolated from the rest of the community. This includes scattered-site supportive housing, including for households with tenant-based vouchers, and project-based supportive housing that houses a mix of people who do and don’t need supportive services. This can help older adults who want to age in place live in their own homes, instead of congregate care settings such as nursing homes or psychiatric facilities.^[51]

Older adults and non-elderly people with disabilities are much more likely to receive federal rental assistance than other people in need of assistance, but there are still many people in these groups who face serious hardship because they can’t afford housing.^[52] A recent representative study of adults experiencing homelessness in California found that 44 percent of unhoused adults were 50 and older.^[53] Many older adults are no longer able to work and rely on fixed incomes provided by Supplemental Security Income (SSI) that are often too low to cover housing costs.^[54]

In 2023, over 4,700 people experiencing homelessness in the Los Angeles City and County Continuum of Care (CoC) were 65 and older, and nearly three-fourths (74 percent) of them were experiencing unsheltered homelessness.^[55] Living in a car, on the street, or other places not meant for human habitation can exacerbate the risk of chronic disease and serious mental illness, lower access to health services, and increase food insecurity for older adults.^[56]

PBRA Helps House Thousands of Disabled Angelenos; Access to Community Resources Could Be Improved

In the Los Angeles metro area, PBRA assists roughly 6,500 households that include a person with a disability. (See Figure 9) Some 14 percent of those households live in high-poverty neighborhoods. Living in high-poverty neighborhoods can limit access to health care and negatively impact physical and mental health, particularly for older adults.^[57] This underscores the need to broaden housing options for PBRA-assisted households in low-poverty neighborhoods, while also investing resources in high-poverty neighborhoods to improve living conditions for all residents in these communities.

Rental assistance can help disabled people keep a roof over their heads, especially those whose only source of income is SSI. In California, SSI provides a basic monthly benefit of $1,163 in 2024 — too little to pay for a typical one-bedroom apartment even if every dollar of SSI benefits were used for rent.^[58]

While some disabled people with low incomes may require supportive housing, rental assistance and short-term support in navigating the rental market are likely enough for most adults with disabilities to gain long-term housing stability.^[59] However, as is the case with federal rental assistance programs more broadly, funding limitations leave many low-income, disabled renters without the assistance they need to stay stably housed.

Renters with disabilities and low incomes also face unique barriers to housing affordability and accessibility. Finding a unit that accommodates their safety and usability needs can be challenging due to the dearth of accessible homes. Even when a home is accessible, people with disabilities often face landlord discrimination: discrimination based on disability accounted for over half of fair housing complaints filed nationally in 2022.^[60] People with disabilities are also often excluded from employment and education opportunities, and they can face higher costs of living due to steep medical bills, transportation, and expensive home accessibility modifications.^[61]

As a result, disabled people are more likely to live below the federal poverty line, live in poor-quality housing, and experience homelessness compared to people without disabilities, posing additional challenges to housing security.^[62] Lack of sufficient income or rental assistance to stay stably housed can force disabled people into congregate or institutional settings that undermine their independence. Expanding access to inclusive and affordable housing means people with disabilities can live in neighborhoods that best meet their needs, such as near key community resources, services, or social supports that reduce isolation and barriers to community living.

More Can Be Done to Support Use of Housing Choice Vouchers in More Milwaukee Neighborhoods

In 1974 Congress authorized the Section 8 tenant-based rental assistance program that evolved into the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV). Today housing vouchers are the largest form of federal rental assistance, assisting roughly 5 million people in 2.3 million households. (See Figure 10.)^[63] The vast majority of housing vouchers are tenant based, meaning the voucher is issued to an individual or family to use in the private rental market. A voucher recipient must find a unit that meets the program’s quality standards and has a landlord willing to participate.

A family with a voucher generally must contribute the higher of 30 percent of their income or a “minimum rent” of up to $50 for rent and utilities. The voucher covers the rest of those costs, up to a limit (called a payment standard) that the housing agency sets based on HUD’s Fair Market Rent estimates. If a family moves, they can take their voucher with them, provided the new unit is eligible and the landlord is willing to participate in the program.^[64] The HCV program is administered by a network of nearly 2,200 state and local public housing agencies.^[65]

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Milwaukee Highly Segregated by Race and Income Level

The Milwaukee metro area is home to nearly 1.6 million people, 64 percent of whom are white, 16 percent are Black, 12 percent are Latine, and 4 percent are Asian. Milwaukee is one of the most racially segregated metro areas in the country, reflecting the past and present impact of racist and exclusionary housing policies.^[66]

By the 1940s, nearly all of the Milwaukee suburbs used restrictive covenants to exclude Black people from owning or occupying homes.^[67] Families of color had far less choice about where they could live and were largely relegated to areas of Milwaukee that did not receive the same resources and investment afforded to white communities.^[68]

The impacts on Milwaukee residents last to this day. Residents of historically redlined neighborhoods in Milwaukee County (which includes the city of Milwaukee) are more likely to be in poverty and identify as Black or Latine.^[69] They also continue to experience lending discrimination, marked by unfair loan denials and higher costs for those who receive loans.^[70]

People of color are far more likely to live in high-poverty neighborhoods compared to white residents, reflecting the intersecting impact of racial and economic segregation. Black people make up 16 percent of residents in the Milwaukee metro area but over half (53 percent) of people living in high-poverty neighborhoods and only 3 percent of those living in low-poverty neighborhoods. Latine people, who make up 12 percent of the Milwaukee metro’s population, make up 23 percent of residents in high-poverty neighborhoods and only 6 percent of residents in low-poverty neighborhoods.

Black Milwaukee families are also more likely to face housing insecurity compared to other racial and ethnic groups: over half (53 percent) of renter households headed by a Black person are cost burdened in the Milwaukee metro area compared to 44 percent of renter households headed by a white or Latine person.^[71] Black renters are more likely to receive federal rental assistance due to higher need stemming from the past and present impact of systemic racism.^[72] Over two-thirds (69 percent) of voucher-assisted households in the Milwaukee metro area are headed by a Black person, reflecting this outsized need.^[73]

Landlord Discrimination Often a Source of Voucher Underuse in Low-Poverty Neighborhoods

There are roughly 9,400 households using a housing voucher in the Milwaukee metro area. These families and individuals should be able to use their vouchers in the neighborhood of their choice. For example, they are substantially more likely to live in low-poverty neighborhoods than residents of public housing or Project-Based Rental Assistance. But voucher holders’ housing options are significantly influenced by landlords’ willingness to accept housing vouchers.

In Milwaukee and nationwide, the share of voucher-affordable units — units whose rents are low enough to be covered by the voucher subsidy — in lower-poverty neighborhoods is significantly higher than the share of voucher-assisted households. Over a third (34 percent) of voucher-affordable units are in low-poverty Milwaukee neighborhoods, double the share of voucher-assisted families living in low-poverty neighborhoods.

Due to data limitations, we cannot identify which voucher-affordable units are vacant or their number of bedrooms. Voucher holders may be more likely to live in higher-poverty areas because of a mismatch in the types of units available (since studio and one-bedroom units may be affordable with a voucher but too small for many families with children).

Nonetheless, landlord discrimination is a key reason why so few voucher recipients use their vouchers in low-poverty neighborhoods. Landlords are significantly more likely to refuse to rent to someone with a voucher in low-poverty neighborhoods, national research shows, which can limit housing options for voucher-assisted families in these neighborhoods.^[74] Landlords may view required unit inspections as burdensome and not worth the additional time and effort, especially in neighborhoods where there is competition for units, making it easier to opt for unassisted tenants.

Some landlords stop accepting vouchers after negative experiences with inspections or because they did not feel adequately supported by the housing agency when a conflict arose with tenants.^[75] Improving administration of inspections, creating funding for landlords to make minor repairs or accommodations to units, and providing stronger outreach to landlords can help address these types of concerns.

But in some cases, landlords deny vouchers for more outright discriminatory reasons. That includes falsely assuming that voucher-assisted families will not be good tenants or using voucher holder status as a proxy to discriminate against people based on race (since in many places most voucher holders are people of color). Source of income protections are designed to prevent discrimination against voucher-assisted families, but these laws are specific to states or localities and are sometimes poorly enforced.

Milwaukee County enacted such protections in 2018, but the law has not prevented landlords from rejecting vouchers, with some still explicitly saying that they do not accept vouchers in published apartment listings. A recent investigation found many voucher-assisted families were completely unaware of the protections, and five years after their enactment, there had not been a verified complaint of voucher discrimination.^[76]

Voucher Leasing Time Limits, Lack of Search Assistance Constrain Use

Families who use vouchers in the Milwaukee metro area are notably more likely to rent in higher-poverty neighborhoods. Nearly a third (32 percent) of voucher-assisted families in the area live in high-poverty neighborhoods while only 17 percent live in low-poverty neighborhoods. This trend is even more pronounced for project-based vouchers: almost half (49 percent) of families using project-based vouchers live in high-poverty neighborhoods, compared to 28 percent of households using tenant-based vouchers.

When an individual or family is issued a voucher, they may have as little as 60 days to find a unit and landlord that will take the voucher, although housing agencies are free to set longer limits and provide extensions if needed. If a voucher holder does not succeed within the allowed time frame, they have to return the voucher to the housing agency. Because many families wait months or even years before receiving a voucher, they are under intense pressure to find housing within the time limit. Some families do not even look for units in low-poverty neighborhoods because they fear, often rightly, that landlords will turn them down.^[77]

The risk of not finding a unit and losing a voucher is more serious for some families and can vary widely depending on the housing agency. Less than half (44 percent) of families who received a voucher from the Milwaukee City housing agency were able to use their voucher in 2019, compared to 95 percent of families assisted by the Milwaukee County housing agency.^[78] The reasons for the difference in success rates aren’t entirely clear, but it is likely due in part to the Milwaukee City housing authority’s poor administration of the voucher program.^[79]

Agencies with low success rates can take steps to provide more help to people looking for voucher-affordable units, reduce inspection delays, and address other administrative problems that can play a major role in discouraging landlords from accepting vouchers. Search assistance can also help families consider a broader range of neighborhoods.^[80] In communities where the housing agency doesn’t provide much help finding a unit, voucher-assisted families often rely on online listings specifically focused on voucher-friendly properties that are often in higher-poverty neighborhoods.

Aiding voucher-assisted families with intensive search assistance and covering expenses like security deposits and screening fees significantly increases voucher use in low-poverty neighborhoods.^[81] This suggests that more families would like to use their voucher in a low-poverty neighborhood, but most housing agencies do not offer the services and supports needed to help families act on those preferences. Using vouchers to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods can improve the mental and physical well-being of adults as well as long-term earnings and educational outcomes for children.^[82]

Some families may wish to use their vouchers in communities that happen to have higher poverty rates, because, for example, they can be close to friends and family in their social support network. Or, they might have access to public transportation, which is often lacking in further flung suburbs, or have a more manageable commute to work.

Previous experiences with racism can also deter voucher-assisted families of color from searching for or moving to a predominantly affluent and white community, as they may rightly anticipate that the community will be unwelcoming.^[83] This underscores the need for reparative policies that address historic disinvestment and reduce poverty, which helps all families in all communities.

Voucher-Assisted People of Color Doubly Affected by Landlord Discrimination

Beyond discrimination from landlords that do not wish to participate in the voucher program, voucher-assisted families and individuals of color can face additional landlord discrimination because of their race or ethnicity. The compounding effect of both voucher and racial discrimination may help explain why so few families and individuals of color can use their vouchers in low-poverty neighborhoods. In the Milwaukee metro, only 7 percent of Black households and 16 percent of Latine households with a voucher live in low-poverty neighborhoods, compared to 46 percent of white Milwaukee households with a voucher. (See Figure 12.)

Severe racial inequities partly reflect the racial discrimination Black and Latine people continue to face in the rental market.^[84] During housing searches, landlords and realtors often steer people of color toward higher-poverty, racially segregated neighborhoods, reproducing patterns of racial and economic segregation.^[85] Voucher recipients may not even realize their housing choices are being constrained because they do not know that the landlord is not showing them all available properties.

Voucher-assisted families with children may also face additional housing discrimination from landlords, receiving differential treatment due to anticipated issues children may cause, such as overcrowding and more wear and tear on units.^[86] One study found that while families with children are as likely as those without children to obtain an appointment for an available rental unit, they are shown fewer units and are told about slightly larger units that were more expensive to rent compared to renters without children inquiring about the same-size units.^[87] Discrimination can also have intersecting impacts across race, ethnicity, gender, and presence of children. For example, limited evidence suggests Black and Latina women are penalized during housing searches for being parents and for being single mothers, while white women are not.^[88]

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Policy Recommendations

Federal, state, and local policymakers should seek to ensure that all people with low incomes can afford stable, good-quality housing, that they can freely decide to stay in their current neighborhood or move to another location of their choice, and that wherever they live they have access to the community resources and amenities they need to thrive. We’re far short of those goals today, but there are many steps that policymakers could take to advance us closer to them.

Expand Federal Rental Assistance to Make It Available to Everyone Who Needs It

The most important way to ensure that people have access to good-quality, stable, affordable housing is to expand federal rental assistance and ultimately make it available to every low-income person who needs it. Rental assistance is highly effective at reducing homelessness, overcrowding, and housing instability, but federal rental assistance only reaches 1 in 4 eligible households due to funding limitations.^[89] Policymakers should also take other steps to make housing more affordable, such as increasing subsidies for affordable housing development, reforming zoning rules to allow more subsidized and market-rate housing to be built, and instituting well-designed rent regulations where appropriate. But these measures generally won’t make housing affordable to households with incomes around or below the poverty line unless the households also have rental assistance, so expanding federal rental assistance must accompany supply strategies to be successful at helping those with the greatest challenges.^[90]

Make Rental Assistance More Responsive to Participants’ Needs and Choices

For people to have greater choice about where they live, it must be easier for people to use tenant-based rental assistance in a wide range of neighborhoods.^[91] Policymakers should fund housing navigators and other search assistance^[92] and ensure that voucher holders have adequate time to look for housing before their vouchers expire. Other key changes would make it easier for families with vouchers to compete with higher-income applicants for available units. Such changes include allowing voucher subsidies to be used for security deposits, streamlining inspection requirements to avoid unnecessary delays, and ensuring that voucher subsidies cover typical rents even in higher-cost neighborhoods by extending use of ZIP code-level Small Area Fair Market Rents that better reflect rents in individual neighborhoods.^[93]

Along with these adjustments to the existing voucher program, it would be valuable to test a more fundamental change: provision of rental assistance directly to tenants rather than through owners. Direct rental assistance could reduce administrative burdens for families, agencies, and owners, and potentially broaden choice for participants. HUD called for local pilots to test direct rental assistance in a September 2023 statement that has already prompted emerging efforts around the country, and a federally funded demonstration could evaluate the approach on a large enough scale to determine whether it should be adopted more broadly.^[94]

Prevent Discrimination Against People With Rental Assistance

Federal, state, and local policymakers should also strengthen rules prohibiting owners from discriminating against voucher holders. This includes enacting prohibitions against discrimination in states and localities where they don’t exist today, and ultimately passing a federal law that would outlaw voucher discrimination everywhere. Policymakers should also strengthen enforcement of existing laws prohibiting discrimination, including state and local bans and prohibitions on discrimination in units built or rehabilitated using federal affordable housing subsidies. In addition, strengthening enforcement of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 — because most voucher holders are people of color and/or are members of other groups protected within this legislation — would broaden choice for people with vouchers in addition to fighting discrimination more broadly.

Build and Preserve Housing That People With Low Incomes Can Rent in a Wide Range of Neighborhoods

Policymakers should also take steps to ensure that there are units available for federal rental assistance recipients to rent in a wide range of neighborhoods. This should include modifying zoning laws that exclude lower-cost housing types from many communities, such as large minimum lot sizes and bans on multifamily housing.

In addition, it is critical that subsidy programs like the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) build and preserve housing in a wide range of neighborhoods, including in areas where it is otherwise difficult for people with low incomes to rent and in gentrifying neighborhoods where the availability of affordable housing is declining. States can ensure that their LIHTC qualified allocation plans^[95] support housing in a variety of neighborhoods, and federal policymakers can support this goal as well.^[96]

For example, the proposed Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act includes important provisions to prevent local governments and state elected officials from excluding affordable housing developments from their communities. In addition, policymakers could increase the long-run benefits of developing affordable housing in low-poverty or gentrifying areas by taking steps such as requiring long-term or permanent affordability protections, or public or social ownership or control.^[97]

Project-based assistance (including PBRA, public housing, project-based vouchers, and other smaller programs) can also help people with low incomes afford good-quality, stable housing and give them access to a wider range of neighborhoods. Many PBRA and other older subsidized housing developments need additional investment for renovations, which could be provided through special supplemental subsidies or by prioritizing them for funding through LIHTC and other programs. The needs are even greater in public housing, where many years of inadequate federal funding has resulted in a backlog of unmet renovation needs that exceed $70 billion according to some estimates.

As a result, many public housing residents live in unsafe or unhealthy conditions, and many developments are at risk of being demolished or otherwise lost as affordable housing — including developments that provide difficult-to-replace affordable housing in low-poverty or gentrifying areas. Federal policymakers should provide both a large infusion of upfront public housing capital funding and reliable ongoing subsidies. These ongoing subsidies could be provided through mechanisms like the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) that convert public housing to long-term PBRA or project-based voucher subsidies, which increase more reliably over time to keep pace with costs than public housing subsidies do and make it easier for housing agencies to obtain private financing to fund renovations. Policymakers should then ensure that the converted developments remain subject to strong tenant protections and long-term affordability guarantees.

Policymakers should also consider increasing funding for HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI), which supports both renovation and replacement of public and other subsidized housing developments and investment in the surrounding neighborhoods. HUD is in the process of evaluating CNI’s ongoing impact, and policymakers should take those results into consideration.^[98]

Project-based assistance can also be used to ensure that people with the lowest incomes have access to new subsidized housing. This is particularly valuable in neighborhoods where tenant-based vouchers are hard to use. Most new project-based assistance is provided through project-based vouchers (PBVs), which are especially effective for expanding choice since PBV residents have the right to move with the next tenant-based voucher that becomes available after they have lived in a development for a year. State and local housing agencies are permitted to project-base up to 30 percent of their vouchers (and often more, since some types of PBVs are exempt from the 30 percent cap). Most could project-base additional vouchers without hitting that limit, and expanding the size of the voucher program would further increase the availability of both project-based and tenant-based vouchers.

It will be important, however, to ensure that most vouchers remain tenant based, since tenant-based assistance also has a central role to play in expanding choice and helping people afford housing.^[99] In addition, policymakers should extend the right to move with a tenant-based voucher after a year — which project-based voucher residents already have — to other types of project-based assistance (including PBRA and public housing) and institute reforms to make this right easier to use, so that all people who receive federal rental assistance have the option to move if they wish to do so.

Invest in Under-Resourced Neighborhoods

At the same time policymakers seek to enable people to choose from a wider variety of neighborhoods, they should also act to ensure that no one is denied access to critical resources, amenities, and services because of where they live. Many areas with high poverty rates also struggle with a range of other challenges — from under-resourced schools to environmental hazards to inadequate parks and other public facilities — which result from a long history of underinvestment and discrimination.

Housing policy can help address the challenges of under-resourced neighborhoods. For example, some high-poverty neighborhoods have many vacant or deteriorating housing units, so grants and loans for repairs and ongoing voucher subsidies that pay enough rent to cover maintenance and repair costs can help improve conditions.

But many of the measures that are needed go beyond housing policy, including investments or reforms in areas such as education, workforce development, transportation, policing, health, parks, and environmental protection. And broader fiscal and political reforms also have an important role to play in ensuring that all local governments have adequate revenues to meet the needs of their communities and that residents of every neighborhood can influence decisions that affect them. Taken together, these interventions can help bring about a future where every neighborhood has the resources its residents need to thrive.

Appendix

Interactive Charts and Tables

Explore the data by metro area and household type for the 100 most populous metro areas using the charts and tables below. For more detailed metro-level data, download the supplemental spreadsheet.^[100]

Methodology and Data Sources

Data Sources and Definitions

Poverty rate: Data on poverty by census tract are from the 2017-2021 American Community Survey, Table S1701: Poverty Status in the Past 12 Months. High-poverty neighborhoods are census tracts with poverty rates at or above 30 percent, and low-poverty neighborhoods, under 10 percent.

Total population by race/ethnicity: Data on total population by race/ethnicity are from the 2020 Decennial Census, Table P2: Hispanic or Latino, and not Hispanic or Latino by Race.

Households receiving federal rental assistance: Data on households receiving federal rental assistance are from a 2020 dataset from the HUD Office of Policy Development and Research, obtained through a research agreement. This dataset contains demographic and location information collected through HUD Form 50058 through December 2020. Race and ethnicity of assisted households were determined using data on the head of household.

Metropolitan areas: We define metropolitan areas using U.S. Census metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). MSAs consist of the county or counties (or equivalent entities) associated with at least one urbanized area of at least 50,000 people, plus adjacent counties having a high degree of social and economic integration with the core as measured through commuting ties.^[101] We use September 2018 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) MSA delineations.^[102] We identify the 100 most populous MSAs using data from the 2020 Decennial Census, Table P1: Total Population.^[103]

Neighborhoods: Census tracts are small, relatively permanent geographic subdivisions of a county or equivalent entity; they generally have a population between 1,200 and 8,000 people, with an optimum size of 4,000. We use census tracts as neighborhood proxies. Where appropriate, we aggregate all census tracts in a given MSA to calculate metropolitan-level measures.^[104] We use census tract boundaries from the 2010 decennial census and incorporate numbering and other geographic changes from 2011 and 2012. There are 47,401 census tracts in the most populous 100 MSAs, accounting for 67 percent of the total population nationally (including Puerto Rico).

Geographic adjustments: The Census Bureau changes tract geography boundaries every ten years to account for population changes, with the most recent changes occurring in 2020. While the 2020 HUD data on assisted households use 2010 census tract geographies, we decided to use more recent 2017-2021 ACS and 2020 Decennial Census data based on 2020 census tract geographies. We match the ACS and Decennial Census data to the HUD data using the IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) 2020 to 2010 Block Group crosswalk.^[105]

For consistency, we treat the Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown, NY MSA as part of the New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA MSA due to it losing MSA status from 2013 to 2018.

We rely on Missouri Census Data Center’s MABLE/Geocorr 18 crosswalks in our analysis, which do not include Puerto Rico. To include the San Juan-Bayamón-Caguas, PR MSA in our analysis, we created crosswalks using the Census Bureau’s September 2018 OMB MSA delineation file and the 2010 ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) to census tract relationship file.^[106]

Voucher-affordable rental units: We consider a rental unit to be affordable to someone using a housing voucher if its gross rent is below the prevailing Small Area Fair Market Rent (SAFMR). HUD sets SAFMRs to the 40^th percentile of each ZIP code’s rent distribution. A family with a voucher pays about 30 percent of their income for rent and utilities, and the voucher covers the remainder up to a payment standard set by the state or local housing agency, which is generally within 10 percent of the Fair Market Rent (FMR). HUD generally sets the FMR to the 40^th percentile rent for the entire metropolitan area. Because SAFMRs are based on rents in particular ZIP codes, they reflect neighborhood rents more accurately than metro-level FMRs.^[107] All housing agencies in metro areas are permitted to base their payment standards on SAFMRs instead of FMRs; housing agencies in 65 metro areas are required to do so. In 2016 HUD began requiring housing agencies in 24 metro areas to use SAFMRs, and in 2023 expanded that list to another 41 areas.

We used data from the following sources to calculate the number of voucher-affordable units in metropolitan census tracts:

• 2017-2021 American Community Survey, Table B25063, which contains counts of renter-occupied units by their gross rent;^[108]
• fiscal year 2021 Small Area Fair Market Rents;^[109]
• fiscal year 2021 Fair Market Rents;^[110]
• 2020 HUD Tract-to-USPS ZIP Code crosswalk;^[111]
• Missouri Census Data Center’s MABLE/Geocorr 18 Tract-to-ZCTA crosswalk;^[112] and
• Missouri Census Data Center’s MABLE/Geocorr 18 Tract-to-CBSA crosswalk.

We compute census tract estimates of all rental units with gross rents below the prevailing two-bedroom SAFMR. HUD generates SAFMRs based on the number of bedrooms in a unit. However, the American Community Survey only publishes census tract counts of all rental units with detailed gross rent values, without specifying the number of bedrooms. Because two-bedroom rental units are the modal rental unit in the nation and because most families with children using vouchers consist of one adult with two children, we use the two-bedroom SAFMR. Consequently, we estimate voucher-affordable rental units as all rental units (independent of bedroom size) in the tract with gross rents below the two-bedroom SAFMR.

To do this, we join ZIP code-level SAFMRs to the tract-level gross rent data using census tract-to-ZIP code correspondence files. Some ZIP codes span multiple metro areas and so are assigned multiple SAFMRs. To ensure the correct SAFMRs are always assigned to tracts, metro area codes are first joined to the tract-to-ZIP code correspondence files and SAFMRs are then matched to tracts by using combined ZIP code-metro area codes. Gross rent data for census tracts are compared to a weighted average of the SAFMRs for all ZIP codes intersecting with a tract. Rental units are aggregated for all gross rent increment categories below the weighted average SAFMR. Linear interpolation is used to compute the number of units below the SAFMR and above the adjacent highest rent increment threshold, based on the methodology used in McClure, Schwartz, and Taghavi (2015).^[113]

While the highest ACS gross rent category is “$3,500 and over,” some 118 ZIP codes have SAFMRs at or above $3,500. For tracts in these ZIP codes, we use 2017-2021 ACS Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) to calculate each ZIP code’s 90^th, 95^th, and 98^th percentile rent for units of all sizes based on a weighted average of all Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs) intersecting with that ZIP code. We then set the upper bound for the interpolation computations at the rent percentile that first exceeds the SAFMR, starting with 90^th percentile, then 95^th percentile, and finally 98^th percentile rent.

National figures for voucher-affordable units are based on SAFMRs in tracts where they are available. The remaining tracts without SAFMRs are based on fiscal year 2021 Fair Market Rents, using the same process we use for SAFMRs.

Limitations and Areas for Future Research

We believe our process for calculating voucher-affordable units is the best approach available, in light of the ACS data limitations outlined above. However, this interpolation method does not account for instances in a small number of high-cost metros where SAFMRs exceed the highest gross rent category in the ACS data. In these instances, we adjust our interpolation computations by approximating an upper bound using rent percentiles, as described above. This method will pose research challenges for a growing number of metros as SAFMRs continue to rise, unless the Census Bureau expands their ACS gross rent categories to include categories capturing more expensive rental units.

ACS gross rent data is also limited by not being disaggregated by bedroom size, as described above. As a result, there is no way to limit the number of voucher-affordable units to those with two or more bedrooms. This measure therefore includes some studio and one-bedroom units that would be too small for the typical voucher-assisted family of one parent and two children. It also mostly misses three-bedroom (and larger) units, likely partly offsetting the inclusion of smaller units. We would ideally be able to identify the number of units for each bedroom size based on the corresponding SAFMR.

As outlined above, we decided to crosswalk more recent ACS and decennial census data on neighborhood characteristics based on 2020 census tract geographies instead of relying on older data based on 2010 census tract geographies. However, the tradeoff is a lower level of accuracy as the crosswalked data are estimated based on the tract’s share of the population that overlaps between 2020 and 2010 census tract geographies.

Since we rely on 2020 data for the location of HUD-assisted households, our analysis does not capture changes in their location in the following years. This largely applies to voucher-assisted households who are not tied to units in specific locations. In addition, some public housing developments have been demolished, replaced in another location, or converted to other types of subsidies since 2020, and some PBRA owners have opted to withdraw their units from the program upon the expiration of their contracts — all changes that would affect findings on the location of households in those programs. Finally, this analysis does not include the perspectives of HUD-assisted individuals and families. Knowing what assisted families are looking for in a neighborhood, and whether those needs are being met by federal rental assistance programs, is a key area for further research.