Blog: Homelessness Ends Here

Will Fischer, a Senior Policy Analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, testified yesterday at the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity on The Section 8 Voucher Reform Act (SEVRA). Fischer notes that "The bill would enable state and local housing agencies to use available funds to make housing affordable to more needy families, a crucial measure at a time when poverty and homelessness are rising. In addition, it would sharply reduce administrative burdens for housing agencies and private owners, strengthen work supports, and provide more flexible and effective assistance to low-income families."

According to Fischer, SEVRA would also:

• Establish a stable, fair voucher funding system that would allocate resources more efficiently and encourage housing agencies to serve as many families as they can with the funds they receive.
• Simplify rules for setting tenant rent payments, while continuing to cap rents at 30 percent of the tenant’s income.
• Streamline housing quality inspections to encourage private owners to participate in the program.
• Protect tenants of owners who face financial difficulties by giving housing agencies new tools to ensure that buildings are kept in livable condition.
• Help develop and preserve affordable housing by facilitating use of “project-based” vouchers (which, unlike more widely used “tenant-based” vouchers, can be tied to a particular development).
• Expand housing choice by linking the “Fair Market Rent” that limits the value of a voucher more closely to local market rents, and making it easier for a family with a voucher to move beyond the local housing agency’s jurisdiction.
• Strengthen the Family Self-Sufficiency program so that it will provide employment counseling and financial incentives to a greater number of families, establish a new earnings disregard, and take other measures to support work.

From his conclusion:

SEVRA would build on the voucher program’s many strengths through a series of measured, targeted improvements that, taken together, would deliver important benefits to housing agencies, private owners, and low-income families. Moreover, because several of the bill’s provisions extend beyond the voucher program, it also would improve the public housing and project-based Section 8 programs.

There are three reasons why it is important that Congress not only act on SEVRA, but do so expeditiously. First, SEVRA is already long overdue. More than 10 years have passed since the last major authorizing legislation affecting the voucher program, the 1998 Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act. As with any government program, there are substantial benefits to be reaped from updating the voucher program as circumstances change and lessons are learned.

Second, enacting the bill promptly would allow the new Administration to use it as a foundation for efforts to strengthen the voucher program and other housing assistance programs through administrative or regulatory action. If Congress delays action, HUD may undertake some administrative streamlining and other reforms, but such efforts would be limited by the constraints of the current statutory framework and likely would require revision once SEVRA is enacted. As a result, later enactment of SEVRA would increase administrative burdens on HUD and its partners.

Last and most important, SEVRA is urgently needed to help low-income families cope with the consequences of the economic downturn, including rising homelessness and poverty and widespread foreclosures. The bill’s provisions enabling agencies to assist more families with available resources and protecting tenants of owners facing financial difficulty are particularly timely. The sooner SEVRA is enacted, the sooner it will begin helping families that are clinging to their homes or are already doubled up with friends or relatives, living in shelters, or on the streets.