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Title
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(HUD) Housing Choice Voucher Program
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Date
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2022
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Description
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2022 student presentation on the housing choice voucher program.
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Format
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mp4
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Language
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English
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Contributor
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Emery Shelley
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transcript of
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Speaker 1 [00:00,131 - 00:31,103]: Yes, thanks. So the next person up is going to be Emery, and she's going to be reporting on the home ownership program, the voucher program. And then we'll go from there. So you have 20 minutes. Hi. Are you ready? Yes. Okay, great.
Speaker 0 [00:31,744 - 01:01,314]: I'm sorry. One second. I had it up, but for some reason it was... Okay, there you go. Oops.
Speaker 1 [01:04,735 - 01:05,875]: There you go. Can everyone see?
Speaker 0 [01:07,716 - 24:17,135]: Great. So this semester I was researching the Housing Choice Voucher Homeownership Program that is in place in Providence. Some background on that program. So it's actually a program is. to talk about the history of the Homeownership Program, we kind of have to start at the Housing Choice Voucher Program. So that is, so the Housing Choice Voucher Program is a program created by HUD in 1974, which provides subsidized rent as a percentage of tenants income to low-income tenants who qualify. Oops, sorry, I gotta move you guys. um yeah so the idea behind the section eight the housing choice bachelor program is also referred to as section eight the idea behind the program was to combat like um concentrated property that was seen within project-based uh housing projects um so in practice this is a lot more complicated as we'll we'll get into um so the homeownership program was an addendum to Section 8. It was initially passed in 1998, but it didn't go into effect until 2000. And beyond that, it was individual local PHA's decisions whether they chose to implement this program. So some people started doing it right away. Others started throughout the early 2000s. So to participate in this program, there are a few eligibility requirements. You have to meet some income and employment requirements. But then beyond that, it's pretty much defined by the individual PHA how else they're going to define eligibility requirements. Some PHAs require participation in programs that they offer, such as the Family Self-Sufficiency Program, which I'll talk about later. Um, but in general, the homeowner, the HBC home ownership, HCV home ownership program was seen as like a way to open doors for section eight tenants into, um, the American dream of home ownership and, uh, yeah. And to get them, sorry. Okay, I realized that I forgot to specifically make a slide about methods, but so the methods I used for this study were a combination of interviews. I was fairly limited ultimately in the interviews that I could have with people, so I supplemented that with a pretty extensive literature review. The literature review took academic papers as well as like HUD and other governmental commissioned reports about these programs and sort of combined that data with the data and responses seen from actual tenants. I also was able to get a hold of some other academic papers that had been done in other places that did have firsthand interviews with tenants that I could reference as well to get that additional perspective. So getting into what I actually found in this study. So a lot of these failures of the homeownership program kind of jump off of existing problems within the Housing Choice Voucher Program. So part of that is the Housing Choice Voucher Program, as I mentioned before, doesn't really do what it set out to do. It kind of failed to combat this issue of concentrated poverty. Ultimately, tenants have really limited options for a number of reasons, first being that HUD calculates fair market rents, which is how the stipend, the subsidized amount for Section 8 tenants is determined. So they used to calculate fair market rents using entire metropolitan areas, which ultimately resulted in voucher holders not really being able to afford much more than they already could because a lot of suburban higher income areas were included in this calculation and made the subsidized rent just not not accurate to most areas of the metropolitan area. Now, I'll talk about this a little later, as HUD instituted a rule allowing for fair market brands to be calculated based on zip code in 2016. So a lot of places are still implementing this and a lot of places have not implemented it yet. Providence implemented it in, I think they passed the rule in 2018, but it went into effect in 2020. Another reason for these limited options are landlord discrimination. A lot of landlords refuse to rent to Section 8 tenants. They use logics that are very reminiscent of white flight, suggesting that all of their other tenants will move out if they rent to Section 8 tenants. And going on top of this, landlords in particularly low-income areas will specifically recruit Section 8 tenants because they know that they can get a consistent check from them. Another reason for limited options are HQS health and safety inspections, which all properties that use Section 8 vouchers are required to go through. These inspections, while looking for specific federally designated health and safety standards, often limit tenants' housing options because they disqualify options that are in neighborhoods that tenants are familiar with and have access to resources that they trust and can afford, but maybe by certain standards not determined by the actual tenant are determined, the property is determined not of a proper quality. All of this, as I said before, kind of results in the HCD program really just not living up to what it was meant to do. Yeah. And then going off of that, the home ownership program, the HCDH program, the biggest thing I ran into is there's just very little formal information on long-term outcomes of this program. So the last HUD commission report was in 2006. The program wasn't available to PHAs until 2000. One part of this program is that it offers roughly, for most people, 10 to 15 year mortgages. So given the program started in 2000 and the last commission report was in 2006, there's no data about long-term outcomes once this assistance runs out. There's absolutely no formal analysis of what happened to tenants who did buy a home through this program and then what happened after their assistance ran out. That was the biggest issue. There's very little literature surrounding this. And additionally, tenants, HCD participants had little to no knowledge about this program. In the study that I was able to get additional tenant perspectives from, that study specifically looked at tenants who did have knowledge of the program. So it eliminated people who had absolutely no knowledge of the program. But even within that study, the tenants specifically noted that they had very little knowledge of the program. They had heard of it before, but specifically did not participate because they had extremely limited information. Additionally, a really common thing was a lot of tenants had a lot of anxiety about the prospect of homeownership. They saw homeownership as something that was done when people were in financially stable positions and thus were very unsure about the uncertainties of and unpredictable costs of homeownership. The lack of information provided by PHAs only reinforced those fears because there was no access to any kind of information about what would the homeownership program even entailed, what kind of support would be given throughout the process, etc. Yeah, going on top of that, the 10 to 15 year assistance periods given that most mortgages are 30 years, brings up major questions, especially as I mentioned before, given there is not any formal reporting about any long-term outcomes of this program. This in turn also adds on to the anxiety that tenants face about the program. And then in Providence specifically, this program, I was never able to get an exact date for when this program started in Providence, but as of 2017, they assert that they've helped 71 Section 8 residents buy a home and currently have 55, well, not currently, but as of 2017, have 55 recipients still in the program getting assistance. Given that Providence's PHA has almost 3,000 vouchers, this number is pretty small. The people currently in the program amounts to about 2% of the total HCD participants. Conversations with a Providence voucher holder revealed that many people who have been in the program for many, many years were unaware of this program. And learning about it was actually extremely frustrating because they felt they could have been paying into something that some kind of long-term wealth equity rather than paying into rent for however many years. Additionally, in Providence, there is no mention of this program in their administrative plan, which, based on the actual text in the legislation of the rule, PHAs are actually required to, if they offer the program, list the specific detailed policies about it within their administrative plan. Additionally, they're required to notify tenants about this specific program, the HCVH, during their initial briefing section as a Section 8 tenant. But in the itemized list of what is discussed during this briefing section, which is in the administrative plan, there's no mention of the HCVH program. So that's what it looks like in Providence. So here's some numbers of just a breakdown of the Housing Choice Voucher Program in Providence. And it lists all of the programs that go off of this. So this is Veterans Assistance. Here's just the Section 8 Basic Ritual Assistance. And then here's the Home Ownership Program. So you'd see that's about 2% of the total number of Section 8 recipients. are within the home ownership program and then i have some additional numbers here um this is pop by gender you can see that most people who are in the home ownership and within the housing choice voucher are single female headed households um yeah and then additionally um this is the racial breakdown so while the numbers are not um extremely different you if you do you break down these calculations, there is a higher percentage of white people who have been involved in the home ownership program than there are of any other race, which speaks to something that Jasmine and Marleny also spoke about, which is that people who are privileged enough to know more about the system tend to be able to be involved in these additional programs easier. Yeah. Okay, so another major thing that I noticed within both the Housing Choice Voucher and the Housing Choice Voucher Homeownership Program was just paternalism riddled throughout it. So one point is these HQS inspections. So these federally determined health and safety standards unfortunately often go head to head with what tenants actually want, which is why it limits their options so much. oftentimes, and this is actually noted by PHA administrators and health and safety inspectors themselves, who were forced to go by the aspects of their job that told them to go by these certain health and safety standards. Oops. But noted that often would go head to head with tenant's wants. So ultimately tenants have no authority in this and will lose options that are, lose viable housing options because of it. Another additional thing is that PHAs control who knows about this program. So tenants really have no way to understand their options unless a PHA administrator decides to tell them their options. A conversation with a Providence public housing authority representative suggested that most people in Providence find out about the program simply because a PHA administrator that they spoke to mentioned that it might be a good fit for them. Combined with the relative lack of information about the program on their website, in their administrative plan, and elsewhere, this speaks to a larger element of paternalism, suggesting that tenants don't have the capability to know what is right for them. Additionally, adding on to this, the referral basis that the system essentially operates on raises questions about whether the same logics that caused inequities in housing in the first place remain true in this situation. Another thing that was pretty significant in this area was the Family Self-Sufficiency Program, which is, in Providence, a required part of participation in the homeownership program. This is not something that's specific to Providence. This is something a lot of PHAs do. However, this program, even in its name implies that those who are forced to rely on public services are are not self-sufficient while those who are not in that situation are, which is, as we know, simply not true. People who do not rely on public services, rely on other forms of wealth, such as generational wealth, that do not mean that they are self-sufficient and just simply mean that they are not disadvantaged by their, they're not part of a historically disadvantaged group. Okay, and then throughout this analysis, I noticed often how much the experience of Section 8 tenants overlapped with the historical Black struggle for housing. Landlord and neighborhood alienation, the logic of white flight that a lot of landlords use to avoid writing to tenants with Section 8. Additionally, something I've mentioned before was Oftentimes suburban PHAs will use residential preferences in their selection process for tenants. This is often used to keep central city outsiders outside of their higher income suburbs. and is very reminiscent of racial covenants with the context of this class. Health and safety standards also harken back to the idea of blighted properties that was used to rationalize the demolition of Black neighborhoods. While it's not the same context, It is the assertion that our standards are more important than your standards and the resulting consequence of relegating those communities into very impoverished and disinvested areas where they are ultimately going to be left in exploitative situations. Additionally, the lack of secure home ownership options. So the fact that this program does not provide long-term assistance for most people who are involved and also has no, this seems to not care about the outcome, the long-term outcomes by the fact that there's no data kept on long-term outcomes or there's been no interest by HUD or by local PHAs in assessing long-term outcomes. Yeah. OK, some limitations of the study were largely due to time, but I lacked the firsthand perspectives I really hoped for. I didn't get to speak to nearly as many people in Providence or anybody in Providence who was specifically a part of this program. Part of that was a time limitation. combined with the fact that there is a relatively small number of participants in this program in Providence. I also hope to speak to people at the Providence Public Housing Authority who are more closely involved with this program. I was able to speak to a representative who could tell me a bit about how Section 8 works in Providence, but no one who had intimate knowledge of the homeownership program specifically. On top of that, there was a general lack of data and literature surrounding home ownership program. As I mentioned, there hasn't been a federally commissioned report since 2006. And apart from a couple academic publications where people have conducted their own interviews, there wasn't any local reporting on this program either. And ultimately, that made it hard to assess, get definitive answers to what the failures in implementation were and what the failures of the general program. And then some recommendations that I had coming from this were kind of twofold. So firstly, I was looking at what can individual PHAs do to address some of these issues. The first and probably most obvious thing is to do a better job advertising home ownership programs so that all people who are eligible, meaning all all Housing Choice Voucher participants at least are aware of the program and are aware of what they need to do to be eligible, etc. So just even just doing what they're already supposed to be doing, making sure that these things are advertised to people during the initial briefing session. But on top of that, mentioning it at yearly check-ins. adding supplemental information online that describes a bit more about what the eligibility requirements are, what the timeline for the program is. Another thing PHAs can do is limit their eligibility requirements, not just for the home ownership program, but for the greater voucher program as well. They have some control over discretionary policies, preference policies, and can minimize barriers in those ways. One thing that some PHAs have done elsewhere is do shorter background checks. Incarceration is often a huge barrier for people trying to participate in Section 8 or who have family members who have dealt with incarceration and instituting shorter background checks, three versus five year background checks can make a big difference in the lives of those who are dealing with those kinds of situations. Additionally, as I mentioned before, not using residential preferences can make a big difference in making sure those who really need housing can get it, even if they are not a current resident of the area they're applying. Additionally, as I mentioned, Providence already did, but using small area fair market rents can dramatically expand a tenant's options and where they can live and actually help them move out of neighborhoods that have not been serving them well. And then lastly, follow up with participants of the home ownership program. So I think that PHAs, to the best of their ability, should try to assess the outcomes of the people who have been involved in our program, even as simply as, do you still own your home? Are you still living at this place? How are you feeling? And then I noted this may be difficult without additional funding. So the second part of my recommendations. Oops. The second part of my recommendation is just on the federal level, policy surrounding low-income homeownership in general should be less directed towards maximizing homeownership and far more directed towards maximizing the stability of the homeownership that doesn't exist among lower-income tenants or lower-income owners. Additionally, I think that there should be more funding to PHAs. One, to conduct reports on long-term outcomes, or at least collect data on long-term outcomes. And two, to invest in historically disinvested communities, because ultimately a lot of this comes back to the fact that communities have not been invested in. And while HUD's policy is directed towards either moving tenants out of those communities or trying to get them to invest in buying homes. The only real way to correct historical inequities is to reinvest in those communities and make them livable places. Yeah, and then on top of that would be to conduct more federally commissioned reporting on the outcomes of this program. And then Axel.
