Can Rental Markets Absorb a Major Voucher Expansion?

Will Fischer
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Growing calls to expand housing vouchers or similar rental assistance and ultimately make them universal have raised attention on whether rental markets could absorb assistance for millions more households. In practice, the Housing Choice Voucher program has a long and continuing record of assisting additional households, and research—although limited—indicates that voucher expansion has done little to drive up market rents. This reflects several factors making vouchers easier to absorb and less prone to inflate rents than some critics assume, including the large share of families receiving vouchers who already rent housing, although often with very high rent burdens. There is no indication that the program has hit a limit on expansion, so absent a major change, it is reasonable to expect that markets could continue to absorb substantial numbers of added vouchers. Making rental assistance available to all eligible households, however, would require an unprecedentedly large expansion. There are strong reasons to believe this expansion would be feasible, but guaranteed assistance would likely be more successful if accompanied by rental assistance reforms giving participants access to more of the housing stock and broader interventions in tight rental markets to expand supply and limit excessive rent growth.