Direct Rental Assistance: Returning to the Roots of Housing Allowances

Paul Joice
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Katherine O’Regan
Ingrid Gould Ellen
New York University

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not represent the official positions or policies of the Office of Policy Development and Research, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or the U.S. Government.

At $30 billion in expenditures annually, the Housing Choice Voucher program is the federal government’s largest rental housing assistance program. Although seen as highly successful in many ways, the voucher program suffers from three interrelated challenges: the program imposes high administrative burdens on recipients, landlords, and housing authorities; many recipients are unable to successfully use their vouchers to rent homes after waiting years to receive them; and program rules distort behaviors in ways that undermine the program’s goal of leveraging market efficiency. Amid interest in reforming or expanding the voucher program, this article considers whether and how providing the voucher rental subsidy directly to the recipient might mitigate those challenges. It outlines a set of design considerations for such a program and proposes a demonstration that could inform both voucher reforms and a direct rental assistance program.