Fifty Years of Tenant-Based Rental Assistance: Introducing a Symposium on the History and Future of the Housing Choice Voucher Program

Peggy Bailey
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Brian J. McCabe
Georgetown University

With the passage of the Housing and Community Development Act in 1974, the U.S. Congress authorized the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to create a new paradigm for rental assistance. Up until that point, the federal government supported low-income renters through project-based public housing developments and subsidies for private developers to build affordable housing (Schwartz, 2014; Vale and Freemark, 2012). However, the radical departure from these historical models transformed the role of the federal government in the provision of housing. During the next 50 years, tenant-based rental assistance would emerge as the largest program administered by HUD. In fiscal year 2023, with Congress allocating more than $30 billion for the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, tenant-based rental assistance programs made up approximately 45 percent of HUD’s total budget (HUD, 2024a).