Designing an Alternative Rent Policy for the Housing Choice Voucher Program

James Riccio
MDRC

In 2013, four Moving to Work (MTW) agencies joined the Rent Reform Demonstration to design and test an alternative approach for subsidizing private-market rents paid by families participating in the Housing Choice Voucher program. The new policy’s goals are to support tenants’ efforts to increase their earnings, reduce the administrative burden on public housing agencies, and protect families from increased hardship, all while remaining cost-neutral relative to the existing rent policy. This article describes the trade-offs associated with different reform options and the process through which the four agencies considered those trade-offs and came to a consensus on an alternative policy to test.