Utilization and Success Rates for Emergency Housing Vouchers: Local Contexts and Supportive Services

• In Event: Evaluating and Improving the Housing Choice Voucher Program

Abstract

The Emergency Housing Voucher (EHV) program is largest and most recent demonstration that housing vouchers can be a powerful tool to fight homelessness. Launched in response to the Covid-19 pandemic as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, over 70,000 households experiencing or at imminent risk of homelessness leased homes using an EHV at the program’s peak. These households had to overcome the many barriers documented in prior research to successfully find housing—barriers that are heightened for those who were currently experiencing homelessness—while also navigating the circumstances of the pandemic. To help them do so, the EHV program provided supplemental funding for evidence-based practices to support voucher holders’ housing searches and move-ins, and to recruit landlords to participate in the program. This mixed-method study describes the range of accomplishments, challenges, and implementation strategies for the EHV program across public housing agencies (PHAs). Using PHA-level data from the more than 600 PHAs awarded EHVs, voucher-level administrative data from a sample of 25 PHAs, and interviews with PHA staff and other stakeholders, the study focuses on three questions: 1) How do the utilization and success rates for EHVs vary between places with different housing markets conditions and other contexts? 2) How do utilization and success rates correlate with the types of supports that PHAs and partner organizations provided with the program’s supplemental funding? 3) How did PHAs decide what supportive actitives to prioritize for the program, and what steps were required to provide them? We conclude by discussing lessons from the EHV program that can be exported to other housing assistance programs for people experiencing homelessness, as well as opportunities to continue supporting current EHV tenants given the impending expiration of the program’s funding.

Author

• Ryan Finnigan, University of California, Berkeley
  Presenting Author