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Housing Vouchers Could Be At Risk In 2008 |
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Housing Vouchers Could Be At Risk In 2008: This fall, Congress will seek to finalize its appropriations bills for fiscal year 2008, including the Transportation-HUD bill, which funds "Section 8" Housing Choice Vouchers and other affordable housing programs. Section 8 vouchers are the nation's leading source of housing assistance for low-income elderly, people with disabilities, and families with children, helping approximately 2 million households to secure modest, affordable rental housing in the private market. Congress will have two key issues to resolve in the Section 8 voucher portion of the HUD appropriations bill: how much money to provide to renew existing vouchers and how to distribute those funds among the 2,400 state and local housing agencies that administer the program. On the first issue --- the amount of renewal funding for vouchers --- the House and Senate appropriations bills both improve significantly on the President's budget request. The President proposed a hard freeze in voucher renewal funding (a freeze with no adjustment for rising costs), even though rents and utility costs continue to increase across the country. In the 2007 appropriations act signed into law in February, Congress changed direction, restoring stability to the voucher program by directing the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to distribute voucher renewal funds based on an agency's leasing rates and costs in the most recent 12-month period. The Senate's 2008 HUD appropriations bill continues this reform, directing HUD to distribute funding based on agencies' leasing and costs over the most recent 12 months. In contrast, the House appropriations bill halts this progress, directing HUD to base agencies' share of voucher renewal funding for 2008 on their dollar allocation of renewal funding for 2007.
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