President's 2007 Budget Renews Same Number of Housing Vouchers Funded in 2006
President's 2007 Budget Renews Same Number of Housing Vouchers Funded in 2006, 3/13/06
The President's budget requests $15.9 billion in fiscal year 2007 for tenant-based rental assistance under the Housing Choice Voucher Program, the nation's largest low-income housing program.
Yet most local communities would face cuts due to the inefficient method that would be used to allocate funds among the more than 2,400 state and local housing agencies that administer the program.
Under this formula, the share of funding that each housing agency receives is based on the amount it was eligible to receive the previous year, adjusted by an inflation factor set by HUD.
We estimate that the budget request would underfund 70 percent of agencies in 2007, forcing them to cut the number of families they serve or reduce the average rent subsidy they provide to each family, which would raise rent burdens on needy families or have other harmful consequences.
As a result of the proposed change, communities where some units in a subsidized building are vacant at the time the subsidies are ended would permanently have fewer subsidies available to help low-income people afford housing.
