The Key To Tapping The Promise Of Vouchers Is Trust

Now that we’ve looked at the history of the Section 8 program, Congressman Ryan’s critique of the program from a decade ago, and the program’s function today, we can consider ideas about how to improve the program in the future. The idea behind Section 8 – offer people help to pay rent in housing available in the private market – was born out of the recognition that buying land, financing, building, and operating housing is expensive, complicated, and risky. The idea behind the program was to let the private sector do all that, and help people with less money make choices about where they want to live without the government having to build and manage housing. It’s a good idea. But it isn’t working. Let’s look at why and what might come next.

Both the left and the right have some ideological issues with programs that provide simple, easy to get, cash assistance. When it comes to housing on the left, there is a genuine and sincere concern about trying to help people who are poor. Simply giving them cash seems to miss concerns that people need “services,” however that is defined. On the right, cash payments are seen to promote indolence and inflation. More money means people lose the incentive to work and all that money has a tendency to fuel more spending and higher prices. Both left and right are concerned about fraud and abuse, the left worries about housing providers providing unsafe and rundown apartments and the right worries recipients will find ways to game the system, getting money when they don’t deserve it.

Government ends up trying to accommodate both of these concerns, and the Section 8 program suffers from the burden of requiring that people who get vouchers live in units approved and inspected by the local agencies. People who need help with rent are forced to fill out paperwork proving they qualify and then they have to wait for vouchers then go out and hunt for a unit. I’ve already outlined how the program ends up failing residents, and housing providers. And I’ve outlined why I think cash is the best solution often over the years, even suggesting it is really a conservative policy.

There is an answer to the problems of participation that have seen the program with many unused vouchers: let people use them where they currently live. Here’s how it would solve the problems I raised in the last post.

More Resident Participation: Allow Voucher Use Immediately

In the last post we saw how people who get vouchers have 60 days to use them. That isn’t enough time for anyone to find a new apartment. If you’ve ever moved you know that it is a hassle; now try finding a needle in a haystack, a qualifying unit priced right and inspected by a local Public Housing Agency. The current Section 8 program is inefficient at best and cruel at worst, putting people who are already struggling to pay rent in the position of going on an Easter egg hunt for the perfect unit. We all know that such a thing doesn’t exist, and in the early experiments with vouchers, it was clear people chose to stay close to friends and family.

More Housing Provider Participation: Let Any Housing Provider Take Voucher

A bold move would be to abolish any and all requirements for housing providers to take vouchers. Imagine a young family struggling to make ends meet – maybe a newly immigrated family – are already paying rent somewhere. They aren’t living in the best place in the best neighborhood, but they’re making it work. Their kids are getting used to their school, and everything they need is nearby and somehow, they’re paying 29.99% of their gross monthly income on rent. If tomorrow rent goes up and their income goes down, and they qualify for a voucher HUD and the local PHA would require them to move to use their voucher. Based on the study I cited in the last post, the housing provider wouldn’t care where her rent came from, and in fact would likely see this as a benefit and a reason to keep the family in place.

Efficiency is Compassionate: Housing All By Itself Solves Problems

Notwithstanding Ryan’s conclusions to the contrary, The Family Options Study, a really deeply wonky and comprehensive study with lots of sample and participation over years, proved to my satisfaction that simply paying a family’s rent relieves all sorts of pressures and opens all sorts of opportunities. My own experience with cheap, simple, and easy to get housing for Farmworker families is consistent with these findings. When I worked in nonprofit housing, our Farmworker housing facility offered families a large hotel room for $10 a night. Families freed from the pressure of having to move around settled in, allowing their kids to finish school. The value of just this is inestimable, and the study validated that.

We Need To Believe In People Who Earn Less Money

Poverty is a terrible thing. It eats away at people’s self-respect and deprives people of the peace and mental focus afforded to people who don’t have to spend all their time just surviving. Yet poverty is a great motivator for good and ill. Trusting people, I am convinced, taps the good and socially beneficial tendencies in people. When policies are based on outliers, cheaters and bad actors, people in the middle feel like they’re cheaters and bad actors too. Giving people the money and opportunity to use it freely to support their own choices seems not only very American to me, but truly compassionate. The Section 8 program should become a beacon of this kind of optimism in our fellow Americans who happen to have less money.