Housing Vouchers as a Key Piece of Houston’s Housing Strategy

In the Kinder Institute’s Urban Edge, Stephen Averill Sherman explains how housing vouchers have been a key component of the Houston Housing Authority’s (HHA) strategy to combat homelessness and housing insecurity.

According to Sherman, Houston’s voucher program serves 10 times as many households as public housing, “making the voucher program an important — if imperfect — way of providing affordable housing.”

“Despite HCV being the single largest affordable federal rental housing subsidy (accounting for 45% of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s budget), the need far outstrips the resources of this imperfect but important program.” Sherman points out that in 2018, the waitlist for 19,000 available vouchers had over 150,000 households on it.

Although the piece was written before the federal government took any action regarding housing vouchers, steps taken by the administration last week indicate that it could do away with the federal housing voucher program.

Sherman notes that “A voucher provides guaranteed shelter, which conveys many well-documented health, education and economic outcomes.” The relatively low government investment in vouchers arguably yields exponential returns in both economic and social benefits.