Housing Choice Voucher

On July 26, HUD issued a notice announcing a new initiative to provide Tenant Protection Vouchers (TPVs) to youth aging out of foster care. HUD describes the program, known as the Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) initiative, as one designed to address the unmet housing needs of youth aging of foster care, who often experience high rates of homelessness after exiting the child welfare system.

While HUD’s Family Unification Program (FUP) is intended to serve both families and youth involved with the child welfare system, 95 percent of current FUP participants are families, according to the notice. Because so few PHAs administer FUP vouchers-- only 280 nationally--eligible youth experience dual barriers to receiving a voucher in that families are more likely to be referred and many youths may live in a community where FUP vouchers are not an available resource.

To address the challenges of serving foster youth through FUP and preventing future homeless episodes, the FYI initiative will provide TPVs for FUP-eligible youth to PHAs who are not currently administering FUP vouchers. PHAs interested in receiving a TPV for an eligible youth will be required to create a partnership infrastructure with their local child welfare agency that is similar to what is required of FUP grantees. Eligibility criteria for the initiative follows FUP eligibility guidelines for youth. For more detailed instructions regarding the application process and eligibility requirements, please see the full notice.

The National Center for Housing and Child Welfare is hosting a series of webinars on the FYI initiative, and some of the content may be of interest to CLPHA members who are considering applying for FYI vouchers. Registration for the webinars can be found here.

CLPHA would like to hear from members who are considering applying for FYI vouchers. To indicate your interest or to raise questions or concerns about this new initiative, please contact CLPHA’s Senior Research & Policy Analyst Emily Warren at ewarren@clpha.org.

From Next City:

"The need for this program far exceeds available resources.”

That was how the Housing Authority of the City of Austin put it when it reopened its waitlist for Housing Choice Vouchers last September for the first time in four years. The Housing Choice Voucher program, which was previously known as Section 8, helps low-income families make up the difference between the cost of rent on the private market and what they’re able to afford. In 2014, the last time the Authority opened the waitlist, it got 20,000 applicants. It whittled them down to 2,500 through a lottery. It was expecting to do the same again last year, randomly selecting another 2,000 applicants just to get in the line for a voucher.

But even when a family gets a voucher, says Michael Gerber, president and CEO of the housing authority, they may find it very difficult to find a landlord who will accept it. As Next City has reported before, Texas landlords are allowed to reject tenants based on their source of income. And like a lot of growing cities, Austin is facing a critical shortage of affordable housing across the board, which is especially acute at the lowest end of the income scale.

“While a housing authority I don’t think has a responsibility for fixing all of [the housing shortage], we certainly feel a responsibility to try to address it as best we can,” Gerber says. “It’s hard to say to that resident, ‘Here’s a housing choice voucher. We know you’re not going to be able to use it.’”

So as part of its effort to make more housing available to voucher holders, the housing authority is continuing to expand a strategy of acquiring housing units on the private market and making some of them affordable for low and moderate-income people. Recently, the housing authority, in partnership with the affordable-housing investment group Community Development Trust, bought a 452-unit apartment complex in Southeast Austin, as the Austin American-Statesman reported. The authority is planning to rent the units to tenants earning no more than 80 percent of median family income, which works out to $48,200 for an individual or $68,800 for a family of four. And it’s planning to market at least 15 percent of the units to voucher holders and tenants receiving assistance through HUD’s Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program.

Read Next City's article "Austin Housing Authority Buys Private Apartments to Rent to Section 8 Tenants," featuring the Housing Authority of the City of Austin.

On July 29 and August 6, CLPHA co-hosted webinars with the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) on the Mainstream Voucher Program. The July 29 webinar, for CLPHA members only, covered the recent Mainstream Voucher NOFA that is due on September 5th. CLPHA and CSH staff also discussed common implementation challenges and reviewed recent guidance from HUD on administrative practices for Mainstream such as waitlist management .The webinar slides are available here. 

The August 6 webinar included participants from PHAs, Continuums of Care (CoCs), and a variety of service providers. In addition to presenting an overview of the Mainstream Voucher program, staff from CLPHA, CSH, and the Housing Authority of the City of Austin answered participant questions, discussed implementation issues in more detail, and reviewed strategies for working with service partners most effectively. CLPHA received a number of questions during the webinar on topics including waitlist management practices, administration of program referrals from local Coordinated Entry systems, and verification of homeless and disability status. The webinar recording is available here. Specific questions about the recent NOFA can be sent to HUD at MainstreamVouchers@hud.gov.

CLPHA members with questions about the webinars or Mainstream Voucher program may contact CLPHA’s Health Research & Policy Manager Stephen Lucas at slucas@clpha.org.