Families and individuals seeking public housing and housing choice vouchers (HCVs) face a long wait, reveals a new study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC).
To dig into the issue, NLIHC recently surveyed 320 public housing authorities about their waiting lists. The results are sobering:
· 53% of HCV waiting lists were closed to new applicants, and 65% of HCV waiting lists closed to the general public had been shut for at least one year;
· The median HCV waiting list had a wait time of 1.5 years, and 25% of HCV waiting lists had a wait time of three years or longer;
· 11% of public housing waiting lists were closed to new applicants, and 37% of public housing waiting lists closed to the general public had been closed for at least one year;
· The median public housing waiting list had a wait time of nine months, and 25% of public housing waiting lists had a wait time of 1.5 years or longer;
· Families with children accounted for 60% of households on the average HCV waiting list and 46% of households on the typical public housing waiting list; and
· Seniors comprised the most common type of household on 15% of the public housing waiting lists for which these data were provided.
“Most of the poor families that are unable to obtain affordable homes spend more than half of their limited incomes on housing. They face impossible choices between paying the rent or paying for food, medicine, transportation, or child care,” says Diane Yentel, NLIHC president and CEO. “Congress can make more housing affordable to the lowest-income people by significantly increasing investments in deeply targeted and highly effective tools like housing choice vouchers, public housing, and the National Housing Trust Fund.”
Several bills in Congress would expand funding for critical affordable housing programs. These bills include the Pathways out of Poverty Act (H.R. 2721) and the Common Sense Housing Investment Act (H.R. 1662), which propose modest changes to the mortgage interest deduction to provide additional funds for both vouchers and public housing, as well as the National Housing Trust Fund; the Ending Homelessness Act of 2016 (H.R. 4888), which would increase funding for vouchers; and the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act (S. 3237), which would better target the low-income housing tax credit program to extremely low-income renters.
For more information, read NLIHC’s Housing Spotlight: The Long Wait for a Home.
