My interest in housing policy was sparked by my difficulty to find an affordable apartment while in college. I was curious to know how many Americans struggle with the cost burden of rent and what governmental interventions were in use. Below is a very brief literature review detailing the Section 8 Housing Voucher Policy.

The United States has had longstanding affordable housing issues (U.S. GAO, 2025) which became more prevalent after the 2008 recession as more people rented and less people bought homes. Investors bought foreclosed homes at auctions in bulk and began selling them as investments, which may have contributed to increased rents/prices of homes (U.S. GAO, 2025). The US has many programs to support affordable rental housing. The Housing Choice Voucher Program (also known as Section 8 housing) was first implemented in 1974 and was designed to alleviate the burden of a high cost of housing for low-income individuals (Leacock, 2019). It is the nation’s largest form of housing assistance and is an anti-poverty and homelessness reduction program. The intended outcomes are reduced poverty and homelessness. The program operates by giving recipients a voucher that specifies how much rental assistance they will receive. Then, when the recipient pays rent, the voucher’s subsidy is sent directly to the landlord. Usually, the recipient is expected to pay 30% of the total monthly rent with the voucher covering the rest.

We know that these subsidies have already provided such outcome as they’ve sharply reduced housing instability/homelessness (Wood, Turnham, & Mills, 2008) and have lifted 3 million people out of poverty (Trisi, 2019). 75% of recipients of the voucher must have “extremely low incomes,” defined as incomes up to the poverty line or 30 percent of the local median, whichever is higher (CBPP, 2024), so it is evident that recipients of this voucher are being assisted in a way that significantly benefits their financial situation and could allow for “upward mobility” where recipients over time accumulate enough wealth that pulls them above the poverty line.

Then, in the long run, this policy improves the overall well-being and health of low-income families (Mueller & Tighe, 2007; Lubell, Crain & Cohen, 2007). This occurs for many reasons. Firstly, many older studies have found that higher living costs are associated with poorer health, sometimes due to not having health insurance (low-income people forgo health insurance due to the extreme cost burden of housing) (Levy & DeLeire, 2003), and sometimes due to food insecurity caused by the extreme cost burden of housing (Lipman, 2005). This policy helps to reduce the stress and related adverse effects in American lives due to what is commonly the most expensive bill, allowing citizens to financially prioritize their well-being via medical payments and buying more nutritious foods (Lubell, Crain & Cohen, 2007).

Evidence shows that Section 8 housing vouchers benefit qualifying families by significantly reducing homelessness, the number of subsequent moves, crowding, and the incidence of living with relatives or friends (Wood, Turnham & Mills, 2008). Additionally, vouchers also increase housing mobility and create small improvements in neighborhood quality (Teater, 2008; Wood, Turnham & Mills, 2008). The intuition is that over time, the housing voucher program can open doors for low-income families to live in high-opportunity areas (Teater, 2008), and that this can create economic mobility for voucher recipients (Gallagher, 2018). However, many experts find that this is not the case. While housing vouchers do increase housing mobility, there is little to no evidence that they assist in economic mobility (Teater, 2008). There isn’t substantial evidence that vouchers alone enable economic self-sufficiency. This means that receiving vouchers is not associated with changes in earnings or employment rates as measured by unemployment insurance records, and offering families housing vouchers without additional counseling appears to have little effect on economic outcomes (Kling et. al., 2004; Ludwig et. al., 2005; Varady, 2010).

Additionally, the current budget for Section 8 Housing Vouchers is not sufficient to allow all qualifying applicants to receive them. In fact, only about 25% of households that qualify for rental assistance receive it (Oliver, 2022). Waiting lists for applicants are long and often close due to budget constraints (Crews Cutts & Olsen, 2002). When vouchers have become available, qualifying citizens have literally raced to apply due to the extreme scarcity and first-come-first-served basis of the subsidies (Oliver, 2022). Over 70% of families below the poverty line do not receive vouchers (Crews Cutts & Olsen, 2002). This means that the vast majority of individuals who could qualify for this program remain unaffected due to administrative and budget constraints, and the program isn’t effective for most qualifying Americans because there aren’t enough funds allocated to create a more widespread impact.

Some proposed solutions to these limitations include lowering the amount of each voucher given or expanding the budget. One study found that the program’s current subsidies greatly exceed the minimum rent of units that meet the program’s standards (Crews Cutts & Olsen, 2002); thus, decreasing the amount that each beneficiary receives through the subsidies would not be so severe as to cause housing insecurity for the beneficiary. Giving each recipient less money would not reinstate the burden of housing for them, meaning recipient households could afford to lose some of their assistance so that funds could be given to other qualifying households. Some economists believe that an entitlement program for housing assistance would be more efficient because some administrative and time costs could be minimized; equality could be ensured this way, too, as all qualifiers could receive equal benefit from the government instead of only a lucky few recipients (Crews Cutts & Olsen, 2002).

Works Cited:

Crews Cutts, Amy, and Edgar O. Olsen. “Are section 8 housing subsidies too high?” Journal of Housing Economics, vol. 11, no. 3, Sept. 2002, pp. 214–243, https://doi.org/10. 1016/s1051-1377(02)00102-x.

Gallagher, Megan, et al. “How Affordable Housing Providers Can Boost Residents’ Economic Mobility | Urban Institute.” METROPOLITAN HOUSING AND COMMUNITIES POLICY CENTER, Urban Institute, Oct. 2018, http://www.urban.org/ research/publication/how- affordable-housing-providers-can-boost-residents-economic-mobility.

Kling, Jeffrey R., et al. “Moving to opportunity and tranquility: Neighborhood effects on adult economic self-sufficiency and health from a randomized housing voucher experiment.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 10 Sept. 2004, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn .588942.

Leacock, Kevin. “A Brief History of Housing Policy in the U.S.” National Nurse-Led Care Consortium, Public Health Management Corp., 29 Oct. 2019, nurseledcare.phmc.org/ advocacy/policy-blog/item/641:a-brief-history-of-housing-policy-in-the-u-s.html.

Levy, H., and T. DeLeire. 2003. What do people buy when they don’t buy health insurance and what does that say about why they are uninsured. NBER Working Paper No. 9826,Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, July.

Lipman, B. J. 2005. Something’s gotta give: Working families and the cost of housing. New Century Housing 5(2).

Lubell, Jeffrey; Crain, Rosalyn; Cohen, Rebecca. The Positive Impacts of Affordable Housing on Health: A Research Summary. Center for Housing Policy, 2007, https://www.google.com/ url sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0ahUKEwil0eGZs6XWAhUZ24MKHZMyDo4QFgg0MAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.housingpartners.com%2Fassets%2Fcreating_change%2Fhttp___app.bronto.pdf&usg=AFQjCNHpJphCXgsuzhNNrFFzE
m13x1CbeA.

Ludwig, Jens, et al. “Housing Mobility Programs and economic self-sufficiency.” Journal of Public Economics, vol. 89, no. 1, Jan. 2005, pp. 131–156, https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.jpubeco.2003.07.010.

Mueller, E. J., & Tighe, J. R. (2007). Making the Case for Affordable Housing: Connecting Housing with Health and Education Outcomes. Journal of Psychologists and Counselors in Schools, 21(4), 120-129. https://doi.org/10.1177/20556365231216810 accessed using:https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/f Tighe_Rosie%20_2007_Making_the_case_for_Affordable.pd

“Policy Basics: The Housing Choice Voucher Program.” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), 30 Sept. 2024, http://www.cbpp.org/research/housing/the-housing-choice-voucher-program.

“Rent: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO).” YouTube, 20 June 2022, http://www.bing.com/ videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=rent+last+week+tonight&mid=FF11ADDEF511F1CDADEBFF11ADDEF511F1CDADEB&FORM=VIRE. Accessed 13 Apr. 2025.

Teater, B. (2008). Residential Mobility of Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program Recipients: Assessing Changes in Poverty and Racial Composition in Neighborhoods. Journal of Poverty, 12(3), 351–371. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10875540802198651

Trisi, Danilo. “Programs Targeted for Cuts Keep Millions from Poverty …” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), 10 Sept. 2019, http://www.cbpp.org/blog/programs-targeted-for-cuts-keep-millions-from-poverty-new-census-data-show.

U.S. Government Accountability Office. “Affordable Housing.” U.S. GAO, http://www.gao.gov/ affordable-housing. Accessed 13 Apr. 2025.

Varady, D. What should housing vouchers do? A review of the recent literature. J Hous and the Built Environ 25, 391–407 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-010-9199-0

Wood, Michelle; Turnham, Jennifer; Mills, Gregory (2008), Housing affordability and family well‐being: Results from the housing voucher evaluation, Housing Policy Debate, 19,(2), 367-412