Elderly- or Disabled-Headed Households are Now the Most Common Housing Choice Voucher Program Households

A new HUD Office of Policy Development and Research study found that as of 2020, families with children no longer represented the most common type of tenant-based rental assistance - Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) - households. Elderly- or disabled-headed households are now the most common HCV household structure.

HUD began providing tenant-based rental assistance following the passage of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974. For the first time, low-income households were able to use their assistance to seek rental housing in the private market. By the 1970s, observers realized that the spatial concentration of poverty was negatively impacting those the program sought to help. The current HCV program tries to have these assisted households live in higher-opportunity neighborhoods rather than areas of concentrated poverty, where many public housing developments were and still are located.

A HUD report comparing nationwide trends in 2010 to those in the top 50 MSAs in 2000 found that although the HCV program had a small share of affordable rental housing, the share of households living in high-poverty areas was increasing. It also found that the share of HCV households living in HCV-dense census tracts had increased during 2000-2010. Both reports found that participant choice alone was not enough to achieve spatial poverty de-concentration.

The just-released third HCV location report covering 2010 and 2020 found that:

(1) The number of HCV households with an elderly or disabled head of household exceeded the number of HCV households with children. During 2010-2020, the number of elderly heads of households increased by nearly 10% and the number of disabled heads of households decreased slightly. Non-Hispanic Black heads of households continue to represent the largest - and growing - racial/ethnic group of HCV households.

(2) The share of HCV households living in neighborhoods with a high density of voucher holders increased 2010-2020; and 

(3) A large share of HCV households still live in high-poverty neighborhoods. Nationwide, 44% of tenant-based voucher (TBV) households still lived in high-poverty census tracts in 2020, including 7% living in areas of extreme poverty

(4) There are significant racial and ethnic disparities among voucher households regarding neighborhood poverty rates: Black (52.3%) and Hispanic (47.8%) HCV households were more likely to live in neighborhoods with higher concentrations of poverty compared to their white peers (30.7%). Black and Hispanic HCV households were also twice as likely to live in neighborhoods with higher concentrations of other voucher holders, where more than 10% of units were occupied by voucher holders, compared to white HCV households.

Read the October 29, 2024 HUD Report.

Read the September 16, 2024 National Low Income Housing Coalition article.

Study Confirms Maryland Has Shortage of Affordable Housing Units

 

The just-released The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) has found that across Maryland, there is a shortage of rental homes affordable and available to extremely low income households, whose incomes are at or below the poverty guideline or 30% of their area median income. Many of these households are severely cost burdened, and spend over half of their income on housing. Severely cost burdened poor households are more likely than other renters to sacrifice other necessities like healthy food and healthcare to pay the rent, and to have unstable housing situations like evictions. 

"Cost Burden" is defined as spending more than 30% of household income on housing costs. "Severe Cost Burden" is spending more than 50% of household income on housing costs.

According to the NLIHC study, historic drivers of housing inequity include: 

• Decades of racial discrimination by real estate agents, banks, insurers, and the federal government have made homeownership difficult to obtain for people of color. 
• Many factors kept people of color (POC) from being able to purchase homes through the 1950s: the pervasive refusal of whites to live in racially integrated neighborhoods, physical violence targeting POC who tried to integrate (which was often tolerated by police), restrictive covenants outlawing home sales to Black buyers to integrate neighborhoods, and federal housing policy that denied borrowers access to credit in minority neighborhoods (Massey & Denton, 1993; Coates, 2014; Rothstein, 2017). 
• Being denied the ability to purchase homes meant that POC did not benefit from the appreciation in home value, a major driver of the racial wealth gap. 
• While overt discrimination was outlawed by the Fair Housing Act of 1968, subtler forms of housing discrimination continue. HUD’s fair housing tests in 28 metropolitan areas found that Black homebuyers were shown 17.7% fewer homes than similar white homebuyers (HUD, 2013). 
• More recent fair housing investigations show similar discrimination, including being shown fewer homes and not being given the same information as white buyers (Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, 2018; Choi, Herbert, Winslow, & Browne, 2019). 
• Today’s credit scoring system and lending practices also are barriers to POC homeownership (Rice & Swesnik, 2012; Bartlett et al., 2019).

Other Key national findings of the NLIHC's study are:

• The shortage of affordable rental housing primarily impacts renters with extremely low incomes.  Extremely low-income renters in the U.S. face a shortage of 7.3 million affordable, available rental homes, resulting in only 34 affordable, available homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households.

• The shortage of affordable rental housing is more acute than before the pandemic. Between 2019 and 2022, the shortage of affordable and available rental homes for extremely low-income renters increased by more than 480,000.

• Black, Latino, and Indigenous households are disproportionately extremely low-income renters and disproportionately impacted by this shortage. Some 19% of Black non-Latino households, 16% of American Indian or Alaska Native households, and 13% of Latino households are extremely low-income renters, compared to only 6% of white non-Latino households.

• Extremely low-income renters are more likely than other renters to spend a large part of their income on rent. A total of 87% are cost-burdened with 74% are severely cost-burdened. Extremely low-income renters are almost a quarter of all renters, but 44% of all cost-burdened renters and 69% of severely cost-burdened renters.

Regarding Maryland:

• 197,310 or 26% of Maryland renter households are extremely low income.
• The state has a shortage of 134,192 rental homes affordable and available for extremely low income renters.
• $37,740 is the average income limit for 4-person extremely low income household.
• $64,642 is the annual household income needed to afford a two-bedroom rental home at HUD's Fair Market Rent.
• 73% of extremely low income renter households have a severe cost burden.

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Read the NLIHC study's Maryland profile.

 June Edition of "Fair Housing E-News"

FAIR HOUSING E-NEWS

June, 2023

Welcome to this edition of Fair Housing E-News! This newsletter is produced by the GBCHRB

as a public service. More info/resources: http://www.gbchrb.org. Just a few of the headlines are:

NLIHC’s Out Of Reach 2023: The High Cost Of Housing Shows Rents are Moving Further out of Reach for Low-Income Renters As Pandemic-Era Benefit Programs Expire.

Read the NLIHC Summary of its 2023 Out of Reach report.

Out of Reach 2023 is available at: https://nlihc.org/oor.

Study Finds Baltimore Children who moved from High-Poverty to Low-Poverty Areas had Improved Asthma. Read the May 16, 2023 Baltimore Sun article.

Maryland Finds Erie Insurance Illegally Rejected Baltimore Auto Customers in Minority Neighborhoods. Read the June 6, 2023 Baltimore Sun article. Read the June 1, 2023 Baltimore Banner article.

Justice Department Secures Over $3 Million Redlining Settlement Involving ESSA Bank & Trust in Philadelphia. www.justice.gov/fairhousing.

Federal Housing Administration Launches 30 New Resources to Remove Language Barriers in Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese for Borrowers.

Read the June 13, 2023 HUD release.

KeyBank & Capital One Lose Their Access To New York City’s Business. "NYC Regulator Halts City Deposits at Key Bank, Capital One," Banking Dive, May 26, 2023. NCRC Just News/ May 25, 2023 Press Release.

To read this issue of Fair Housing E-News: fhnews2023jun.pdf.

Contact the GBCHRB for free Fair Housing training.

GBCHRB

P. O. Box 66180

Baltimore, Maryland 21239-6180

http://www.gbchrb.org

443.347.3701