Section Two: Priorities, Performance Indicators, and Cross-Agency Priority Goals
Priority 1: Strengthen and broaden the Federal housing safety net for people in need.
Increase access to safe, stable, and affordable housing for those at high risk of homelessness or housing instability.
LEADING THIS PRIORITY
Program Offices
Office of Community Planning and Development Office of Housing
Office of Public and Indian Housing
OVERVIEW
One of HUD's core functions is to provide a safety net for households when they need it, and help people gain access to safe, affordable, and stable housing. HUD aims to address the housing crisis for our Nation's most vulnerable groups, including people of color with low incomes; Tribal communities;4 immigrants; people with disabilities; people fleeing domestic violence, sexual violence, or human trafficking situations; people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer; and people involved in the criminal justice system.
The COVID-19 pandemic presented new challenges to our existing housing system. As this health and economic crisis worsens, more resources are needed to help those experiencing homelessness, to prevent homelessness, and to provide housing stability. This includes increasing production of and access to affordable housing (including Public Housing preservation and Manufactured Housing), deploying Rental Assistance, improving neighborhood choice, and addressing and fortifying Fair Housing tools, practices, and policies. HUD's rental assistance programs help 4.6 million low-income families5 pay their rent, and over half of assisted families are elderly or have a disabled head of household. These programs provide safe, stable, and affordable housing. HUD aims to expand the number of people that can rely on the Department's programs: once people have stable housing, they can focus on their families, jobs, health, and other aspects of life.
INITIATIVES
200,000 Voucher Expansion
Increases in median rent costs has outpaced increases in median renter income since 2001 in nearly every state. To help address this problem, the Department's FY22 Budget proposes to expand the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program by increasing the number of vouchers available to those who currently qualify for rental assistance by 200,000 units. This is a first, yet significant, step toward making housing assistance available to families currently eligible for the Housing Choice Voucher program but do not receive assistance due to resource shortages.
In addition to the 200,000-voucher expansion, the Department also seeks to leverage the following existing programs:
Tenant-Based Rental Assistance (Housing Choice Vouchers)
Tenant-Based Rental Assistance (TBRA), commonly known as the Housing Choice Vouchers (HCV) program is primarily tenant-based assistance, which means HUD provides assistance to an individual household rather than tying assistance to a unit or property. HUD continues to take steps to improve the operations of the voucher program, enhance systems, and streamline requirements to reduce burden on public housing agencies (PHAs). Improving these key business processes to create efficiencies will enable staff to focus on HCV policy and finance issues and the expanding portfolio which includes the 200,000 voucher expansion.
Project-Based Rental Assistance
The Project-Based Rental Assistance (PBRA) program is a crucial component of the Federal housing safety net for people in need. The PBRA program provides over 1.2 million low-income and very low- income families with decent, safe, and affordable housing. Multifamily housing assisted by PBRA stabilizes neighborhood affordability and contributes to greater local economic opportunity by providing employment, increasing the buying power of assisted tenants in support of local businesses, and increasing local tax bases. The PBRA program directly contributes to job creation and retention in the fields of property management, maintenance, general construction, and contract work such as landscaping, pest control, security, snow removal, equipment servicing, legal representation, and property insurance. This creates reliable sources of rental income to tenants and landlords.
Housing for the Elderly (Section 202)
The Housing for the Elderly (Section 202) program is currently the only Federally funded program that expressly addresses the need for affordable elderly housing. This program expands the supply of affordable housing with supportive services for the elderly through Capital Advance funding and Project Rental Assistance Contracts. The Congregate Housing Services Program (CHSP) subsidizes the cost of supportive services that are provided on-site and in participants' homes, which may include, but are not limited to, congregate meals, housekeeping, personal assistance, transportation, and case management. The Department's FY22 Budget request proposes funding to continue to offer grants through the Service Coordinator Program and the Congregate Housing Services Program to support independent living and guard against premature transitions to nursing home care at properties that do not have a current service coordinator grant or funds allocated in their operating budgets for this purpose.
Housing for Persons with Disabilities (Section 811)
HUD's FY22 Budget request proposes funding for Section 811 to continue to provide project-based rental assistance to very low- and extremely low-income persons with disabilities. The program covers the difference between HUD-approved operating costs of the project and the tenants' contributions toward rent, as well as direct Capital Advance funding for construction. Smart investments in Section 811 supportive housing align with, and complement, state efforts to provide home and community-based services for persons with disabilities in independent housing settings, minimizing the need to institutionalize this vulnerable population. The program supports access to community-based support and services, such as case management, housekeeping, and daily living assistance to successfully live independently in the community.
Homeless Assistance Grants
HUD's Homeless Assistance Grants (HAG) provide housing and services for vulnerable individuals and families who are homeless or at-risk of homelessness. The Department's proposed FY22 Budget request include Emergency Solutions Grants (ESG), which supports over 350,000 persons in emergency shelter each year, and meet the need for the Continuum of Care (CoC) Program, which will allow HUD to continue to serve over 750,000 people experiencing homelessness each year. Most resources will be made available through the annual CoC competition targeted to the following activities:
• Providing resources for CoC-funded projects to partner with other programs that provide housing or healthcare assistance, including the HCV program, local rental assistance programs, and Community Health Centers;
• Expanding coordinated entry systems to ensure that more resources, including mainstream housing and health care services and services for families and individuals can be facilitated through coordinated entry systems;
• Expanding outreach assistance to ensure that people experiencing unsheltered homelessness can access resources;
• Expanding HMIS to support additional data collection and support, particularly for mainstream housing and services resources;
• Providing additional funds for projects providing rapid re-housing and other assistance for people fleeing domestic violence; and
• Providing funds for additional Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program (YHDP) projects through a separate competition, including technical assistance to improve system responses to youth homelessness.
Public Housing Fund
Public Housing grants are the only dedicated Federal resource available to PHAs to operate and maintain the Nation's public housing stock. The FY22 Budget request proposes to cover the day-to-day operational expenses as well as capital costs associated with public housing. The Public Housing Fund will provide payments to nearly 3,000 PHAs for the operation, management, maintenance, and capital needs of publicly owned affordable rental housing throughout the United States and its territories. The Public Housing Fund is to be allocated as grants to support operations such as:
• Grants awarded for Operations
• Grants awarded for Capital Needs
• Public Housing Grants for Housing Health Hazards
• Public Housing Grants for Lead-Based Paint Hazards
• Public Housing Grants for Emergencies and Natural Disasters
• Public Housing Grants for Safety and Security Needs
• Prevention, Recovery and Transformation of High Risk PHAs
• Public Housing Operating Shortfall Funding
• Financial and Physical Assessment
• Public Housing Energy and Water Conservation
• Climate Resilience and Energy Efficiency
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
To help achieve this priority, HUD has established the following performance indicators:
Number of families served through HUD rental assistance
This measure will track the number of rental units occupied by HUD-assisted households.
Length of homelessness
This measure will track the national average length of homelessness in CoCs.
Number of people experiencing homelessness
This measure will annually track the number of people experiencing homelessness in the Point-in- Time (PIT) count, a count taken on a single night in January each year.
CAP GOALS, STRATEGIC GOALS, STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES, AND AGENCY PRIORITY GOALS
HUD is currently in the process of developing new strategic goals, strategic objectives, and Agency Priority Goals (APGs) to align with the strategic priorities highlighted in the FY22 Budget. Alignment to Cross-Agency Priority Goals will be defined once the President's Management Agenda is published.
EVIDENCE
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) has produced an extensive body of evidence on the scope of housing needs among renters nationally, how HUD programs meet those needs, and how those programs could be enhanced to meet these needs in the future. PD&R supplements its surveys of national and regional market activity with biennial reports to Congress about households with "worst-case housing needs." Renter households with very low incomes who do not receive government housing assistance and who pay more than one-half of their income for rent, live in severely inadequate conditions, or both, have worst case needs for adequate, affordable rental housing. Worst-case housing needs affect 7.7 million very low-income renter households, with a shrinking proportion of affordable and available units relative to need.
Following the completion of preliminary reports, PD&R produced follow-up outcomes analyses for two landmark studies intended to shed light on improvements to HUD's core programs: the Rent Reform Demonstration and the Rental Assistance Demonstration. The Rent Reform Demonstration was designed to test an alternative to the current HUD-assisted rent structure to assess its effect on the employment, earnings, and hardship of the residents that rely on housing vouchers. The results indicate that, when the findings for all four study PHAs are combined, the new policy generated a small statistically significant increase in heads of household's quarterly employment rate. The story, however, varied substantially across locations as there were some positive effects on earnings in one site, on earnings and employment in another, but not in the other two sites. The Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) provides PHAs with new options for preserving Public Housing units through conversion to the more financially sustainable project-based Section 8 assisted housing platform. PD&R's evaluation shows that as of October 2018 over 100,000 units of public housing were converted to the Section 8 platform under RAD and over $12.6 billion was raised, with significant leverage, from numerous sources to improve the physical and financial condition of properties. The study confirmed that the physical and financial condition of converted properties improved, and a majority of tenants reported that the physical condition of their units and developments was better after conversion. More than 80 percent of interviewed tenants expressed satisfaction with their units and developments post-conversion.
HUD's research helps form the backbone of evidence supporting efforts to prevent and end homelessness among several key populations. PD&R's landmark Family Options study found that families who received priority access to deep housing subsidies experienced major decreases in returns to homelessness and increases in family well-being relative to those offered usual care in shelters, and documented major cost savings of rapid rehousing and permanent housing relative to shelter and transitional options on a per-month basis. HUD draws on the considerable research literature regarding Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) and the Housing First program model when implementing programs for chronically homeless individuals. Randomized controlled trials evaluating PSH programs using a Housing First approach show that it improves housing stability, physical and mental health, and a variety-of-quality of life measures while also yielding cost savings through reduced need for emergency health services.
In partnership with the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), HUD recently completed a research effort exploring the rise in unsheltered homelessness encampments in many major cities and the costs of the interventions being deployed. The final report on the costs of encampment responses in four major cities, published in early 2021, provides a useful template for local governments to assess their own interventions. The Understanding Rapid Re-Housing (RRH) study, published in early 2020, provides the first comprehensive documentation of RRH participant experiences and program practices in different types of communities. Other recent projects such as the Youth Homelessness Demonstration are designed to build on available research to understand how program models can meet the needs of key target populations, and how they have evolved from demonstration projects to components of the HUD homeless assistance system nationally.