Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Publishes Report on Federal Rental Assistance and Neighborhood Choice

By Ella Izenour, NLIHC Opportunity Starts at Home Intern 

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a member of the Opportunity Starts at Home (OSAH) campaign Steering Committee, recently published a report titled, “Where Households Using Federal Rental Assistance Live.” The report examines how effectively federal rental assistance programs enable people to access assistance for living in economically diverse neighborhoods. The findings are based on the locations of households using federal rental assistance and compare them to the locations of all rental units and of rental units that are affordable to people using a Housing Choice Voucher. The authors find that households relying on rental assistance frequently live in high-poverty neighborhoods, reflecting persistent patterns of economic and racial segregation as well as limitations in rental assistance programs’ ability to provide true neighborhood choice.  

The report uses data from the 100 most populous metropolitan areas across the United States. The accompanying interactive mapping tools and data tables allows individuals to explore metropolitan-level data and neighborhood poverty patterns. The report highlights differences among the three largest federal rental assistance programs—Housing Choice Vouchers, Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance, and Public Housing—in promoting neighborhood choice and economic diversity. Project-based assistance serves a more economically diverse range of neighborhoods than public housing, where over half of residents live in high-poverty areas that often reflect local patterns of economic and racial segregation. Housing vouchers perform best overall, with recipients more likely to live in low-poverty and less likely to live in high-poverty neighborhoods than those in other programs. However, although one-third of all voucher-eligible units in major metros are in low-poverty areas, many remain inaccessible due to landlord discrimination, limited space, and low vacancy rates.   

The authors examine Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Milwaukee, revealing how local histories of racial and economic segregation continue to shape modern housing outcomes. In Washington, D.C., for example, decades of racially restrictive covenants and exclusionary zoning have produced lasting patterns of segregation that limit the neighborhood choices available to households using federal rental assistance. Similar dynamics appear in Los Angeles and Milwaukee, where racialized housing policies and the uneven distribution of affordable housing perpetuate inequality.  

The report concludes with recommendations for federal, state, and local policymakers to ensure that all low-income households can access stable, affordable, quality housing in neighborhoods of their choice. Key recommendations include: the expansion of federal rental assistance to make it available to everyone who needs it, improving program responsiveness to better meet participants’ needs and support true neighborhood choice, preventing discrimination against people who use rental assistance, building and preserving affordable housing in a wider range of neighborhoods, including low-poverty areas, and investing in under-resourced neighborhoods to improve resource access and quality of life. The authors also recognize that achieving housing equity requires sustained effort to undo decades of racist policies that have contributed to unequal neighborhoods and wealth and income disparities.  

Read the article here.  

To learn more about the intersections between housing, racial equity, and economic mobility, read the OSAH fact sheets here.