Most Continuously Non-Working Housing Choice Voucher Householders Are Seniors, Have Disabilities, or Face Other Barriers to Workforce Participation

By Mackenzie Pish, NLIHC Research Analyst 

An article in Housing Policy Debate, “Economic Mobility or Safety Net? Examining Employment Status and Wage Trajectories of Housing Choice Voucher Recipients,” found that the vast majority of householders with a Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) who haven’t ever participated in the labor force are seniors or have disabilities. The majority (79%) of non-senior, nondisabled HCV householders participate in the workforce to some degree, accounting for 89% of continuously employed and 75% of intermittently employed householders. 

The authors rely on data from 3.5 million voucher holders who received vouchers for at least 3 consecutive years between 2005 and 2018. The authors classified voucher householders by both their labor force potential and actual wage earnings. More than half (55%) of householders were at least 62 years of age or had disabilities and were designated as aging or special needs householders. All other householders (45%) were designated as potential labor force regardless of their actual labor force participation. With regard to wage earnings, more than half of all householders (54%) were designated as unemployed, which means they reported no wages in any year; 36% were intermittently employed, meaning they reported intermittent wage income over time; and 10% were continuously employed, meaning they consistently reported earned wages every year while receiving a voucher.   

Over half of the householders (54%) never earned wage income during their participation in the HCV program, but most of these individuals (83%) were aging or special needs householders. Householders in the potential labor force group were much more likely than householders in the aging or special needs group to participate in the workforce. Nearly 80% of working-age householders without disabilities participated in the workforce, continuously or intermittently, accounting for 89% of those who were continuously employed, 75% of those who were intermittently employed, and only 17% of householders who never earned wages.  

Continuously employed and intermittently employed householders experienced modest real annual wage growth over the study period. Continuously employed householders saw annual real wage growth of 2.7%, compared with 2.1% for all householders. Notably, these increases contrast with the national decline in annual real wage growth of 1.5% over the same time for all workers earning 50% or less of the median income. The authors note, however, that these increases represent a relatively small gain in actual dollars, given the extremely low incomes of HVC householders—amounting to $5,730 for continuously employed householders and $2,163 for all householders over 13 years.   

The study concludes that the HCV program is first and foremost a housing-stability tool for the majority of participants who need long-term housing support, and an economic-mobility tool only for a smaller subset. The authors suggest that HCV-related policies aimed at economic mobility should be narrowly targeted to the subset of recipients who can and do participate in the workforce. They suggest that this subset should not be defined based on age or disability alone, given that roughly 20% of non-senior, non-disabled householders with wage potential do not participate in the workforce, and some householders who are seniors or who are living with a disability do. Health issues that don’t meet policy-prescribed definitions of disability, or other factors, can negatively impact employment outcomes for low-income renters, regardless of their workforce potential. The authors call for more effective methods to identify households that could benefit from employment incentives, such as HUD's Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program, while still prioritizing housing stability as the program's primary goal.    

Read the report here.