HUD’s Office of Public and Indian Housing (PIH) has released a table showing the number and percentage of Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) households with children living in high-poverty neighborhoods for every public housing agency (PHA). The table also shows the total number of HCV households in each PHA, as well as the number of those households that include children. High-poverty neighborhoods are census tracts with a poverty rate of 30% or more. An alarming number of PHAs have concentrations of HCV households with children in high-poverty neighborhoods that are greater than 50%.
The table is not easily found on the HCV website. The table can be found on a PIH Housing Mobility webpage, which cannot be accessed via any of the primary HCV webpages. NLIHC was alerted to the table’s existence by the Policy & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC), which discovered the table in a June 1 Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) announcing $25 million available to PHAs for the HCV Mobility Services program. According to a June 1 media release, the Mobility Services program will support PHAs attempting to address barriers HCV households encounter by offering mobility-related services to increase the number of voucher households with children living in neighborhoods with better opportunities, such as higher performing schools. PHAs awarded Mobility Services funds will work together in their regions to adopt administrative policies that further enable housing mobility, increase landlord participation, and reduce barriers to enable households to move across PHA jurisdictions through portability.
Find the PIH HCV concentration table at: https://tinyurl.com/4df53nwj
Find the PIH Housing Mobility page at: https://tinyurl.com/2zuw36ts
More information about the HCV program is on page 4-1 of NLIHC’s 2023 Advocates’ Guide.