The Unraveling of the Emergency Housing Voucher Program Reveals How Decades of Neglect and Budget Cuts Set Families Up to Fail—Again
From lifesaving relief to looming eviction, the unraveling of the Emergency Housing Voucher program reveals the fragile promise of stability for families fleeing homelessness and domestic violence, just as new federal budget plans threaten to end rental assistance for millions more. Get the real-life data on housing voucher waitlists and learn the historical context of how this has led to increases in homelessness in the past.
“You just don’t know where you’re going to be the next day with your children,” divulged Otiana Martin in a candid interview with CBS 21 News.
Martin’s struggle as a single mom who’s wait for Section 8 housing left her and her children homeless on the streets is too familiar.
“I’m trying to be Superwoman,” Martin added, her eyes welling up with tears as she described the heartbreak and uncertainty of bouncing from one hotel room to the next with her young children by her side.
Section 8 is a Flawed But Functioning System. It’s All Many People Have to Rely On.
The Section 8 Housing Voucher Program has been providing federal funding for housing assistance since 1974. It was initially created under the Housing and Community Development Act and has since taken on a life of its own. The goal of the program is simple – making housing affordable for low-income families who cannot cover their rent. Over the years, Section 8 has helped millions of renter households by making it possible for them to pay just 30% of their adjusted annual income toward rent, while the government covers the rest.
This is a vital program at a time when family homelessness is on the rise. It is currently our nation’s largest and most widely recognized rental assistance program. As rental prices continue to drastically outpace the median wage, the need for national rental assistance has become dire. In 2016, the National Low-Income Housing Coalition identified 2.8 million families on Section 8 waitlists and an additional 1.6 million more on public housing waitlists.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reveals that the average wait time for a Section 8 housing voucher is 2 1/2 years. In some places, such as Miami-Dade, Florida, low-income earners spend an average of eight years waiting for financial rental relief. Numbers like this illustrate exigent circumstances that require more funding and immediate action. However, delivering yet another devastating blow to the low-income and unhoused community, the Trump Administration aims to cut voucher funding for upwards of 60,000 rental families in need.
These families are already on an assistance program that was initiated in 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan. They thought their housing was secure. If the Trump proposition goes into effect, yet another safety net will be ripped out from under their feet. These are families who’ve already had to start their lives over again. Will the vicious cycle repeat?
The Trump Administration Proposes Slashing the Emergency Housing Voucher Program
This puts nearly 60,000 vulnerable renter households at risk of being thrust into homelessness for a second or even third time.
The Emergency Housing Voucher Program (EHV) was implemented to address long waitlists for vulnerable families, particularly those with one or more of the following attributes:
- Families with children
- People with disabilities
- Homeless veterans
- Homeless senior citizens and more
In 2021, it was believed that the program had enough funding to last at least a decade. However, skyrocketing rental rates, combined with recent surges in homelessness, have caused the funding to funnel out swiftly. Organizations distributing the aid told AP News they received letters from HUD with the following daunting message attached:
“Manage your EHV program with the expectation that no additional funding from HUD will be forthcoming.”
History Shows That Voucher Cuts Create Surges in Family Homelessness
To quote the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Cuts in Housing Choice Vouchers have had the largest and most immediate impact on low-income families.”
Experts pointed to the 2013 sequestration cuts as a recent prime example. During that budget cut, 100,000 renter households were adversely impacted and placed at elevated risk of homelessness. Even when the program reemerged, more than half of those families continued without rental assistance. Notedly, 2013 marked the historic high for family homelessness with schools reporting 1 in 30 homeless children in grade school classrooms, a number that equates to more than 2.5 million children nationwide.
When funding is treated as temporary relief rather than a long-term investment, solutions to homelessness are fragile and fleeting.
In an exclusive interview with Invisible People’s news team, longtime homeless historian and renowned lecturer Dr. Owen Clayton highlighted the urgency for effective solutions.
“Homelessness is not a problem that we don’t know how to solve,” said Dr. Clayton. “There are countries in the world that have solved it. It’s not even a problem that always existed in some of the countries where it exists now.”
Speaking to this point, Dr. Clayton drew from historical examples.
“The UK didn’t always have a big homelessness problem,” he said. “And in Finland, there’s no homelessness. The solution to homelessness is, surprisingly enough, giving people homes. The problem is that we don’t have the political will to do it. And the political will to do it partly is because there isn’t maybe public will to do it either.”
Representation Matters: Why We Must Change the Lens through Lived Experience Stories
“The only way that policy changes is through changing people’s minds,” Dr. Clayton explained. “And we do that through changing representations. I think if you hear people’s stories, you can’t ‘other’ that person anymore because you are responding to them as a human being.”
“The more kinds of organizations that will do things like have co-creation from people with lived experience as permanent members of their boards, for example, things like that, not just tokenism, then maybe we can gradually change the public opinion and create the political will to put the solutions in that we already know work,” Dr. Clayton concluded.
Talk to Your Representatives About the Unaddressed Human Right to Housing
Every human should have the constitutional right to a permanent, affordable home. Talk to your representatives about why, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, that right remains undocumented and unaddressed.