Race, Space, and Take Up: Explaining housing voucher lease-up rates

Author(s)

While housing choice vouchers provide significant benefits to households who successfully lease homes with their vouchers, many recipients fail to do so. Understanding more about voucher success rates is critical, yet the latest national study was published over two decades ago. In a new paper, “Race, Space, and Take Up: Explaining housing voucher lease-up rates,” NYU Furman Center Faculty Directors Ingrid Gould Ellen, Katherine O’Regan, and Doctoral Fellow Sarah Strochak use unique administrative data to estimate voucher recipient leasing success rates and search times. The authors also provide suggestive evidence in their paper showing that policy interventions, such as extended search times, neighborhood-based rent ceilings, and source of income discrimination laws, can help both to boost overall success rates and to reduce these racial and spatial disparities.

In a new paper, “Race, Space, and Take Up: Explaining housing voucher lease-up rates,” NYU Furman Center Faculty Directors Ingrid Gould Ellen, Katherine O’Regan, and Doctoral Fellow Sarah Strochak use unique administrative data to estimate voucher recipient leasing success rates and search times.

Among the highlights in their paper, include:

Overall, only 60 percent of recipients successfully use their vouchers within 180 days, even after waiting for two and a half years on average to receive them.
Success rates are lower in tighter markets with older homes and more rent dispersion
Within markets, voucher recipients of color are significantly less likely to successfully lease homes
Differences in origin neighborhoods explain about 40 percent of racial differences

The authors also provide suggestive evidence in their paper showing that policy interventions, such as extended search times, neighborhood-based rent ceilings, and source of income discrimination laws, can help both to boost overall success rates and to reduce these racial and spatial disparities.