Reintroduced Bill Would Make It Easier for Private Sector to Participate in Section 8 Housing

Congress is bringing back yet another attempt to expand the Housing Choice Vouchers Program, otherwise known as Section 8, to make it easier for private landlords to participate. Called the Choice in Affordable Housing Act of 2023, it is the reintroduction of a bill that has been brought up annually since 2020.

Introduced by Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.) and Reps Emanuel Cleaver, II (D-MO) and Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), it is has seen bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress.

“To ensure working-class families have access to affordable housing options, it is imperative that Congress work to remove burdensome barriers within the Housing Choice Voucher Program (HCV) that limit landlord participation and where vouchers can be utilized,” Cleaver said in prepared remarks.

As the bill argues, the current program — the largest federal housing assistance effort for low-income families, the elderly, and disabled though helping more than 5 million people a year — relies on private landlords, but participation has been declining “with an average of 10,000 housing providers leaving the program each year between 2010 and 2016.” That is particularly true in “’high-opportunity neighborhoods’ that have low  poverty rates and good access to quality schools, jobs, and public transportation.”

The bill allows for a one-time incentive program for first-time participant landlords with properties in a census track that has less than 20% poverty rate. The amount could be no higher than double the monthly housing assistance payment made to the property’s owner.

A public housing agency could require the landlord to commit to at more than a year of participation. There could be only one payment regardless of the number of eligible units owned or the number of public housing agencies the owner has contracted with.

Another part of the legislation would provide for security deposits, “an amount determined by the public housing agency, on behalf of the tenants of the dwelling units.” Priority would be given to owners whose units are occupied by “extremely low-income families.”

There is a provision for bonus payments to public housing agencies that employ at least one dedicated landlord liaison who will perform landlord outreach, program education and training of landlords, and a “hotline” mechanism for handling landlord questions and concerns.

If the legislation passed and was signed into effect, the HCV would move from considering rent prices for subsidy calculations across an entire metropolitan area to focus on smaller ZIP code areas.