Using Tenant-Based Vouchers to Help People Leave Homelessness: Lessons from Los Angeles

Can Housing Choice Vouchers help people leave homelessness? Or do people experiencing homelessness face unique challenges that could make it harder for them to shop for private market housing and find landlords who will accept the vouchers?  This article, “Using Tenant-Based Vouchers To Help People Leave Homelessness: Lessons from Los Angeles,” presents new analysis from California to shed light on these questions. The full article appears in a special issue of HUD’s journal, Cityscape, highlighting the 50th anniversary of the Housing Choice Voucher program. 

Background: 

Communities across Greater Los Angeles are working to address increasing numbers of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Amid high housing costs, low rental vacancy rates, and a lack of living wages that would allow more low-income people to afford housing, local leaders have been using Housing Choice Vouchers to help move people out of shelters and into stable housing. The prioritization of vouchers for people experiencing homelessness is a shift. Historically, vouchers were intended to help all families and individuals with poverty-level incomes afford housing that met minimum health and safety standards. However, local public housing authorities that manage these programs almost always face a greater need for housing vouchers than the actual number of vouchers available based on annual appropriations by the U.S. Congress. Currently, most new vouchers become available only when households already using vouchers leave the program. Therefore, the program has long waiting lists.  

Data from Los Angeles reflects this shift towards using vouchers to help address homelessness. The housing authorities serving Los Angeles put people experiencing homelessness at the top of their waiting lists, ahead of most other households. This study measured how well people experiencing homelessness succeeded in using the vouchers and were able to find landlords willing to lease to them. 

Findings: 

The analysis showed that the rate of lease up was greater for people experiencing homelessness than for those who were not (65 percent vs. 61 percent). Success rates for people experiencing homelessness were high across racial and ethnic groups (66 percent Black, non-Hispanic; 66 percent Hispanic/Latinx of any race; 67 percent Asian, non-Hispanic; and 60 percent White, non-Hispanic). The authors suggest that people experiencing homelessness were more likely to use their vouchers given the added help they received from case managers. Another success factor may have been the incentives that local governments provided to landlords accepting vouchers.  

More research will shed light on whether landlord incentives and case management can replicate these results in other metropolitan areas. The authors suggest ways to match Homeless Management Information System data with Housing Choice Voucher data to provide insights on pathways that can help support successful lease ups with vouchers and housing stability. To date, no research has been conducted to examine the retention rates of people using vouchers to leave homelessness and what resources are needed to support them. This is another area important for future study.