Reforming the HCV Program Through Direct Rental Assistance

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he [Music] he [Music] you know there is a phrase we use in back in the country it says being without food but don't be without shelter or home you know shelter is very important than food you know I was working as much as you can work you know like three jobs even with all of those efforts I couldn't afford to even get a little bit time with the kids at the age of 16 I entered the American foster care system I've pulled myself out of some pretty bad spots but I needed housing and what I was making was just not cutting it at the time how can a family grow and prosper if they don't have a home that they can afford in a decent neighborhood in the past several years the situation has become more urgent than we've seen even 10 years ago it has implications for people's lives there are so many American families that don't have enough income to afford rental housing half of the renters in this country are paying more than 30% of their income for housing the low-income housing tax credit allows in investors to invest money in housing and get credits and the result is funds to build additional low income [Music] housing the Section 8 vouchers are the primary way to help people afford housing vouchers are a way for a resident to get into an apartment that costs more than what they can afford with their 30% of budget allocated to housing there definitely would have been a lot more detours a lot more failures a lot more uncertainty now I know that I can enjoy the life being with the kids and have a better future first off I think housing is a nonpartisan issue but I certainly believe that the bipartisan approach to solving it is what needs to happen every social goal that we want for the people of the United States revolve around housing a precondition for making progress is to have a decent place to say tonight I'm going home to [Music] rest good afternoon and thank you for joining us for today's virtual discussion on reforming the housing Choice Voucher Program through direct rental assistance I'm Kristen clarfield senior policy analyst for housing here at the bipartisan policy centers J Ronald to williger Center for housing policy the housing Choice voucher program is a critical tool to support housing stability in the US helping more than 2.3 million low-income families affordably rent homes in the private Market unfortunately landlords have been dropping out of the program in recent years uh citing burdensome paperwork and lengthy inspections as some of the reasons for their non-participation this has led to an unacceptably high voucher return rate some 40% of voucher recipients eventually return them unused often after waiting years to receive that assistance so during today's webinar we'll discuss in alternative approach to providing housing Choice vouchers to eligible families called direct rental assistance under the housing Choice voucher program the public housing authority or PHA pays a porun a portion of the voucher family's rent to the landlord typically a participating family pays 30% of their monthly income to the landlord for rent while the PHA covers the remaining portion through a housing assistance payment through direct rental assistance a rental subsidy would be paid directly to the participating family that family is then responsible for making the full rent payment to the landlord with minimal or even no interaction between the landlord and the PHA there's been some recent momentum in the field and at HUD to test whether direct rental assistance could alleviate some of the challenges in our current voucher program it could create a more direct line of support for families and potentially help more people make use of their vouchers to successfully rent homes HUD recently issued a request for information to gather feedback regarding the possibility of conducting a direct rental assistance pilot project so today we have a fantastic panel of experts to help shed some light on Direct rental assistance we'll get into our discussion questions in just a moment um but first I want to thank our virtual audience for participating and encourage you to submit your questions throughout the panel discussion by using the chat function in YouTube I'll make sure we leave time to respond to these questions now uh I'll introduce our esteemed panel first we have Peggy Bailey Peggy is the Executive Vice President for policy and program development at the center on budget and policy priorities she also currently serves as the center's vice president for housing and income security where she guides its work to strengthen reform and resource federal and state housing health and nutrition programs Peggy served in the Biden Harris Administration as the senior adviser on rental assistance to the HUD secretary we're also joined by Hunter CTS founding partner of Gate House strategies a dc-based advisory firm Hunter has spent his career working in the affordable housing industry at the local state and federal levels most recently he served as assistant secretary for public and Indian housing at HUD next next we have Brian McCabe Brian is a Provost distinguished associate professor of Sociology at Georgetown University he holds an Affiliated appointment as faculty member in the mccort school of public policy and his research focuses on Urban policy issues including low-income housing programs and neighborhood change in 2022 he was appointed by the Biden Harris Administration to serve as Deputy assistant secretary for policy development at HUD a role he held until 2024 and rounding out our panel today is Rachel mulbury Rachel is the director of policy and strategic initiatives at Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation the nonprofit arm of the city's Department of Planning and Development Rachel's portfolio of Housing Programs includes residential repair loan programs for homeowners and small landlords and rental assistance programs including the city of Philadelphia's first guaranteed income pilot PHL housing plus which we'll talk about today and she previously helped lead Philadelphia's nationally recognized covid-19 emergency rental assistance program so I truly want to thank each of you for being here today okay with that let's get into the discussion and I first want to start with a few questions to help us understand the impetus for exploring alternatives to the traditional housing Choice voucher Administration and what direct rental assistance could look like so Brian since you were most recently at HUD it would be great if you could set the stage for us a bit as Deputy assistant secretary for policy development you were pretty closely involved in Hud's discussions around the housing Choice voucher program as well as ways to improve it like the direct rental assistance model we've seen that HUD has been actively exploring this idea by holding events facilitating meetings and recently releasing the request for information could you tell us a bit about what drove HUD to focus on these potential reforms and can you share anything else about the RFI that was released sure um thanks Kristen and um really grateful to be here and and I'm sort of reflecting back on my experience at HUD and thinking about sort of where this fits into the work that we were doing at the agency um so I served for two years as the deputy assistant secretary for policy development and a big part of that portfolio is thinking about um the the set of policies that we have at HUD and what's working and what's not working and what can be improved and there's a huge interest in Hut at the moment for many of the reasons that you mentioned um in improving the voucher program and I want to just sort of call out and commend my colleagues at the agency for the work that um they're doing on the voucher program there's a lot of discussion and work on increasing landlord participation on reforming the inspection process on cutting down the bureaucracy and reducing paperwork for a landlord so all of the issues that we're thinking about together as a community for the voucher program my colleagues at HUD are really on top of and and thinking about in terms of reforming the program so um so sort of with that as the stage um you know we were tasked with thinking about some bigger ideas in rental assistance programs and the voucher program right as you know this is the 50th anniversary of a of a program uh 50 years of of rental assistance given to tenants um and we were thinking about models that might work better or at least might work better for some um some families that are receiving rental assistance so when we started sort of thinking about this and learning about this we turned first to the guaranteed income Community um right one of the things that we do in pdnr at HUD is to really think about the evidence and the data that we have in support of a policy and so we started by really learning from guaranteed income communities about where folks that were receiving guaranteed income were spending their money right and um perhaps unsurprisingly right people are are paying the rent first right a lot of that money in guaranteed income was going to pay the rent um and so this sort of in combination with the discussions happening around reforms um let us to begin this conversation about direct rental assistance and I should say that you know this is not a new conversation um it's sort of been through a couple times one of the mtw cohorts there was discussion about direct rental assistance um in the early EAB program in the 1970s sort of direct cash payments were were part of the model so so this is a sort of conversation that's reared its head um several times over the years years um and we started having conversations with a working group of stakeholders that included public housing authorities folks from the guaranteed income space um kind of a coalition of folks that were really excited and interested in this and that's where the the conversation really took off in a set of monthly meetings um within pdnr kind of with this community um from there one of the things that we were we were thinking about and sort of which led to the RFI um is that we were hearing a lot from folks that were excited about this that thought that this was going to work that this had a lot of potential and we wanted to make sure right that we were hearing the range of voices um from um you know phas or stakeholders that might have had concerns from landlords on the ground that wanted to tell us how they thought this experience might affect them and so one of the reasons for HUD issuing the RFI and I really think that this is um sort of the you know the best that the agencies do this is the best of the agency is really listening to um a broad set of stakeholders not just sort of those that are enthusiastic and supportive of this idea already and really get input from from as many stakeholders as possible so I know that that input is coming into HUD now and that they're looking at that as they move forward with this absolutely thank you Brian for that um and I I think that you know leads uh into then my next question for Hunter um because after working for HUD as a political appointee and a a career civil servant you co-founded Gate House strategies to help housing authorities and local governments among others deal with pressing housing issues um so have you heard any challenges from your clients uh when it comes to affordability in the private market and have they expressed any difficulties administering the voucher program so first of all thank you very much for having me today um excited to be here and and be with on this panel with all these esteemed folks to talk about this issue um yes you know both both as my time at Gat house as well as my time um asistance secretary and and working at the local level uh you know we've heard a lot of a lot of different um issues that that are recipients of housing Choice vouchers are facing as they try to go out and and get uh an apartment um but you know obviously the the two simple question the two easiest ones to mention are um Supply uh just generally you know it we could have a whole another webinar talking about um supply issues Across the Nation but obviously that really is a problem that impacts the housing Choice Voucher Program um as well as Brian mentioned inspections and you know I I'm excited that HUD is continuing to to implement the Inspire um inspection process I look forward to seeing that fully rolled out um but I think other um other agencies need to look at at that uh and try to determine um whether or not Inspire might be a standard that could be used across the board for for the various funding sources the federal government has uh and sort of have a single inspection um we didn't number of lesing listening sessions in my time as this secretary with uh with landlords and you know as Brian mentioned that the inspections was one of the big issues but it wasn't just you know the fact that inspector had to come out it was the fact that they were receiving different types of funding and they were having multiple inspections having on the same property um because they were getting funding from from various uh you know agencies various local governments so it's trying to encourage one National inspection standard I I think is is key in that process but but I do think that this sort of um opens the door to the other issue that that that we face and that is you know a lot of this uh you know in sort of taking a step back a little bit about this program you know having been spent most of my career in DC um you know it is uh it's easy for us to to try to look for that uh Silver Bullet if you will to sort of find a solution um for the fix all the issues that we have and that that really doesn't exist and I think working um and understanding that that that this you know direct uh payments I'm excited to see the the research and and the you know where the RFI go leads and and hear more about uh what they're doing in Philadelphia with this I I think there's a this is a really promising program but it's not the Silver Bullet to fix everything it's it's really a tool in the toolbox of housing authorities and local leaders and I I I think it's important to emphasize that that that you know each community faces a different Challenge and different sets of issues uh and and providing this as a tool for housing authorities um you know who are key in trying to ensure to try to provide uh this type of assistance um is is is really beneficial because I'm sure in some communities this will work wonderfully and others it may not and allowing them that options to choose from you know direct assistant or the standard housing Choice voucher program I think it is really that flexibility that those housing authorities can have because they are the ones that are dealing with this problem on a day-to-day basis at the local level great thank you for that Hunter um and and here at bpc at the Trager Center we we certainly agree with you when talking about the issue that uh lack of supply of housing is is really just a crucial crucial challenge that we're facing and it it does directly impact um the affordability and and uh folks using their vouchers to try to find housing so um we certainly agree with you there um but let's zero in on the reform idea that we're discussing today which is direct rental assistance um and Peggy your team at the center on budget and policy priorities has researched the importance of the voucher program for years and also its challenges um and you've looked at direct rental assistance specifically so it would be wonderful if you could give us a highlevel overview of the direct rental assistance model and some of the key elements that might be needed for successful rental assistance uh demonstration sure thanks Kristen and thanks for having me here I'm also um really pleased to be a part of this panel today and and this growing and the growing momentum behind direct rental assistance um in the opening you laid out a lot of the key pieces when it comes to uh creating a direct rental assistance program but one piece I want to make sure that um the audience understands is the direct rental assistance program yes it can fix some of the issues with rental with how the voucher program works today and how um recipients uh are able to use it but a big piece of the sh of what brought us to thinking about the the shift to direct rental assistance is the scalability because um while there are these underlying issues that with the program the biggest issue is that there's just not enough money to give everyone who needs aist assistance the assistance um assistance right now about only one in four eligible households uh receives assistance due to funding constraints um uh which are uh part of the issue with how Congress funds the voucher program and that the voucher program isn't universally available so in thinking about okay well we want to get to Universal assistance in addition to funding what are some of the other things that are holding us back and and the administration of the voucher program can be pretty clunky uh and given and especially because landlords have so much control over whether they accept the voucher or not accept the voucher and um and so direct rental assistance one of the key components is to take out some of the paternalism that's embedded within the way that the voucher program is administered and put more control in the recipient hands um and and so with that in in our you at the center we work on a variety of issues in addition to housing and food assistance is one of them and so while the way that direct rental assistance isn't exactly like the way um the snap programmer food stamps works it we were thinking of it really similarly how could we make it almost invisible to the landlord that the person has assistance that maybe this could help with some of the Discrimination that happens in housing give PE help people have um more choice of where they're living and um and and think about how they're using um the the funds that they're eligible for uh to shop around for housing um you know there's still some issues around uh how the these resources would be distributed right it would still be coming from the federal government and it would C to the state or local housing agency um and and then those housing agencies would distribute those those dollars to people though and and that people would have the choice to of where of where to live um people with those uh and so that's that's that that that's an overview of of how we're coming at the at the conversation I think some of the key elements are you know oftentimes we think that uh we don't need pilot programs so we know what works you know as Brian said a lot of the lessons for direct rental assistance come from the guaranteed basic income programs but this isn't exactly one of those situations because there are a lot several things that we need to figure out how to make work to ensure that we're not um making it even harder for people to find housing um like and making sure we don't have any blind spes spots uh as we uh as we move forward so like how will inspections work right there is a degree to which that quality control helps um voucher recipients access higher quality housing but as Hunter said said there's several ways that that is clunky inefficient often duplicative unnecessary and a barrier to having landlords participate in the program we also want to see what to what degree the resources are actually blind a landlords you know landlords will still ask people what their income is as they come into as they decide if they're going to rent to that person like they would with anybody else are there ways that we can make this make make sure that um that that uh this assistance is blind enough to where we're reducing the amount of discrimination and racism that can be embedded in um in landlords choosing to accept uh uh subsidy assistance what to another thing is what to do with excess funds will housing authorities um H have the same um line of sight when people are moving or find rent that's lower than what they're eligible for do we allow people to keep those resources to um be able to build a stronger Foundation or be able to use them for more utility assistance than what's already allowable within the voucher program um think about like how can we help people build Savings in order to you know be able to move out of Assistance or maybe purchase a home and then just the basic delivery system is also something that we need to think about how you know with SNAP benefits for example people have an EBT card what does it look like how do people pay their rent how do they get the you know how do they get the resources as efficiently as possible so those are some of the things that uh we see as why Pilots are necessary we really have to work out how those things can work and the variety of ways it can work because as Hunter said there's not it's not necessarily the case that there's one model that we will do for everyone maybe there are um local variations depending upon uh local local markets um but I think in all of this we just have to keep some basic principles in mind that we want to make sure that people have self-determination of their use of their resources that we're listening to Residents about what works for them you know there are some folks who when we listen to people with lived expertise that are concerned about about this model and this switch especially because of the housing quality concerns uh but overall we want to make sure that we're growing and moving into a world where there's where assistance is universally available and I I'm really excited about uh the ways that we're growing and examining this U model so that we can um make create the foundation for building the day when everyone who needs rental assistance has access to it thank you very much Peggy um certainly so many important design considerations uh to be made when thinking about direct rental assistance um and so I'm very pleased to turn next to Rachel um who has seen direct rental assistance on the ground and has spent time uh I believe grappling with some of these decisions to really Implement uh a direct rental assistance um pilot program um because Philadelphia is one of the first jurisdictions in the country to Pilot such a program um and so Rachel I'd love to hear uh what led the city to invest in this approach to voucher Administration and what are you hoping to learn from the pilot thanks Tristan and I'll Echo others and some gratitude for for being invited to to share thoughts today and and looking forward to questions so uh in Philadelphia like many places you know policy is is people so to some extent there was the right mix of City leadership of certain evaluation centered Partnerships that we had in place that really helped uh build up a kind of appetite for trying something new we also had you know chronic housing instability here in Philadelphia that's you know true in many places across the the country so first I'll start by just really quickly orienting folks to the direct finantial assistance program that we have here in Philadelphia it's called PHL housing plus that launched in 2022 as a two and a halfe pilot serving 300 renter households that we randomly selected from the bottom uh part of our local Philadelphia Housing Authority is weight list um and households you know as as Peggy and others kind of outlined households receive a monthly payment directly on a on a debit card that's a equivalent to what a landlord would receive if they were enrolled in the voucher program and because we selected folks from the weit list they're still on the weit list while they're part of our our pilot so this this they're receiving assistance while they wait for um for a kind of more permanent form of federal housing assistance um so the the reality now that we're a couple years in is that the average payment is around $850 for folks you know that reflects to some extent the the income and rent reality here in Philadelphia um and there's a number of reasons that we ended up here so some of them again are are kind of unique to Philadelphia and some of them are are more Universal the first one is very much Universal it's really as Peggy said really just the need for more rental assistance um so the majority of Philadelphia renters like renters across the country are rent burdened and we when we look at at low-income residents it's closer to say 70% of households that are paying more than they can afford on rent every month and uh within the city we really just were looking at ways at at increasing growing the pie of of kind of rent assistance that was on the table ways that complement of course the the existing uh Voucher Program here the second again is really about that that flexibility like Hunter said so we were looking for a broader set of tools that were a little bit more responsive to the reality of what renting looks like here in Philadelphia and some of this really had to do with the timing so um you know 2020 and onward we we were implementing the emergency rental assistance program and that really showed us that it was one possible to move funds very Qui quickly at scale to address housing emergencies we also knew that many of the folks who were coming to us for that emergency assistance during the pandemic had issues you know challenges paying their rent far before that um that this was not so much a one-time emergency as a as a recurring chronic issue and we saw that there were a number of landlords you know not by no means all but but some segment of the the landlord population that didn't want to accept rental assistance sometimes because they didn't want to come into contact with the city um and the regulations you know of of kind of admitting that they were renting a property sometimes because they didn't want to accept the eviction protections that came with that assistance sometimes because there were language barriers um or or just trouble getting in touch with landlords so we saw that being able to to pay tenants directly as part of uh that emergency rental assistance program was was key it wasn't what we did in all cases but it was a really important tool and and flexibility to have last again the the kind of practical piece here is that just that experience during the pandemic helped you know helped us to build the infrastructure have the right Partnerships in place with the Housing Authority with our really valued research Partners at the University of Pennsylvania with the mayor's policy office so we're kind of ready to take on something new and um you know we like others were seeing those same challenges that households were facing when they were using a voucher um in Philadelphia the urban Institute found in 2018 that uh around 70% of landlords wouldn't accept a voucher when they were asked by a prospective tenant and when we look at higher income areas that percent was was even higher so we knew that people were having trouble using vouchers here and then lastly I think the piece that was um kind of special here in Philadelphia was that there was a real interest in building that evidence base and really maximizing the kind of learning that we could do so um again with our partnership with the mayor's policy office and the Housing Initiative at Penn really inter ated from the very beginning of the planning process there was that evaluation and research element um and that's allowed us to to look uh you know now we're a couple years in at a wide range of of outcomes so of course housing um ease of of moving and leasing up relationship with landlords uh evictions housing Quality Health through both kind of surveys and electronic health records understanding that that Nexus between housing and health when people are receiving this assistance as well as education outcomes and other kind of administrative data including what other programs people are participating in and really the hope there because this PHL housing plus is structured as a randomized control trial is to see what the differences are between households the experiences of households who are receiving a voucher versus those who are receiving this direct rental assistance are certain types of households benefiting more from one intervention or another if so why and again the piece I really just want to end on is that the Hope here in Philadelphia is to understand what particular Gap this tool of direct rental assistance can can help fill that's really complementary to the strengths of the existing Voucher Program now I'll end there well thank you so much Rachel that was insightful and and very exciting to hear um that your program is up and running it's it's been going for a few years um and the importance that you placed on evaluation because I think the rest of the Housing Community can you know really will have a lot to learn um from your experience um and so on that topic um like I said I know your pilot is still ongoing but I did read your article in Hud's most recent edition of cityscape where you talked about the pilot and some of the early Lessons Learned um and there's two aspects that I'd love to hear a little bit more about that you mention in the article um the first is the fact that you eliminated the inspection requirement uh for your pilot um and also you're looking at the impact of uh direct rental assistance uh payments on uh folks eligibility for other benefits programs um so if you could share any Lessons Learned or just observations uh in these two areas I think that would be really beneficial for our audience sure yeah and and first I'll start just briefly with kind of what our application process was was like so that there's a little bit of context when when we start to talk about other benefits or inspections so um we did use an online application process you know something similar that worked really well during the pandemic and you know one of the challenges though operating off of a weit list is that uh the the contact information for folks that we were trying to invite into the program was was quite outdated we have long weight lists here in Philadelphia as exist in in other jurisdictions as well um and I think one one real strength that we saw was that about 85% of the people that we reached and who started the intake process finished it and so that's 85% of people who who completed the full application process um another uh you know 15% or so of those you know were ineligible for some reason they didn't live in Philadelphia or they weren't renters or their incomes were above the threshold for receiving this assistant which is the same as a voucher um but for for those who did enroll again 100% of were able to immediately start receiving this cash benefit and another thing that I'm particularly proud of in terms of the kind of streamlining and scaling that that Peggy mentioned is that it took just about 35 days on average from when someone started an application to when they were fully enrolled so it was a process that we were able to implement quickly and and in a way that didn't create undue burdens for households who were opting to participate but but to your your two specific questions around benefits and inspection so first on the benefit side we really wanted to make sure that PHL housing plus payments were additive that they were increasing the the kind of financial capacity that households had rather than swapping cash for some other benefit that people were receiving so we were really grateful to receive a waiver from the Pennsylvania Department of uh Human Services that protected a number of really key uh benefits program so um PHL housing plus payments do not affect snap or Medicaid or t or lie Heap um and that's meant that again for the many households in our program who do receive those things they can use this income um from the program in addition to those benefits without kind of falling off the benefits Cliff that people talk about we also were really uh cognizant of kind of walking through group uh folks through what the risks were especially anybody who was getting SSI Child Care subsidies um and doing those in in group session so I think the the kind of Hands-On nature of the program was was important to making sure not just that we had the Protections in place but that we were communicating them and then on the the inspection piece which I know has already come up a number of times so first I I do want to start by echoing what others have said which is that the quality of rental housing is really important to the city of Philadelphia this is not something that we take lightly and we know that there's really diverse renting Arrangements that people are using to remain housed you know some folks are are in unlicensed rental units or rental in a room or doubled up with family and PHL housing plus was really meant to be first and foremost rental assistance it's not a repair program or code enforcement initiative you know we we have those in Philadelphia we are actively working on them and I think what I I want to recall here is just um the the phrase that um got brought up already of of kind of no one silver bullet and so we really see again PHL housing plus as a tool uh for giving financial assistance to um and it it can complement our other initiatives around you know Poe housing quality um and the the enforcement there but we opted not to require any sort of inspection um because again we really see it as a tool as a financial tool um not one that um that's meant to uh that's it's not the right tool for intervening in the housing quality space but again want to emphasize that there's a lot of other initiatives and ways that we see complementing this program that are working across the board not just in housing uh units where where there's a subsidy at play but really all rental housing units in the city to ensure that they're safe um and and a dignified place for for tenants to live absolutely uh thank you Rachel for that um and I think you know as you mentioned any program or policy change that we're looking at comes with tradeoffs you know whether that's um tweaking the inspection or you know the application process um and I I think it's important to identify the potential tradeoffs ahead of the program's implementation if you can to help practitioners you know plan and for how to deal with those trade-offs um so if possible I'd like to open up a discussion to everyone um to talk about some of the important trade-offs that could come with a direct rental assistance model um so if if anyone would like to jump in to respond to any of Rachel's um anything that Rachel shared about how Philadelphia is choosing to implement their program um or other uh aspects of a direct rental assistance model that you've identified in your work um I think that would be that would be great sure Chris and I I can start and just share a little bit about um some of the things that we thought about at the agency so um I think one thing to keep in mind and not only with direct renal assistant but with all of our programs with all HUD programs with the voucher program um is that you know the same program might work differently for different kinds of family it might work differently for different kinds of landlords um in different kinds of neighborhoods and so I think one kind of big piece of evidence that um that HUD will need uh to move forward is to think about where it is that uh direct repal assistance works well and where it is that it maybe works better than the voucher program so we can think for example about landlords that are in um sort of high rent neighborhoods and landlords that are in low rent neighborhoods right and and there may be different barriers for those kinds of landlords in participating in the about your program and it may solve them in some neighborhoods but not in others right it may be that in high rent neighborhoods where the the counterfactual tenant is a high income renter um a landlord would prefer to rent to somebody with cash rather than having to go through the voucher program whereas in a low rent neighborhood right where the counterfactual tenant is a different renter um they may actually value the consistent monthly payments from the PHA and in that case right the um Direct Cash may not be such a um an enticement for that kind of landlord um the same is true when we think about renters right so um there are a lot of renters in the housing Choice voucher program that are very successful in the program right we could think of a a renter that leases in place so it doesn't have to go through Housing search that has a landlord that's eager willing to accept the the voucher um that tenant may be succeeding very admirably in the voucher program and there's no benefit of direct rental assistance or or maybe not as many benefits whereas there other kind of land uh tenants that are struggling to find a unit and the stigma of having a voucher may be one of the reasons that that they're struggling and so we can think about those as tenants who may benefit from direct rental assistance and so one of the um one of the sort of major things that that I've talked about with folks um who are thinking about designing these kinds of pilot programs to develop evidence um is actually that there's real value in getting different kinds of programs right so the the model in Philadelphia is a really terrific model but it's certainly not the only model of how we could be running these programs and I think collecting evidence from different kinds of housing markets um different variation on this program different ways of Distributing cash different ways of calculating the cash subsidy right these are all things where kind of that variation helps us to better understand who this would work better for and and who it may not and the one thing that I would just want to hone in on that Rachel talked about was the collaborative effort of with the city when it comes to the inspection part right housing quality is more isn't just important to people who have the Val have a Val or even have a federal subsidy housing quality should be important to all of us and and also when it comes to uh renters rights as well it's something that should be Universal across uh a locality so the engagement of the city in the effort uh is critically important and are really uh I think uh uh you know if you think about best practices something to put an aspect around when you're thinking about creating a pilot is that engagement of community leaders and the city or the county uh as you're putting it together because it it takes all of the pieces to make to make this work and it's a way to leverage how to improve not only uh housing access for people with assistance but you know some housing practices across uh an entire Community thank you Brian and Peggy Andre did you have anything no they they sort of I think Peggy sort of hit on the the the inspection issue which you know I I think that is a stumbling block that communities as they try to uh try to implement this are going to face um and you know trying to find creative ways uh to ensure that that people do have uh you know the right housing quality standards um that they deserve um is really key and you know and I do think that there is a level of extra scrutiny um and and rightfully so when there is you know additional funding sources being provided to ensure that those those units are are you know meeting what we're trying to do in in this scenario so you know whether it's you know looking at at finding ways to allow for you know the resident to you know to do an inspection as they you know training the resident if you will on on what they should be looking for when they're looking for an apartment or other ways to ensure that they're they're getting the quality that they need you know that that's something we're going to need to be creative about and have a lot of conversations about as we go forward to try to try to implement this on at a larger scale great thank you um and Hunter I actually want to stick with you for uh for a minute um because during the onset of the pandemic you led Hud's office of uh public and Indian housing um which made many program rules for um for folks receiving uh federal assistance more flexible to meet the needs of the time and to to make sure that families were able to use their housing assistance during the public health emergency um so did you learn any lessons about streamlining benefits Administration that we could maybe um there we should keep in mind when thinking about direct rental assistance or you know ways to reform the voucher program um to cut out some of the um administrative burden yeah I you know because of covid uh we you know asked for uh the authority uh to sort of have a more blanket uh waivers um that Pi never had in the past you look at you know in Disaster Recovery situations and and other offices throughout HUD that there had the authority to to sort of issue more uh blanket waivers where we were really sort of tied on specific waivers for specific housing authorities so after getting that uh you know that permission we really uh took a hard look at everything we were requiring housing authorities to do and Tred to determine you know what what we absolutely needed in those days and what we didn't um and you know we we waved a lot um I I do think that both the industry and HUD uh really needs to spend some time sort of looking back at what we waved uh and what the uh advantage of advantages of those were because I I think there's probably a lot of uh requirements that we currently have that we really don't need to have um I look at for instance just in reporting um actually one of my initi even before covid was you know we found that we had uh uh both through our housing authorities and travel Partners about 107 different reports um that need to be submitted on 69 different days so that's roughly a quarter of everyone's work week uh that they were submitting a report to HUD on some issue um I asked my office to go back and look at what these requirements were what we could consolidate what we could eliminate unfortunately there's really about half a dozen reports that were not statutorily required um and I really think that's something that Congress needs to take a look at I know that's not glamorous or exciting uh as as you know so this is not going to be congress's number one thought but going back and thinking about um you know the reporting requirements they have because you know I know as it you know it goes back to my time as a working at HUD uh as a career civil servant you know I would working with grantees I would get lots of reports that they were required to submit and you know we weren't looking at all of them uh we were only looking at you know uh those reports that we thought were beneficial and and at those grantees that we are recipients of Hud funds that we concerned about whether they be uh you know performing poorly or other issues so you know streamlining what uh what Hud's asking I you know I think is something worthy of spending uh a lot more time thinking about not just in pi but across the board um both across all recipients of hood funding great thank you um and you know at bpc we are acutely aware of the importance of finding common ground and appealing to people with different perspectives to make progress um and so your your comment about streamlining I think um leads into the next topic I'd like to cover which is really um you know the politics of modifying a federal program like the HCB program whether through local Pilots or national reforms um and because direct rental assistance does aim to streamline the leas set process um and reduce administrative steps um and broadly speaking reducing red tape in bureaucracy does often appeal to Republican and some independent-minded voters um we think direct rental assistance could potentially appeal to to those folks um but at the same time Others May argue that direct rental assistance is similar to guaranteed income um and could disincentivize work um and so Hunter um and then I'll turn to Peggy um do you think that eliminating administrative complexity uh as direct rental assistance could do could appeal to conservative lawmakers enough to outweigh any concerns about the direct payment structure um any thoughts you have on that yeah I think as always uh I think having results to to to demonstrate that this is you know that this works um is probably the easiest way to convince folks that may be naysayers um but at the same time I think it's not just on the conservative side I think this inspection issue uh is really on both sides of the aisle going to be a problem because you know as politics work uh you know whoever is in charge at the time when when you find a unit that that's that's not in good condition the other side is going to you know use that as an example of of what's a problem across the board which may not be the case so I you know I think it it it it it's having results um and also really uh you know ensuring finding ways to ensure uh that that those funds are being used for housing um specifically um is probably the the or at least a majority of those funds are being used for housing is probably the the easiest way to convince some of some of the naysayers on in sort of the conservative side thank you um and I'd like to get your perspective um what aspects of the direct rental assistance uh approach might be deal breakers or on the other hand would be essential um in your opinion to secure more Progressive support for the model sure and and and similar to Hunter I don't know if there's so much deal breakers but there definitely areas of concern that I would highlight in addition to the housing quality piece uh and and and how inspections will will work and need to work I think the tenants rights piece uh is also something that is a concern of making sure that tenants um understand the Avenues that they have to protect their rights uh but also in um ensuring fair housing and that landlords are uh are adhering to fair housing uh to to the standards of fair housing uh or with and and will we have the right oversight or will tenants feel like they can bring things forward or will they feel like they're even more on an island by themselves than they are right now um the other concern is around the depth of the subsidy or the amount of the subsidy I would say right there is a lot of talk about like how could we then create what folks are calling shallow subsidies to uh uh which would basically just be less than the how we calculate the value of a voucher right now we don't you know there is a need for eviction prevention dollars and crisis dollars but the voucher program and through the evidence is shown to be able to help stabilize families and ensure that they're only paying about 30% of their income on rent and that's key because this isn't simply about housing it's also about the other things that a family needs to be able to afford so we don't want to undercut the resources available to families for housing um because all that means is than we're taking from child care or other or clothing or other things that a family has to has to pay for so we want to make sure that the uh that the value of the assistance stays consistent um I think the other piece is you know from an efficiency standpoint you know the way that we're talking about this right now it's an another program amongst a variety of different housing programs and what I think folks will want to see is then how are we taking the lessons that we're learning now to inform the broader program to evolve and move forward we don't want to create we well we don't want to create a situation where now we have another program with another set of of of requirements and create more inefficiencies and more and more confusion for people as they're receiving assistance we want to be able to do these demonstrations and and it's a reason to do a federal regist uh demonstration so that we're learning so that we can then apply those to the uh to the to the voucher program at large and what and whatever we create in order to get to Universal assistance got it thank you Peggy um and that sort of leads into our next question here um and and Hunter touched on it as well um so so I want to turn to Brian um to talk about you know if HUD were to pursue a national demonstration program to test direct rental assistance what steps could they take without Congressional authorization and are there actions that HUD would have to first uh go to Congress and get their approval for yeah let me um before I answer that if I could just follow up on one thing from from Hunter from Peggy I think you know one of the advantages of um sort of a lot of different partners working on this outside of Hud is that we're seeing a lot of innovation in some of this space and one of the things that I I think is really Innovative um and this touches on something that Hunter Hunter mentioned is how it is that we make sure that money is being spent on housing so um so we have a there's a partner working on a platform um where tenants would simply upload right um either rent receipts or their lease right or something where they could provide that information to the Housing Authority in a in a kind of no fr very easy sort of keep up toate way and so I think that question of of making sure or sort of understanding how it is that money is being spent on housing it's a big part of what HUD has been thinking about as well um you know I think the other other piece sort of um just thinking about some of what Peggy said as well is that um you know a direct rental assistance may change the incentives or the way that folks think about where they want to live or the kind of housing that they want to live right so in the voucher program tenant Pac 30% of their income regardless of the the cost of of the unit so if the unit cost $1,000 or $2,000 right the tenant contribution is exactly the same it's 30% of their income and so one of the sort of empirical questions to tease out is about whether or not um right when you get a direct cash payment right people think about different kinds of neighborhoods different costs of units things like that so that's something I think folks will be looking for when we get data back from Pilots um on the HUD question of sort of what happens next in a demonstration um I think that there are two kind of big ways to think about this so one is that um there's a set of agencies uh the mtw agencies the moving to work agencies and um and those agencies have a lot of flexibility to try new things to be Innovative and to experiment and I know that HUD has notified those agencies that they can propose U direct rental assistance programs um with their mtw flexibilities so the important thing about that is that those agencies will still need to um get their get their plans approved they'll still need to let HUD know what they're planning to do and HUD will need to okay that it meets the statutory requirements but those agencies have a lot of flexibility to to do this and so um I think you'll start to see in coming years a whole bunch of mtw agencies that use that flexibility to move forward with pilot programs to start to develop that kind of evidence and that's um a really exciting sort of thing that can happen in the short or the short and medium term um but one of the places that HUD really shines and I think really shines among federal agencies and I think pdnr in particular really shines among federal agencies is that HUD has a long history of doing demonstration projects right where um uh data is collected about um some topic over a sort of long period of time and that informs housing policies so we can think of right MTO was a big one HUD is currently doing the Community Choice demonstration that's building off of right some of the work in Seattle and King County about housing Navigators so HUD has a great track record of um doing these large scale demonstration projects and really developing evidence on a polic issue and so that would be the next big step after the mtw agencies and once we've um kind of identified and collected some evidence from other Pilots that are going on is to really ask Congress for a money to do a much bigger demonstration project kind of building on the track record that HUD already has great thank you Brian and you sort of answered this already but in case you have any uh additional thoughts um do you have any thoughts or if you had to speculate I know nobody likes you know to speculate on on live webinars but um if you had to what would be the long-term impact of these demonstration Pilots or you know a national demonstration that are being developed across the country yeah I I would say you know in addition to some of the challenges of the voucher program that we've already discussed I think that there are there would be two sort of long-term things that I'd like to keep in mind um one is about uh sort of how the pot of money um that's dedicated to rental assistance is being spent right so um you know Congress allocates a certain amount of money each year to pay pay folks rent through the voucher program and there's a a sort of open question about whether a direct rental assistance um could be a more efficient use of that money right in other words given that pot of money could we actually serve more people with the same amount of money and so I think that's one kind of long-term question is um you know until we get to a point where this is this is a universal program and everybody has access to rental assistance if they need it um we're going to be asking questions about how we can serve the most number of households as efficiently as possible with the pot of money that Congress allocates and so I think that's an important question to keep in mind and then the second right is is actually just that um you know all of our housing studies are of course about housing but they're also about all of the other things that um that are undergirded by housing right so we think about how well children do in school we think about employment opportunities and educational opportunities for adults we think about health and mental health outcomes right all these things that are contingent on housing and so I think that um sort of as we think about this and we think about the long-term impacts right I think that we haven't talked a lot about today um which is kind of outside of the the program design is actually just about the rationale for this right and part of the rationale is about dignity right it's about um um letting people make choices um it's about removing paternalism from our social policy right and so those are things that might actually have alongside the the sort of housing outcomes um may have positive benefits for all these other things that we care about and so I think that's the other thing that we'll be watching in the long term is kind of all the things that build off of strong housing outcomes thank you for that Brian um I do want to leave a few minutes for uh questions from our audience we've had a few come in um but if you have questions you can still submit them um and we'll try to to leave a moment for for those questions um but I did want to pose one that's coming um uh to anyone and Rachel I'm not sure if this applies to you um but anyone's welcome to answer um are there thoughts or have there been plans to include uh any other assistance uh indirect rental assistance Pilots such as you know Housing search assistance um money for security deposits or other counseling um which you know those types of um incentives or or uh you know other aspects of the program to to help people find and secure housing um has that been talked about in the context of direct rental assistance at all yeah absolutely happy to take a a first pass at that question so um this pilot that we started in in 2022 is really our our kind of first iteration right and and in this first phase we were really closely trying to mirror to the extent possible the voucher program um and so that's where we were using the same method of calcul calulation inviting folks from the wait list and really focused on again that that kind of monthly payment so it didn't include a broader uh kind of set of supportive services around navigation or moving expenses but again this is really an exercise in in learning and and paying attention to the experiences of the folks who are in the pilot so those the things that this um listener brought up are are absolutely part of the conversation as we move forward and look towards the the future of what what direct rental assistance might include in Philadelphia and we know that that moving even with with this assistance on the table is still hard uh whether that's because of security deposits or because it's just really hard to locate an affordable unit um and becoming more difficult here in Philadelphia so um I'm I'm personally really looking forward to uh kind of making more concrete plans for what happens after this first iteration wraps up here next summer uh and I think that as we look to support both the the households who are already enrolled and the the many more who we know continue to need assistance I think things like security deposit um support uh and and navigation more generally are are part of the conversation and I do want to call up that I think the the uh the the services through uh the housing authorities family self-sufficiency program are also an important piece here and I think learning is kind of going in both both directions right that we're getting to try out something new with the direct rental assistance model but there's so much learning that we can apply from from elsewhere FSS is one piece of that and I think um yeah I think it'll it'll all be relevant uh as we again look at what we've learned from this this iteration and and see what else we can incorporate thank you Rachel uh one other question from the audience here um how would panelists expect uh an HCB participant who is zero income to be approved for units um when the basic income criteria for the units uh is can be you know three times the rent if landlords are asking for that anyone have thoughts that one that's a challenging question I mean I I think this goes back to the fact that this is really just a you know we have to look at this as a single tool in in the you know in the toolbox if you will uh sort of hate using that term but it it fits uh the toolbox that uh is available for housing authorities to to Really approach these problems this may not be the solution for that type of situation where someone doesn't have any other income um you know this is probably not the uh not the answer for that that's why something like a housing Choice voucher and allowing a Housing Authority sort of that flexibility to sort of pick and choose how that best to address the needs of the person they're dealing with is is so Paramount here yeah and it could be right that that's part of the role then the evolving role for housing authorities as well right if maybe you could either a person could either report this to the landlord as their income and then and the Housing Authority or the administrating entity could sign off on the fact that this person has this assistance and this assistance is going to be with them and that could and that's one of the things that I talked about that we want to try to do what we can to see if this assistance can be blind to landlords but there are probably some instances where we where we can't uh and so but are we still making the program streamlined enough and easier to access enough that land that it's taking away some of the barriers from landlord engagement so but that evolving role for housing authorities is of interest because housing authorities are increasingly being um as much in a administrator of a program as a social service agency within the community that's proactively engaged with um the families that they're serving to help them act find housing to create landlord incentive pools to bring landlords into the program to um provide uh Family self-sufficiency Services uh to uh to to their uh to voucher recipients so as as we evolve in this way of direct rental assistance it it it one of the things to test is then what is the role of the housing entity that it or the administrating entity in the in the uh in the program to be the signer to to to uh more proactively and more in uh Social Services lens help families Access housing maintain housing and and and maybe provide some of the services like legal assistance and landlord um and landlord uh negotiation practices that we see happen in the homelessness space a lot thank you so much uh and thank you to all of our panelists unfortunately that's all the time we have for today uh and thank you so much to our virtual audience for joining us and if you enjoyed this event uh please register our next housing event is on September 12th uh it's a conversation with former fhfa director Mark Calabria uh you can attend that session uh either in person at our offices in DC or join online um with that thank you so much to our panelists for participating and to our audience for tuning in have a great day [Music] [Music] e e e e e for