Housing and Urban Development (HUD) officials have formed a task force assembled to enhance efforts to bolster landlord participation in the agency’s Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program.
While the HCV Program is the nation’s largest rental subsidy initiative, assisting more than two million low-income households each year, two new studies determined most landlords do not accept voucher-holders and those who do, complain about the program’s administrative requirements and housing authorities which manage the program locally.
“These studies tell us that we have a lot of work to do to engage more landlords, so our Housing Choice Voucher Program can offer real choice to the families we serve,” HUD Secretary Ben Carson said. “We will be traveling the country to hear directly from landlords about how we can make this critical program more user-friendly.”
Officials said the Landlord Task Force would host a number of forums across the country to engage directly with housing providers, specifically those who do not participate in the voucher program, with the intent of revealing how HUD might make its chief rent subsidy program more accessible and acceptable, specifically in higher opportunity neighborhoods where landlord participation is lowest.
Landlord forums are planned in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and Salem, Oregon, after which the Landlord Task Force will provide policy recommendations to Carson on programmatic changes to increase landlord participation in the HCV Program.