New Report Offers Solutions to Maximize the Impact of the Housing Voucher Program

Research from RAND and the Terner Center, with support from the Cooper Housing Institute, demonstrates the effectiveness of the Housing Choice Voucher program and offers solutions to increase program efficiencies and serve more families.

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Sept. 16, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- RAND and the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, today jointly released Improving Utilization in the Housing Choice Voucher Program. The report, funded by the Cooper Housing Institute, shows that while the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program is highly effective, local housing agencies would benefit from greater regulatory flexibility, program innovation, and local partnerships to consistently deliver every available voucher to families in need.

Each year, the HCV program enables more than 2 million low-income families to rent safe, stable housing in the private market. Yet thousands of vouchers remain unused annually due to high housing costs, rigid rules, and administrative hurdles – even as millions of families remain on waiting lists.

The new report from RAND and the Terner Center offers the most up-to-date comprehensive analysis of how HCV program resources are used locally. Co-authors Jason M. Ward, PhD, codirector of the RAND Center on Housing and Homelessness, and the Terner Center's deputy director of research Ryan Finnigan, PhD, evaluated the policies and practices that are most effective for fully utilizing HCV program resources and propose a range of recommendations that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), public housing authorities (PHAs), and state and local stakeholders can implement to improve the program for more families.

"The key takeaways from this research for our team were that the HCV program is, in general, doing a remarkable job of providing critical rental assistance but is hampered by many aspects of the incredibly difficult and unaffordable housing market in the U.S. today," said RAND's Jason Ward, a lead author of the report. "That said, across the country, PHAs have a wealth of collective knowledge about how to best overcome these challenges and the primary goal of our report is to try to make this knowledge and the policies and practices informed by it widely available to PHAs, stakeholders, and policymakers at all levels of government."  

Co-author Ryan Finnigan from the Terner Center added, "The report aims to highlight the creative and effective ways that local agencies are making the best use of their voucher resources, including how the HCV program is woven into broader efforts to make housing affordable, accessible, and stable for as many families as possible." 

This research was generously funded by the Cooper Housing Institute (CHI), a private research foundation dedicated to solving the affordable housing crisis in the U.S.

"This project was designed through the lens of action to make every voucher count," said CHI's president and co-founder Will Cooper, Jr. "We asked, what can be done right now, by PHAs, their local partners, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, not what requires years-long processes. The findings show that practical flexibility, smarter processes, and modest supports can help more families rent housing quickly, bring more landlords to the table, and get more vouchers to families who need them."

Key recommendations from the report include:

• Strengthen community partnerships: PHAs can collaborate with state and local governments and nonprofits that can provide the extra staff, social supports, and financial resources families need to find and secure housing.
• Improve landlord engagement: PHAs can strengthen connections to landlords with improved customer service and outreach efforts to encourage participation. Additional budget flexibility from HUD, as enjoyed by "Moving to Work" PHAs, can unlock a greater ability to pursue landlord liaison and incentive programs, and other efforts to support greater participation.
• Use allowed flexibility in payment standards: Many successful PHAs are overcoming challenges in rising rental costs by both broadly increasing payment standards and adopting geographic variation that mirrors HUD's Small Area Fair Market Rent (SAFMR) policy.
• Allow longer housing searches: PHAs with low or declining success rates should extend housing search times to improve the chances that a family can find housing that meets their needs.
• Issue vouchers strategically: PHAs, in coordination with HUD, should use data-driven tools, and a strategic approach to overissuance in some cases, to help avoid leaving scarce resources unused.
• Expand project-based vouchers: PHAs in the most challenging housing markets should consider attaching more vouchers to specific properties to preserve affordability and contribute to new development. Expanding the cap on this type of "project basing" can further assist PHAs already using this mechanism to support the supply of housing accessible to voucher holders.

"These recommendations are ripe for action," said Cooper. "Any policymakers who are serious about addressing the affordable housing crisis in the U.S. should include these proven solutions in their proposals."

Read more about the report and recommendations for maximizing the impact of the voucher program on CHI's website: https://cooperhousinginstitute.org/HCV/  

Media Contact
Jenny Werwa, Invariant
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About Cooper Housing Institute
The Cooper Housing Institute (CHI) is a private foundation that supports innovative research, public awareness initiatives, and community organizations with the goal of ending the housing affordability and homelessness crises in the United States. CHI was founded by the Cooper family, owners of WNC & Associates, Inc., a national leader in affordable rental housing investment and development. Learn more at https://cooperhousinginstitute.org/.

About RAND
RAND is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier, and more prosperous. RAND's other work on housing vouchers includes "Transforming the Housing Choice Voucher System in California" and "Encouraging Residential Moves to Opportunity Neighborhoods."

About the Terner Center for Housing Innovation
The Terner Center formulates bold strategies to house families from all walks of life in vibrant, sustainable, and affordable homes and communities, generating practical strategies for policymakers and tools for private sector partners to achieve better results. The Terner Center's other work on housing vouchers includes "Who is Served by the Housing Choice Voucher Program?" and "Using Emergency Housing Vouchers to Address Homelessness."

SOURCE Cooper Housing Institute