• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About
  • Press Room
  • Poverty & Race Journal
  • Donate
  • Publications
    • PRRAC Publications & PRRAC Authors
    • PRRAC Policy Briefs
    • PRRAC Advocacy Resources
    • PRRAC Advocacy Letters
  • Events
  • Contact

PRRAC — Connecting Research to Advocacy

Poverty & Race Research Action Council

MENUMENU
  • Fair Housing
    • Fair Housing Homepage
    • Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH)
    • Housing Mobility & the Housing Choice Voucher Program
    • Source of Income Discrimination
    • Low Income Housing Tax Credit
    • Fair Housing and Community Development
    • Civil Rights and Housing Finance Reform
    • Federal Housing Advocacy – Other Programs
  • Social Housing
  • School Diversity
    • School Diversity
    • National Coalition on School Diversity Website
  • Housing-Schools Intersections
  • Special Projects
    • Civil Rights History
    • Civil Rights & The Administrative State
    • Environmental Justice
    • International Human Rights and U.S. Civil Rights Policy
    • PRRAC In the Courts
    • Title VI Repository
  • Search
    • Search

You are here: Home / Advocacy Guides / How to Advocate for Higher Voucher Caps with your Local Housing Authority (PRRAC, October 2020)

How to Advocate for Higher Voucher Caps with your Local Housing Authority (PRRAC, October 2020)

October 22, 2020 by

Basics of Section 8 Housing Vouchers

  • The Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program is the major rental assistance program funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and administered by local Public Housing Authorities (PHAs).
    • Those eligible for the program find their own housing, so long as the unit meets the program’s standards and the owner is willing to participate in the program.
    • Eligibility for Section 8 is based on gross income, with the cutoff for even being eligible generally requiring less than 50% of the Metropolitan Area Median Income (AMI). Additionally, at least 3/4 of vouchers must be provided to those earning less than 30% of the AMI.
  • Under the Section 8 Housing Voucher program, residents pay approximately 30% of their income towards their rent and utilities, and the rest is paid by the voucher, up to the payment standard set by the PHA. Traditionally, these payment standards cap the voucher at between 90%-110% of the area’s Fair Market Rent (FMR).

Why It’s Important to Raise Voucher Caps

  • The low-income threshold to qualify for Section 8 vouchers combined with the caps based on area-wide fair market rent mean that for any given area, there is a maximum rent voucher recipients will be able to pay. If the FMR is calculated based on rents across an entire city or county, there will undoubtedly be higher rent neighborhoods that price out voucher recipients.
    • For example, in Dallas, voucher recipients were unable to afford rents in the more affluent, whiter parts of the metropolitan area with their proximity to good schools and numerous job centers.
  • Raising voucher caps will allow program participants greater choice in where they live and will ensure their voucher can get them housing in the higher rent and higher opportunity neighborhoods – including city neighborhoods that are experiencing gentrification and rising rents.

How PHAs Can Raise Voucher Caps

  • In 2016, HUD gave PHAs a powerful new tool to increase rent levels in the voucher program using Small Area Fair Market Rents (SAFMR) that set average rents by zip code (as opposed to metro-wide). But for most areas of the country, this option is voluntary, and residents must demand that PHAs make this change.
  • To increase rent caps in specific zip codes using the Small Area FMR, all that a PHA must do is notify HUD by email that it is adopting “exception payment standards” based on the SAFMR in specific zip codes. PHAs are allowed to set the payment standards at between 90-110% of the SAFMR in each zip code. These rents can be significantly higher than the current FMR – sometimes as high as 150% of the current FMR!
  • 24 regions of the country already have been required to adopt SAFMRs (see the list here), and several other regions have adopted SAFMRs voluntarily.
  • In addition to seeking increased rents in selected zip codes, you can also ask the PHA to adopt SAFMRs across the board – but this may lead to decreases in payment standards in lower rent neighborhoods.
  • PHAs with Moving to Work (MTW) authority also have some extra leeway in setting payment standards.

The Best Arguments for Raising Voucher Caps

  • Higher voucher rent caps mean that voucher recipients can move to any part of the city or region that gives them the work, school, or other opportunities they need to thrive. Lower caps mean restricting participants to lower-rent neighborhoods and effectively locking them out of higher opportunity neighborhoods. This often cuts along racial divides as well as economic ones.
  • In addition to offering families more choice of where to live, research has shown that children who grow up in low poverty neighborhoods have higher educational and adult income outcomes. Small Area FMRs now make this possible.

For more information, see the PRRAC/NHLP advocates’ guides to implementation of voluntary and mandatory SAFMRs, and for detailed information see our in-depth analysis of the rule.

 

Filed Under: Advocacy Guides, Fair Housing

You might also like…

What You Need to Know about the Trump Administration’s Attack on Affirmative Marketing (June 2025)
Moving LIHTC Towards Social Housing — A Toolkit

Primary Sidebar

PRRAC Updates

PRRAC Update (June 12, 2025): Understanding the latest threats to housing access

PRRAC Update (May 29, 2025): LIHTC in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”

PRRAC Update (May 15, 2025) Join us for the 10th National Conference on Housing Mobility!

Previous Updates...

PRRAC in the News

Discrimination cases unravel as Trump scraps core civil rights tenet

June 1, 2025

Trump Just Issued an Executive Order Aimed at Decimating the Civil Rights Act of 1964

May 4, 2025

Ballot measure seeks to end discrimination based on source of rental income in Lincoln, Nebraska

April 16, 2025

What Trump’s DEI Orders Could Mean for Housing

February 21, 2025

Previous Posts...

Poverty & Race Journal

Footer

PRRAC – Poverty & Race Research Action Council

The Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) is a civil rights law and policy organization based in Washington, D.C. Our mission is to promote research-based advocacy strategies to address structural inequality and disrupt the systems that disadvantage low-income people of color. PRRAC was founded in 1989, through an initiative of major civil rights, civil liberties, and anti-poverty groups seeking to connect advocates with social scientists working at the intersection of race and poverty…Read More

Archives

Resources at PRRAC

  • Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
  • Environmental Justice
  • Fair Housing
  • Fair Housing & Community Development
  • Low Income Housing Tax Credit
  • Poverty & Race Journal
  • PRRAC Update
  • School Diversity
  • Housing Choice Voucher Mobility
  • PRRAC in The Courts

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in var _ctct_m = "7608c7e98e90af7d6ba8b5fd4d901424"; //static.ctctcdn.com/js/signup-form-widget/current/signup-form-widget.min.js

PRRAC — Connecting Research to AdvocacyLogo Header Menu

  • Fair Housing
    • Fair Housing Homepage
    • Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH)
    • Housing Mobility & the Housing Choice Voucher Program
    • Source of Income Discrimination
    • Low Income Housing Tax Credit
    • Fair Housing and Community Development
    • Civil Rights and Housing Finance Reform
    • Federal Housing Advocacy – Other Programs
  • Social Housing
  • School Diversity
    • School Diversity
    • National Coalition on School Diversity Website
  • Housing-Schools Intersections
  • Special Projects
    • Civil Rights History
    • Civil Rights & The Administrative State
    • Environmental Justice
    • International Human Rights and U.S. Civil Rights Policy
    • PRRAC In the Courts
    • Title VI Repository
  • Search
  • About
  • Press Room
  • Poverty & Race Journal
  • Donate
  • Publications
    • PRRAC Publications & PRRAC Authors
    • PRRAC Policy Briefs
    • PRRAC Advocacy Resources
    • PRRAC Advocacy Letters
  • Events
  • Contact
 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.