HUD officials now say it’s time to give federal cash aid a closer look. They are building on that older research as well as more recent developments: an ongoing related study in Philadelphia, the Covid-19 experiments with new kinds of cash assistance (including not just housing aid but also stimulus checks, child tax credits, and food subsidies), and dozens of encouraging guaranteed income pilots that have cropped up over the last few years. It wasn’t until recently, when some HUD employees stumbled upon old reports buried on an agency bookshelf, that policymakers realized the cash rental assistance model might be more valuable for modern times. That research, however, was largely forgotten about in the following decades. This isn’t the first time the federal government has explored questions around cash rental assistance: In the early 1970s, Congress successfully piloted a program to 14,000 families across 12 cities. The program is so cumbersome that only around 60 percent of beneficiaries can find a landlord willing to rent to them. But if you are in that lucky 25 percent and are awarded a voucher, you might not be able to use it. Right now, due to funding constraints, only a quarter of those eligible for housing choice vouchers (formerly known as Section 8 vouchers) ever receive one. The idea is relatively simple: What if, instead of traditional housing vouchers laden with convoluted red tape that landlords notoriously hate, low-income tenants could pay their rent with cash? Would that make it easier for tenants to find housing or move into better neighborhoods? Could that even save the government money by streamlining the aid? A group of researchers at the Department of Housing and Urban Development have been quietly developing an idea that could fundamentally upend the nearly 50-year-old housing voucher program, which helps more than 2 million low-income families afford apartments in the private rental market every year.
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