Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Housing

Obama Budget Includes Major Plan To Preserve Needed Affordable Housing

The President’s Transforming Rental Assistance (TRA) proposal, outlined in his fiscal 2011 budget, would be the most important new initiative to preserve federally subsidized housing in more than a decade. If enacted by Congress, it would preserve hundreds of thousands of affordable housing units and make other major improvements to the federal rental assistance programs. Read more

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Basics

Policy Basics: The Housing Voucher Choice Program:
The Housing Choice Voucher Program, (“Section 8”), the nation’s largest federal low-income housing program, provides roughly 2 million low-income families with vouchers they can use to rent housing of their choice in the private market.

Policy Basics: Introduction to Public Housing:
The nation’s 14,000 public housing developments, generally owned and operated by local agencies, provide homes to more than 2 million low-income Americans, most of whom are elderly or have a disability.

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Will Fischer

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Douglas Rice

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The Center works with state and local housing agencies and advocates to improve the effectiveness of federal low-income housing programs — particularly the Housing Choice Voucher Program. We also examine the role that well-designed housing assistance programs can play in advancing goals such as reducing the concentration of poverty.