The Housing Mobility Conference agenda is posted! We are looking forward to an exciting conference on September 20 as HUD and PHAs around the country continue to expand choice and opportunity in the Housing Choice Voucher program – see the full conference lineup here, and don’t forget to register!
A source of income discrimination research agenda: This past spring, PRRAC, the Urban Institute, and NYU’s Furman Center hosted a meeting of researchers, advocates, and HUD staff to explore our collective knowledge base regarding discrimination against families with Housing Choice Vouchers – what we know, what we don’t know, and what research we need to do to advance protections for these vulnerable families. We recently released a summary of our findings, along with a series of powerpoint presentations from the meeting. See also this recording of a recent ABA webinar on SOI discrimination enforcement.
Senate appropriations progress: While the sharp divisions in Congress make the future of the 2024 budget murky at best, we did see some progress on housing and school integration in the Senate appropriations bill and appropriations committee report. First, the Senate appropriations housing subcommittee approved a pilot program to permit a limited number of PHAs to use Housing Choice Voucher funds to pay for tenant security deposits, utility hook-ups and other costs that often stand as barriers to tenant participation in more competitive neighborhoods. This proposal falls short of the more extensive approach we advocated, but it can be a starting point for future expansion. On the education side, the education subcommittee agreed to continue to support competitive grant funding to support school integration, as the National Coalition on School Diversity has advocated. See the Senate report, at p. 220.
Recent regulatory comment letters: in the past few weeks, we have weighed in on the need for tenant protections and rent regulation in properties supported by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and in support of HUD’s proposed methodology for setting voucher rents.
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