Publications

This brief from the Center for Housing Policy describes efforts by some public housing authorities to help residents achieve economic security through efforts such as asset-building programs as including Family Self Sufficiency and Housing Choice Vouchers. With housing assistance currently available to only about one in four families who need it, and no prospects for increased federal funding on the horizon, many of these PHAs see economic security efforts as essential for expanding the number of families able to benefit from rental assistance. By helping families that currently receive housing assistance to make progress toward economic security, the PHAs that run these initiatives hope to free up rental assistance for other families.

This case study, one of three prepared by the Center for Housing Policy presented at the National Building Museum's How Housing Matters Conference, describes a long-standing program that uses secure and affordable housing, provided through voucher assistance and public housing, to improve residents' economic opportunities.

In the United States, housing assistance is not an entitlement. Despite annual federal expenditures in excess of $30 billion for housing subsidies distributed to roughly 4.8 million households, millions of eligible families with low incomes and high housing costs do not receive any support. Some families have applied for assistance from their local housing authorities but must wait for their names to come to the top of the list; others have not applied but may pay large shares of their income for rent, reducing available funds for basic necessities, such as food and health care. To ensure that our limited federal housing resources are available to assist as many families as possible, we should be actively searching for innovative ways to encourage existing subsidy recipients to build assets and make progress toward economic security. By helping families take advantage of the stability that federally-subsidized housing provides as a foundation for income and asset growth, we can free up existing housing subsidies for other families in need.

There are many different goals that affordable homeownership programs may seek to achieve. Among them, there are several common goals that are often linked to balancing individual opportunities to build assets with community goals of ensuring long-term affordability and preserving the opportunities and assets that public investment helped to create. This report aims to provide communities and advocates with a general overview of three major approaches to long-term affordable homeownership, and how each functions under different market conditions and serves a community's asset-building and affordability goals.

This report seeks to clarify the overall characteristics of shared equity / shared appreciation homeownership programs, identify the distinguishing characteristics of the multiple programs, and show how the different programs fulfill somewhat distinct housing policy objectives.