New Research on Success Rates for the Housing Choice Voucher Program

The Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program helps around 2.3 million households every year by providing federal rental assistance. Unlike other programs where rental assistance is tied to specific housing projects, families using vouchers must find and rent homes in the private rental market. However, not everyone who gets a voucher succeeds in renting a home.

HCV “success rates” measure the percentage of families who manage to find and lease housing after receiving a voucher. When success rates are low, it means many families are facing difficulties that prevent them from using the program, even though they qualify.

This also creates extra work for public housing agencies (PHAs), which need to reissue vouchers to other families. Policymakers and researchers want to track success rates, but doing so often requires expensive data collection efforts.

To address this challenge, HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) funded a study by the New York University (NYU) Furman Center. The study explored whether HUD’s existing data could be used to calculate success rates — both nationwide and for individual PHAs — without needing new data collection.

The findings from this study, published in the report “Success Rates in the Housing Choice Voucher Program: 2018–2022,” shed light on how success rates have changed over time and what impacts them.
 

Key Findings from the Study

The report summarized several insights from the data collected between 2018 and 2022:

Success Rates Declined Over Time

From 2018 to 2020, the national success rate was around 65%. However, in 2021 it fell to approximately 58%, where it remained in 2022. This shows a significant drop in families successfully finding homes after receiving vouchers.

Voucher Search Times Got Longer

The time it takes to find and lease a rental unit increased during this period. "Search time" refers to the length of time between receiving the voucher and signing a lease.

Success Rates and Search Times Varied Among Public Housing Agencies (PHAs)

Some PHAs had higher success rates than others. Success rates tended to be lower in rural counties compared to urban ones. If you’re interested, the study included PHA-level data, showing how success rates differed from place to place.

Areas With Higher Rents Had Better Success Rates but Longer Search Times

Families in counties with high rental costs tended to be more successful in using their vouchers but took longer searching for homes. These patterns show how local economic conditions influence the effectiveness of the voucher program.

PHAs in the “Moving to Work” Program Had Better Outcomes

PHAs participating in HUD’s "Moving to Work" (MTW) program generally had higher success rates than non-MTW PHAs. In fact, the PHAs in the original MTW group largely avoided the nationwide drop in success rates that happened in 2021.
 

What’s Next?

This research highlights that HUD’s existing administrative data can be used to monitor success rates annually, both nationally and for most PHAs. The study found that success rates dropped and search times increased between 2018 and 2022.

Further research is needed to understand why these rates vary over time and across different locations. Tracking success rates can help improve the Housing Choice Voucher program and address barriers families face when trying to find housing.

For more details, the full report is available for download. It also includes PHA-specific data on success rates, search times, and other metrics.

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