(HUD) Housing Choice Voucher Program
This is an evaluation on how the City of Providence uses the HUD Housing Voucher System to promote, assist and support homeownership for low-income Black families.
In 1974, Congress authorized the Housing Choice Voucher Program through an addendum to Section 8 of the Housing Act of 1937. This program provided rental subsidies to eligible tenants and their families to use on apartments and homes of their choosings (“Multifamily Housing - Section 8 Background Information”). Intended to improve upon the problems of overcrowding and concentrated poverty seen in project-based public housing programs, iIt subsidizes rent within the private market beyond their usual means with the idea that tenants could naturally disperse into higher income.
The Housing Choice Voucher Homeownership Program was established to allow families participating in the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program to use their vouchers to purchase homes instead of renting. This program was created under the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 2000, enabling eligible families to apply their subsidy toward homeownership costs like mortgage payments. Research done by student Emery Shelley in 2022 noted the Providence Public Housing Agency was selective in who was informed about the program. Participants reported that a lack of knowledge was the number one reported reason for voucher holders' decision to not participate in the program.
Beyond just neighborhood and community stigma, both the Housing Choice Voucher Program and the Homeownership Program programs operate similarly to the options left to Black families who fell victim to the FHA’s discriminatory lending policies in the 20th Century. Federal standards masquerading as health and safety concerns and decentralized administration of federal programs, reinforce the same patterns of concentrated poverty and segregation seen throughout the era of redlining. The use of the designation “blighted” to declare properties—most often owned or rented by Black and brown families—in poor quality and, as a result, fit for demolition, does not seem too far off from the neighborhoods and housing options deemed unfit for Section 8 tenants through HQS inspections. In both situations, the federal government's inability to properly invest in low-income Black neighborhoods is ultimately used to deny those same people access to the familiar people and resources they depend on, all in the name of a paternalistic definition of health and safety. Local discretionary policies that even further limit Section 8 participant’s housing options closely resemble the racial covenants popularized through neighborhood associations across the country in the 20th Century.