This brief explores how the federal government can invest in enhancements to the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program to fulfill the program’s unmet goal of ensuring low-income families can live in opportunity-rich neighborhoods. As the COVID-19 pandemic highlights and intensifies racial and economic inequalities in the United States, the urgency to identify scalable strategies to broaden geographic (and ultimately economic) mobility has never been greater. Increased federal investment in how public housing authorities (PHAs) administer vouchers can ensure that the HCV program is an effective and scalable tool to promote neighborhood choice, poverty alleviation, and economic mobility and to create a foundation for expanded neighborhoods mobility services. Given the prospect of program expansion in response to increased housing insecurity caused by the pandemic, they also represent timely revisions to ensure future success.

This essay is part of the Opportunity for All project.