What is direct rental assistance, and why does it matter?

Currently, the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, the nation’s largest tenant-based rental assistance program, pays rent subsidies to landlords on participating households’ behalf. Evidence shows that vouchers can be a critical source of housing and economic stability for residents. But at the same time, low rates of landlord participation and landlord discrimination limit the number of households that can benefit from vouchers. Recent research suggests that only about 61 percent of households offered a voucher can use it successfully, with rates even lower in tighter housing markets like New York City and Los Angeles.

In a direct rental assistance (DRA) model, the rental subsidy would not go to landlords but instead directly to renters. By changing the subsidy recipient, DRA has the potential to address landlord nonparticipation and potentially make assistance easier and cheaper to deliver. It could also give renter households greater agency in decision-making to achieve their housing and financial goals and greater access to high-opportunity neighborhoods.

What are the goals of the direct rental assistance peer learning cohort?

The cohort will bring together a small group of public housing authorities (PHAs) from across the country to explore the feasibility of implementing a DRA pilot or program. From September 2024 to February 2025, teams from each housing authority will participate in virtual sessions and receive direct technical and research support to identify their unique programmatic goals and administrative considerations regarding DRA pilots and to assess whether rigorously designed DRA pilots are feasible. In doing so, we also hope to shed light on the variety of approaches and goals for DRA and clarify the theoretical framework for how DRA can improve outcomes for PHAs, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and individual households.

Topics will include how PHAs can select households for treatment and control groups, DRA subsidy calculation, evaluation design, benefits loss mitigation, funding and coalition-building, and messaging pilots to both landlords and households.

Policy relevance

To date, there have been very few opportunities to directly compare DRA and voucher assistance. HUD tested two different designs for a direct housing allowance in the 1970s but ultimately structured the voucher program to pay landlords. Since then, PHLHousing+ in Philadelphia–launched in 2021 and still ongoing–has been the only trial to directly compare receiving a voucher to receiving direct payments in the amount of a voucher. In 2023, HUD issued a call for partners to help understand whether “providing rental assistance directly to the eligible household… could streamline the assistance process and enable more low-income renters to benefit from the [HCV] program.”

In November 2023, the NYU Furman Center, at the request of HUD, partnered with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities to convene more than 60 researchers, funders, and housing authority representatives to discuss the state of research on direct cash transfers and housing outcomes, and design considerations for direct rental assistance pilots. The convening affirmed the need for more pilots and identified key questions for these studies to address. For example, how can DRA pilots balance concerns over housing quality with reducing administrative burdens linked with inspections? How can pilots define and evaluate DRA as housing assistance while allowing recipients to use their subsidy as flexibly as possible? And can PHAs or households find ways to share information about DRA that reduce stigma and landlord discrimination?

 Working directly with PHAs to identify and address these important program considerations can help advance policy and practice. This project will help PHAs in a range of regions and housing markets, and with varying institutional structures, assess the partners and internal capacity they will need to support a DRA pilot and generate insights about how DRA design can respond to unique PHA contexts and goals.

Engage with us

We look forward to sharing new resources and opportunities based on learnings from the cohort. You can learn more about our research here. 

We also convene a Community of Practice that brings together PHAs interested in understanding how data and research can inform their work, and in finding ways to explore and evaluate innovative practices. If you work at a PHA and are interested in participating, please contact Director of New Research Partnerships Claudia Aiken at claudia.aiken@nyu.edu.