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Housing

UCP’s Housing Channel provides information on housing options, legal and policy issues, and resources on the civil rights of people with developmental, cognitive and physical disabilities regarding housing issues.

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Housing

Housing Options

Renting an Apartment

Because of the extremely low incomes of most people with disabilities, government housing programs that meet their needs are required to include a rental subsidy or an operating subsidy to ensure affordability. However, long-standing Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs that provided deep subsidies for housing for the lowest income groups – including the project-based rental assistance, public housing development (Section 8), and the Supportive Housing for Person with Disabilities Program (Section 811) – have been reduced or eliminated from the federal budget in recent years.

HUD’s Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program – formerly known as the Section 8 program – is one of the most important federal housing programs available to assist people with disabilities, both due to its size and to its flexibility afforded to Public Housing Authorities (PHA) to establish HCV policies and programs that reflect local needs, circumstances and priorities.

Historically, the disability community has had great difficulty attempting to utilize the Section 8 program – and more recently, the HCV program – to assist people with disabilities in securing affordable housing. The following are some of the existing barriers to this access:

  • Lack of a clear set of guidelines - Local HCV programs are governed by a myriad of rules, regulations and policies that are established by federal law, developed by HUD, and determined by state and local housing agencies. This mix of federal rules and regulations and PHA policies often makes it difficult to know which HCV guidelines are actually HUD requirements and which are local PHA policies.

  • Involvement of several key players - The PHA, the low-income household and a willing landlord in the private rental must work in conjunction with one another against a ticking time clock to locate housing within HCV rent limits that also meets HUD’s Housing Quality Standards and the renter’s accessibility needs with a landlord willing to accept the rent subsidy.

  • PHA’s negligence of prioritizing people with disabilities in their planning process

  • Federal Law’s allowance to reserve housing for the elderly with disabilities – This caused a decrease in the supply of housing available for people with disabilities. At the same time, budget cuts to the Section 811 program have prevented the development of new accessible housing properties that could have begun to replace some of the housing lost through “elderly only” designations.

  • Tenant-based vouchers disproportionately distributed - Congress has appropriated funding for tens of thousands of tenant-based vouchers to address the loss of housing for people with disabilities from the implementation of “elderly only” housing policies. In spite of Congress’ intent, these vouchers were not appropriately distributed due to the following reasons:

    -  The majority of PHAs are unwilling to administer vouchers targeted to people with disabilities
    -  Many PHAs report a lack of capacity to administer additional vouchers for people with disabilities who may need extra help to use the vouchers
    -  Some PHAs that have these vouchers have not distributed them. Each of these problems is compounded by the fact that few PHAs have a positive working relationship with local disability organizations.

  • Lack of a good working relationship between the disability organization and PHA - Most disability organizations do not know how the HCV program works and do not know how to get people with disabilities on the HCV waiting lists.