Every year, more than two million low-income households receive rental assistance through the Housing Choice Voucher program, a federal program that helps renters afford housing on the private market. Currently, only about one-quarter of those eligible for vouchers receive them due to lack of program funding, though Democrats and the Biden administration have proposed expanding it. For our first episode of 2022, Rob Collinson of the University of Notre Dame joins us to talk about how we can get more bang for our buck from housing vouchers, the benefits and drawbacks of the program’s design, and how his research has already helped shape voucher policy reforms in metro areas across the U.S.

Show notes:

• Collinson, R., & Ganong, P. (2018). How do changes in housing voucher design affect rent and neighborhood quality?. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 10(2), 62-89.
• Bergman, P., Chetty, R., DeLuca, S., Hendren, N., Katz, L. F., & Palmer, C. (2019). Creating moves to opportunity: Experimental evidence on barriers to neighborhood choice (No. w26164). National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Rosen, E. (2020). The Voucher Promise. Princeton University Press.
• Collinson, R., Ellen, I. G., & Ludwig, J. (2019). Reforming housing assistance. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 686(1), 250-285.