Housing

Transition Plan for Strong Communities

Housing

Housing stability is key to lifting families out of poverty and is deeply entwined with child health and educational outcomes. Efforts to help families with housing costs such as rental assistance and housing vouchers are essential, and children fare better if that assistance enables mobility to move to low-poverty areas.

End family homelessness and reduce housing instability. The administration should support initiatives to end family home­lessness, reduce housing instability, help families that are strug­gling to afford housing, and make improvements to community infrastructure, including affordable housing and public spaces.

Help low-income families with children move to low-poverty neighborhoods. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) should take administrative measures to help more low-income families with children use housing vouchers to move to low-poverty neighborhoods, including strengthening incentives for state and local housing agencies to support such moves and modifying program policies that discourage families from moving to low-poverty areas. Federal rental assistance programs like Housing Choice Vouchers are effective at easing rent burdens and reducing homelessness and housing instability but, because of funding limitations, they assist only one-quarter of eligible low-income families with children.

Rescind the HUD proposed rule that adversely impacts mixed status immigrant families. If finalized, the regulation’s elimination of mixed status families’ eligibility for prorated assistance on a permanent basis would result in the loss of vital housing subsidies for eligible children who have parents with ineligible noncitizen status.

Promote fair housing practices. The administration should prioritize fair housing practice, including access to housing loans and rentals that prohibit the persistence of historic “redlining.”