The sweeping reform of the nation's rental assistance voucher program announced in HUD's 2005 proposed budget is designed to help public housing authorities (PHAs) enable more low-income families to transition to self-sufficiency while reducing the number of families on long waiting lists around the country, according to a recent report from the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The new Flexible Voucher Program (FVP) will allow PHAs to assist the 1.9 million families the Section 8 program currently assists and potentially serve more families. Under FVP, PHAs will continue to receive direct funding from HUD to administer the program, but with added flexibility and less red tape to encourage PHAs to manage effective programs.
FVP shifts the rental assistance program from a unit-based distribution system to a dollar-based system to give PHAs the freedom to adjust their programs to address the changing needs of their communities and better control increasing voucher costs. FVP will allow PHAs to set rents using local rental market data rather than HUD's Fair Market Rent (FMR) data, which is estimated, imprecise and often lags behind market fluctuations. In addition, the FVP will reward housing authorities that are good managers through performance-based incentives while holding PHAs accountable for poor performance
Posted by gandlwoods at March 15, 2004 08:51 AM