Who should run the housing voucher program? A reform proposal

Section 8, the federal government's primary program for addressing the hous ing needs of low-income renters, is administered by thousands of local publ ic housing agencies, most of which serve individual cities, towns, and coun ties. This article contends that the current balkanized system undermines t he potential of the program to promote mixed-income communities and the dec oncentration of poverty and that the voucher program should be administered regionally rather than locally in urban areas. One strategy for achieving metropolitan administration would be to contract out responsibility for operating the voucher program to competitively sele cted regional organizations. In addition to describing how such a program c ould work, we suggest a series of incremental reforms for moving the Sectio n 8 program in the direction of metropolitan administration. Moreover, othe r reforms-including an expansion of affordable rental housing in suburban c ommunities-are also needed for housing vouchers to achieve their full poten tial.