This report is concerned with vouchers. A voucher is a government payment on behalf of a household, to be used solely to pay a portion of the household's housing costs. 3 Voucher holders 4 are chosen in a variety of ways, sometimes by lottery, and voucher systems in population centers usually have extremely long waiting lists.
Vouchers are portable.
That is, vouchers issued to tenants in one jurisdiction may be used in another jurisdiction. Elected officials are also stakeholders. They must work within budgetary constraints and be responsive to constituencies with varying degrees of support or opposition to vouchers. Closely related to this is criticism of the ways local administrators conduct rent reasonableness studies, and important component of the payment standard that allows administrators to calibrate the value of the voucher to local markets. Administrators and voucher holders who must make vouchers work in extremely tight markets, for example markets with less than one percent vacancy rates, will also put forth policy arguments in favor of housing production.