Terner Center Brief: The Potential End of Emergency Housing Voucher Funding
The Emergency Housing Voucher (EHV) Program was designed to rapidly house people during the COVID pandemic and it worked extremely well – housing nearly 70,000 households at its peak. The $5 billion in EHV funding was meant to last for 10 years, but HUD announced in March that the money is likely to run out by the end of 2026.
HUD’s guidance to PHAs is to transfer EHV households to assistance under the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, which is already stretched to it limits.
A new issue brief from the Terner Center for Housing Innovation and the NYU Furman Center highlights the serious consequences of allowing EHV funding to expire, from increased homelessness to added strain on public housing authorities across the country.
The research shows that a modest increase in federal housing assistance funding could sustain EHVs and protect thousands of families from returning to housing instability.
According to the authors, just a 3.3 percent
increase in the 2025 annual HCV budget for housing assistance payments would allow the program to absorb all currently leased EHVs.
Read more in the new issue brief: