An Overview of the Section 8 Housing Program

Publication Date: January 2005

Publisher: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service

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Research Area: Social conditions

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Abstract:

The Section 8 low-income housing program is really two programs: the voucher program and the project-based Section 8 program. Vouchers are portable subsidies that low-income families can use to lower their rents in the private market. Vouchers are administered at the local level by quasi-governmental public housing authorities (PHAs). Project-based Section 8 is a form of rental subsidy that is attached to a unit of privately owned housing. Low-income families who move into the housing pay a reduced rent, based on their incomes.

The Section 8 program began in 1974, primarily as a project-based rental assistance program. However, by the mid-1980s, project-based assistance came under criticism for seeming too costly and concentrating poor families in highpoverty areas. Congress stopped providing new project-based Section 8 contracts in 1983. In their place, Congress created vouchers as a new form of assistance. Today, vouchers -- numbering over 2 million -- are the primary form of assistance provided under Section 8, although over 1 million units still receive project-based assistance under their original contracts or renewals of those contracts.

Congressional interest in the Section 8 program has increased in recent years, particularly as the program costs have rapidly grown. In order to understand why costs are rising so quickly, it is important to first understand how the program works and its history. This report presents a brief overview of that history and introduces the reader to the program. For an expanded discussion of costs and funding in the Section 8 voucher program, see CRS Report RL31930, Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers: Funding and Related Issues. This report will be updated as warranted.