New Report Highlights Inefficiencies in Federal Housing Programs

Last week the United States Senate’s Budget Committee, chaired by Sen. Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.), released a report called Housing Programs: Under One Roof. The report took a blue sky approach to housing programs run by the federal government: if you could start all over again, would you build the system we have now? The answer was “no.” The existing system of housing subsidies has lots of overlap and inefficiencies.

For example, federal subsidies send money to pay for construction of housing projects, fund subsidies for rent in those projects, and then also offer subsidies to people hunting for housing in the market in the form of vouchers. We’ve proposed ideas for how to reform the tenant voucher system: just give people cash to help pay the rent where they’re living now. But taken together, there is lots of money but little focus and people who need housing solutions still can’t find them from federal programs easily.

I’ve posted at Forbes about the report and its findings. In the end, requiring local governments to regulatory overreach that lead to high development costs would help consumers in the market find housing they need whether it is market rate housing or subsidized.

These two problems — excessive regulation and high costs — are related; reducing regulation would reduce costs across the sector, meaning market prices would fall and so would demand for subsidies. Cheaper housing would mean being able to take existing resources and provide more comprehensive support for people with the greatest needs.

You can read the full post at Forbes.