When the Media Delves into the Myth, Not the Truth, of the Housing Voucher Program

BY KATHERINE E. WALZ

You’ve probably seen the flurry of news coverage about Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) Housing Choice Voucher households living in luxury apartments in downtown Chicago. 

This story insinuates that but for these 298 households living in predominately white, low-poverty neighborhoods, the remaining 45,000 households in the CHA voucher program would not be living in poor, racially segregated parts of the City of Chicago. 

This is just flat wrong, and this attack on families with vouchers who to seek to live in better, more integrated neighborhoods is unwarranted.

The Housing Choice Voucher Program is one of the government's main federal housing assistance programs, giving more than 2 million very low-income households, including families, senior citizens and people with disabilities, vouchers to cover a portion of their rent in the private market. Vouchers are one of the best means of relocating families to more racially integrated, lower poverty neighborhoods. Less than 1% of the CHA's vouchers have exception rents, and only a fraction of those vouchers have rents in excess of 200% of the fair market rent. Those rents will be ending soon because, more than a year ago, CHA reduced the exception rents to 150% of the fair market rent.

So the Better Government Association (BGA) and the Sun-Times published a story that was not only not news, it’s old news. Former U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock made the “super voucher” controversy his final salvo before stepping down. Crains Chicago Business covered that story, highlighting some of the exception rents paid by the CHA in high-opportunity areas of the City of Chicago. Had the BGA and Sun-Times read that story, they would have also found a response from the Shriver Center and Access Living refuting much of what Schock had alleged two years ago. 

The much bigger story here is the pervasive pattern of residential segregation in the City of Chicago, where households of color primarily reside in communities with little opportunity for themselves and their families. Voucher holders, the majority of whom are African-American, are likewise clustered in high-poverty, racially segregated neighborhoods. A story about that, and the real reasons behind it, would have resulted more realistic assessment of the current state of the voucher program in Chicago. The Chicago Tribune’s documentation of the limited time voucher holders are given to find a unit, which likely leads to voucher holders taking any unit where a landlord will take the voucher, is one example of such a story.

The Sun-Times/BGA piece also completely botched why the CHA has to offer households with vouchers the chance to live in better neighborhoods. It’s not to waste taxpayer dollars—it’s to comply with civil rights laws. Housing authorities like the CHA have a duty to affirmatively further fair housing, which means they must develop programs to overcome impediments to fair housing choice for protected classes, such as racial minorities, persons with disabilities, and families with children (all three groups making up a significant percentage of the CHA’s current voucher population). The City of Chicago has that same legal obligation. For that reason, the city should not to react to this story or direct the CHA to further reduce any opportunity for voucher households to live in more integrated neighborhoods.

There is a cost associated both with allowing and attempting to end residential segregation. TheSun-Times/BGA piece chose to focus on the cost to taxpayers of the 298 households (out of more than 45,000) who use their vouchers to secure an accessible unit, locate to a safe community, or get into a good school district. These are often predominately white neighborhoods in Chicago where rents are higher and landlord discrimination is pervasive. The cost to society of ignoring segregation and wagging our fingers at those policies intended to overcome it, however, is much higher. Children who grow up in poor, racially concentrated communities are more likely to face physical and mental health issues, have low educational attainment, and struggle with unemployment throughout their lives. 

Former Rep. Schock chose not to take the opportunity to correct his misunderstanding. But theSun-Times and the BGA should do just that. At a minimum, both institutions should stop further propagating this message.  

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