The Effects of Policy-Interested Bureaucrats on State and Local Policymaking
Henry Watson (Georgetown University)
Housing choice vouchers — formerly known as "Section 8" — are the primary way that the federal government provides rental assistance to low-income Americans. Vouchers work through a three-way contract: low-income tenants pay a fixed portion of their income to a private landlord, and a local Public Housing Authority (PHA) pays the difference between what the tenant can pay and the fair market rent. An administrative challenge of this program is that some landlords may not want to participate, whether because of the red tape that comes with contracting with a PHA or because of stereotypes that voucher-holders are bad tenants. There is no federal prohibition against landlords simply refusing to rent to any tenant who wishes to pay their rent using a housing choice voucher. This can contribute to situations where even those low-income households lucky enough to receive a housing voucher struggle to use it, a bad outcome for both low-income tenants and the PHAs responsible for managing the vouchers.
From 1971 to 2023, 19 states, 24 counties, and 105 cities have passed Source-of-Income Anti-Discrimination (SOI) laws. Among other things, these state and local laws outlaw landlord discrimination against tenants receiving rental assistance. In jurisdictions where these laws are on the books, voucher-holding tenants cannot be refused by landlords on the basis of using a voucher to pay their rent. How can we better understand the rapid diffusion of this policy? These policies have to get on the agenda somehow, and one set of actors who might be motivated to place SOI laws on the agenda — at least in some cases — are Public Housing Authorities.
Source-of-income discrimination is a mission-relevant problem for Public Housing Authorities; PHAs interested in increasing their voucher utilization rates and serving their clients have a compelling interest in banning source of income discrimination, even though doing so may upset the interests of private landlords. While PHAs lack the license or authority to ban voucher discrimination on their own, a PHA which is interested in making policy and in improving the efficiency of their voucher program may play a role in influencing the state and local policy agenda. There are several anecdotal examples of PHAs supporting the passage of SOI laws which we can look to. For example, the housing authority in Charlotte, NC, partnered with other organizations to form the initiative "Charlotte End Source of Income Discrimination," a surprisingly public and political action for a state-chartered government agency. Other housing authorities in places such as Prince George's County, MD, Denver, CO, Akron, OH, and Columbus, OH, have made similar public efforts to advance SOI laws.
How can we quantitatively investigate whether local bureaucrats are pushing relevant policy? We wouldn't expect all agencies to be equally interested in or effective at doing so, so one direction is to identify which states and localities have the most policy-interested bureaucrats and see if there is a correlation with whether and when relevant policies are passed. One way local government agencies self-identify as interested in policy and learning is by joining a national membership organization. PHAs can join the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA), which boasts a dues-paying membership of 82 of the largest and most innovative public housing authorities in the country. Membership in CLPHA signals policy interest, effectively subsetting large housing authorities based on their willingness to pay a membership fee to gain access to a professional organization oriented around policy best practices and advocacy. CLPHA membership also grants access to a professional network of similarly-interested agencies, facilitating policy learning and imitation.
And, indeed, SOI laws are significantly more likely to be enacted in cities, counties, and states associated with a public housing authority which is a member of CLPHA, even compared to jurisdictions associated with non-member PHAs of similar sizes. This demonstrates a relationship between the policy interest of local agencies that administer the Housing Choice Voucher program and the diffusion of a key renter protection which has a large effect on the implementation of that program. While this is a necessarily non-causal result, the findings suggest a place for policy-interested bureaucratic agencies within the network of interest groups and elected officials who influence urban policymaking.
Henry Watson received a Ph.D. from Georgetown University and is currently a Housing Policy Analyst at the Congressional Research Service. The views, findings, and opinions expressed in this article are solely his own and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Congressional Research Service or the Library of Congress.