• Reports

Improve Housing Choice Voucher Acceptance

July 2022

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At CPAL, we believe that families should have the choice to live affordably in areas that are best suited to their needs and equipped for upward economic mobility.

This includes access to “high opportunity” areas, neighborhoods with strong economic, environmental, and educational outcomes. Research shows that these neighborhoods can yield long-term benefits, particularly for young children.

Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs) are an important financial tool to help low-income households access housing. Those that benefit most from vouchers are primarily women and BIPOC renters who live below the federal poverty threshold. Notably, only 7% of surveyed apartment complexes reported accepting vouchers, according to a survey by the Inclusive Communities Project across four North Texas counties in 2020.

To understand this disconnect and ways to improve voucher uptake, we have detailed: (1) the system, the relationships, and dynamics at play in the Dallas voucher ecosystem; (2) the hard problems that stymie voucher acceptance; (3) the opportunities and leverage points for design.

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  • Rental Housing Needs Assessment

    CPAL’s Rental Housing Needs Assessment analyzes the growing gap of rental housing supply and demand for low-income families.

    • As of 2021, Dallas had a 33,000+ unit gap in affordable rental housing. Without action, this shortage of affordable housing units is projected to nearly triple to 83,500 units by 2030.
    • The lack of homes that are affordable to lower-income families disproportionately affects Black renters, households with children, and seniors.
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  • WIC Playbook

    CPAL’s WIC playbook features prototypes designed to increase WIC benefit uptake in Dallas through human-centered design.

    • The WIC program plays an important role in improving birth outcomes and containing health care costs. Every dollar spent on WIC leads to savings in health care costs from $1.77 to $3.13 within the first 60 days after birth.
    • National data shows that in 2021, an average of 12.13 million moms, babies, and young children were eligible for WIC but only 51% actually participated.
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  • Eviction at Dallas College

    Analysis from CPAL and Dallas College explores how eviction affects Dallas College students and opportunities for support.

    • Housing providers filed 4,114 evictions against 3,352 Dallas College students from 2017 to spring 2022. For students with an eviction filing while enrolled at Dallas College, just 4% went on to earn a credential.
    • Black students, students with children, female students, and American Indian/Alaskan Native students are overrepresented in the subset of students with an eviction filing.
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