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AGENDA RECOMMENDATION       
   Item No: 4.B.
Economic Development Authority
Meeting Date:
10/14/2025

Agenda Item:

Resolution adopting the payment standard schedule for the Housing Choice Voucher Program.

Recommendation/Action(s):

Adoption of the attached Resolution

Summary:

The Housing Choice Voucher program’s regulations recognize that some flexibility is required to allow the EDA to adapt the program to local conditions. The payment standard sets the maximum subsidy payment a family can receive from the EDA each month. Payment standards are based on fair market rents (FMRs) published annually by HUD. FMRs are set at a percentile within the rent distribution of standard quality rental housing units in each FMR area. For most jurisdictions, FMRs are set at the 40th percentile of rents in the market area. 

The EDA establishes a payments standard within a HUD approved basic range between 90 and 110 percent of the published FMR for each unit size. Current payment standards remain in this acceptable range and staff recommend payment standards remain at current level.
 
The PHA reviews the appropriateness of the payment standards on an annual basis when the new FMR is published, and at other times as determined necessary. In addition to ensuring the payment standards are always within the “basic range”, the PHA considers the following factors when determining whether an adjustment should be made to the payment standard schedule:
  • Funding Availability: The PHA reviewed the budget to determine the impact projected subsidy adjustments will have on funding available for the program and the number of families served. The PHA compared the number of families who could be served under revised payment standard amounts with the number assisted under current payment standard amounts. With FMRs reduced this year, payment standards are recommended to remain the same. The EDA is under-utilizing vouchers due to lack of funding which limits our ability to raise payment standards.
  • Rent Burden of Participating Families: Rent burden was determined by identifying the percentage of families, for each unit size, that are paying more than 30 percent of their monthly adjusted income as the family share. When 40 percent or more of families, for any given unit size, are paying more than 30 percent of adjusted monthly income as the family share, the PHA considers increasing the payment standard. Due to the reduction of Fair Market Rents, staff does not recommend increases to the payment standards.
     
  • Quality of Units Selected: The PHA reviewed the quality of units selected by participant families when making the determination of the percentage of income families are paying for housing, to ensure that payment standard increases are only made when needed to reach the mid-range of the market. Staff complete rent reasonableness at lease up, encourage leasing outside areas of low-income census tracts, and monitors rental rates through regular housing studies.
  • Changes in Rent to Owner: The PHA may review a sample of the units to determine how often owners are increasing or decreasing rents and the average percentage of increases/decreases by bedroom size. Staff is not seeing decreases in rents and rents were assessed with anticipated increases at 5–10%.
  • Unit Availability: The PHA reviews the availability of units for each unit size, particularly in areas with low concentrations of poor and minority families. 1 BR availability continues to be limited.
  •  Lease-up Time and Success Rate: The PHA does consider the percentage of families that are unable to locate suitable housing before the voucher expires and whether families are leaving the jurisdiction to find affordable housing. Households are taking 2-4 months to secure housing, which is slightly longer than their voucher time limit.
Changes to payment standard amounts will be effective on December 1st of every year unless, based on the proposed FMRs, it appears that one or more of the PHA’s current payment standard amounts will be outside the basic range when the final FMRs are published. In that case, the PHAs payment standards will be effective October 1st instead of December 1st. 
 
Current Payment Standards remain the same for each bedroom size and are between 104% to 108% of the Fair Market Rent provided by HUD. These Payment Standards will be effective December 1, 2025. The board is asked to approve by resolution the Payment Standards as revised.

Attachments