	Introduction

The rental assistance programs authorized under Section 8 of the United States Housing Act of 1937 (42 U.S.C. The rising cost of providing rental assistance is due, in varying degrees, to expansions in the program, the cost of renewing expiring long-term contracts, and rising costs in housing markets across the country. The most rapid cost increases have been seen in the voucher program. In order to understand why the program has become so expensive and why reforms are being considered, it is first important to understand the mechanics of the program and its history. This paper will provide an overview of the Section 8 programs and their history. For more information, see CRS Report RL33929, The Section 8 Voucher Renewal Funding Formula: Changes in Appropriations Acts ; CRS Report RL34002, Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program: Issues and Reform Proposals ; and CRS Report R41182, Preservation of HUD-Assisted Housing , by [author name scrubbed] and [author name scrubbed]. The Section 23 program assisted low-income families residing in leased housing by permitting a public housing authority (PHA) to lease existing housing units in the private market and sublease them to low-income and very low-income families at below-market rents. Over 1.2 million units of housing with Section 8 contracts that originated under the new construction and substantial rehabilitation program still receive payments today. However, under the voucher program, families can pay more of their incomes toward rent and lease apartments with rents higher than FMR. Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance

The first program under Section 8 can be characterized as Section 8 project-based rental assistance. Project-based Section 8 contracts are managed by contract administrators. Section 8 Tenant-Based Housing Choice Vouchers

When QHWRA merged the voucher and certificate programs in 1998, it renamed the voucher component of the Section 8 program the Housing Choice Voucher program. Project-based vouchers are portable; after one year, a family with a project-based voucher can convert to a tenant-based voucher and then move, as long as a tenant-based voucher is available.
The Section 8 low-income housing program is really two programs authorized under Section 8 of the U.S. Housing Act of 1937, as amended: the Housing Choice Voucher program and the project-based rental assistance program. Vouchers are portable subsidies that low-income families can use to lower their rents in the private market. Vouchers are administered at the local level by quasi-governmental public housing authorities (PHAs). Project-based rental assistance is a form of rental subsidy that is attached to a unit of privately owned housing. Low-income families who move into the housing pay a reduced rent, on the basis of their incomes.
The Section 8 program began in 1974, primarily as a project-based rental assistance program. However, by the mid-1980s, project-based assistance came under criticism for seeming too costly and concentrating poor families in high-poverty areas. Congress stopped funding new project-based Section 8 rental assistance contracts in 1983. In their place, Congress created vouchers as a new form of assistance. Today, vouchers—numbering more than 2 million—are the primary form of assistance provided under Section 8, although over 1 million units still receive project-based assistance under their original contracts or renewals of those contracts.
Congressional interest in the Section 8 programs—both the voucher program and the project-based rental assistance program—has increased in recent years, particularly as the program costs have rapidly grown, led by cost increases in the voucher program. In order to understand why costs are rising so quickly, it is important to first understand how the program works and its history. This report presents a brief overview of that history and introduces the reader to the program. For more information, see CRS Report RL34002, Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program: Issues and Reform Proposals; and CRS Report R41182, Preservation of HUD-Assisted Housing, by [author name scrubbed] and [author name scrubbed].