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What if universal rental assistance were implemented to deal with the housing crisis?
A significant number of American families facing unaffordable rents are living in motels. While many believe a housing shortage causes high rents, experts suggest that expanding rental assistance is more effective. Making subsidies available to all eligible low-income households could tackle this affordability crisis significantly.
What if universal rental assistance were implemented to deal with the housing crisis?
Alex Schwartz, The New School and Kirk McClure, University of Kansas
If there’s one thing that U.S. politicians and activists from across the political spectrum can agree on, it’s that rents are far too high.
Many experts believe that this crisis is fueled by a shortage of housing, caused principally by restrictive regulations.
Rents and home prices would fall, the argument goes, if rules such as minimum lot- and house-size requirements and prohibitions against apartment complexes were relaxed. This, in turn, would make it easier to build more housing.
As experts on housing policy, we’re concerned about housing affordability. But our research shows little connection between a shortfall of housing and rental affordability problems. Even a massive infusion of new housing would not shrink housing costs enough to solve the crisis, as rents would likely remain out of reach for many households.
However, there are already subsidies in place that ensure that some renters in the U.S. pay no more than 30% of their income on housing costs. The most effective solution, in our view, is to make these subsidies much more widely available.
A financial sinkhole
Just how expensive are rents in the U.S.?
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a household that spends more than 30% of its income on housing is deemed to be cost-burdened. If it spends more than 50%, it’s considered severely burdened. In 2023, 54% of all renters spent more than 30% of their pretax income on housing. That’s up from 43% of renters in 1999. And 28% of all renters spent more than half their income on housing in 2023.
Renters with low incomes are especially unlikely to afford their housing: 81% of renters making less than $30,000 spent more than 30% of their income on housing, and 60% spent more than 50%.
Estimates of the nation’s housing shortage vary widely, reaching up to 20 million units, depending on analytic approach and the time period covered. Yet our research, which compares growth in the housing stock from 2000 to the present, finds no evidence of an overall shortage of housing units. Rather, we see a gap between the number of low-income households and the number of affordable housing units available to them; more affluent renters face no such shortage. This is true in the nation as a whole and in nearly all large and small metropolitan areas.
Would lower rents help? Certainly. But they wouldn’t fix everything.
We ran a simulation to test an admittedly unlikely scenario: What if rents dropped 25% across the board? We found it would reduce the number of cost-burdened renters – but not by as much as you might think.
Even with the reduction, nearly one-third of all renters would still spend more than 30% of their income on housing. Moreover, reducing rents would help affluent renters much more than those with lower incomes – the households that face the most severe affordability challenges.
The proportion of cost-burdened renters earning more than $75,000 would fall from 16% to 4%, while the share of similarly burdened renters earning less than $15,000 would drop from 89% to just 80%. Even with a rent rollback of 25%, the majority of renters earning less than $30,000 would remain cost-burdened.
Vouchers offer more breathing room
Meanwhile, there’s a proven way of making housing more affordable: rental subsidies.
In 2024, the U.S. provided what are known as “deep” housing subsidies to about 5 million households, meaning that rent payments are capped at 30% of their income.
These subsidies take three forms: Housing Choice Vouchers that enable people to rent homes in the private market; public housing; and project-based rental assistance, in which the federal government subsidizes the rents for all or some of the units in properties under private and nonprofit ownership.
The number of households participating in these three programs has increased by less than 2% since 2014, and they constitute only 25% of all eligible households. Households earning less than 50% of their area’s median family income are eligible for rental assistance. But unlike Social Security, Medicare or food stamps, rental assistance is not an entitlement available to all who qualify. The number of recipients is limited by the amount of funding appropriated each year by Congress, and this funding has never been sufficient to meet the need.
By expanding rental assistance to all eligible low-income households, the government could make huge headway in solving the rental affordability crisis. The most obvious option would be to expand the existing Housing Choice Voucher program, also known as Section 8.
The program helps pay the rent up to a specified “payment standard” determined by each local public housing authority, which can set this standard at between 80% and 120% of the HUD-designated fair market rent. To be eligible for the program, units must also satisfy HUD’s physical quality standards.
Unfortunately, about 43% of voucher recipients are unable to use it. They are either unable to find an apartment that rents for less than the payment standard, meets the physical quality standard, or has a landlord willing to accept vouchers.
Renters are more likely to find housing using vouchers in cities and states where it’s illegal for landlords to discriminate against voucher holders. Programs that provide housing counseling and landlord outreach and support have also improved outcomes for voucher recipients.
However, it might be more effective to forgo the voucher program altogether and simply give eligible households cash to cover their housing costs. The Philadelphia Housing Authority is currently testing out this approach.
The idea is that landlords would be less likely to reject applicants receiving government support if the bureaucratic hurdles were eliminated. The downside of this approach is that it would not prevent landlords from renting out deficient units that the voucher program would normally reject.
Homeowners get subsidies – why not renters?
Expanding rental assistance to all eligible low-income households would be costly.
The Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, estimates it would cost about $118 billion a year.
However, Congress has spent similar sums on housing subsidies before. But they involve tax breaks for homeowners, not low-income renters. Congress forgoes billions of dollars annually in tax revenue it would otherwise collect were it not for tax deductions, credits, exclusions and exemptions. These are known as tax expenditures. A tax not collected is equivalent to a subsidy payment.
For example, from 1998 through 2017 – prior to the tax changes enacted by the first Trump administration in 2017 – the federal government annually sacrificed $187 billion on average, after inflation, in revenue due to mortgage interest deductions, deductions for state and local taxes, and for the exemption of proceeds from the sale of one’s home from capital gains taxes. In fiscal year 2025, these tax expenditures totaled $95.4 billion.
Moreover, tax expenditures on behalf of homeowners flow mostly to higher-income households. In 2024, for example, over 70% of all mortgage-interest tax deductions went to homeowners earning at least $200,000.
Broadening the availability of rental subsidies would have other benefits. It would save federal, state and local governments billions of dollars in homeless services. Moreover, automatic provision of rental subsidies would reduce the need for additional subsidies to finance new affordable housing. Universal rental assistance, by guaranteeing sufficient rental income, would allow builders to more easily obtain loans to cover development costs.
Of course, sharply raising federal expenditures for low-income rental assistance flies in the face of the Trump administration’s priorities. Its budget proposal for the next fiscal year calls for a 44% cut of more than $27 billion in rental assistance and public housing.
On the other hand, if the government supported rental assistance in amounts commensurate with the tax benefits given to homeowners, it would go a long way toward resolving the rental housing affordability crisis.
This article is part of a series centered on envisioning ways to deal with the housing crisis.
Alex Schwartz, Professor of Urban Policy, The New School and Kirk McClure, Professor of Urban Planning, University of Kansas
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
New hybrid event aims to give grieving audiences meaningful holiday viewing, with films from more than 25 countries and a mission centered on love, loss, and emotional truth.
A new film festival debuting in late 2026 is taking a different approach to holiday entertainment. Grief Fest™: The Grief Film Festival, created by My Grief Angels Inc., is being introduced as what organizers believe is the world’s first film festival dedicated entirely to grief, remembrance, resilience, and healing.
The hybrid festival will run in two segments: November 25–29, 2026, during Thanksgiving week, and December 24, 2026, through January 3, 2027, during Christmas and New Year’s. Top Honors films will be announced on December 31, 2026.
Organizers say the timing is intentional. Research cited in the announcement shows that grief and loneliness are major holiday stressors for many Americans, making the season especially difficult for people coping with loss. In that context, Grief Fest™ is positioning itself as an alternative to the flood of traditional feel-good holiday programming.
The festival is open to short films, features, documentaries, experimental work, AI-generated projects, and VR experiences. It is described as inclusive, non-religious, and LGBTQ+ friendly, with submissions already received from more than 25 countries. All films will be presented in English, either spoken or subtitled.
Grief Fest™ will be available both in person and virtually through Film Festival Plus, making it accessible to audiences worldwide. The launch of GriefFest.com also includes Lumen, a multilingual AI guide designed to help filmmakers and attendees navigate the festival in their preferred language.
Rather than focusing on industry prestige, organizers say the festival is centered on community and emotionally honest storytelling. For audiences who feel unseen during the holidays, Grief Fest™ is aiming to offer something rare on the seasonal screen: recognition.
Source: PR Newswire
Related Reading
- Grief Fest: Official festival site
- My Grief Angels Inc.: About the nonprofit behind the festival
- Film Festival Plus: Virtual access platform
Catch the latest in movies, TV, music, pop culture, and live events in STM Daily News’ Entertainment section.
As the United States moves toward the 250th anniversary of its independence, a new public storytelling project is asking Americans to answer a big question: what does the American Dream mean today?
McCourt Entertainment has launched America-Dreams.com at SXSW as a digital platform designed to collect video submissions from people across the country. The goal is ambitious: gather one million voices reflecting on hope, opportunity, and what Americans want the future of the country to look like.
The initiative is tied to AMERIGO, an upcoming documentary presented by South Florida PBS and distributed by American Public Television. The film, which will be available to PBS stations nationwide beginning in June as part of 2026 programming tied to the nation’s 250th anniversary, explores the past, present, and future of the American Dream through conversations with people across the United States.
According to the project team, selected user-submitted videos may become part of the broader AMERIGOstorytelling effort, turning the campaign into more than a promotional rollout. Instead, it is being framed as a living archive of public voices gathered during a milestone moment in American history.
South Florida PBS President and CEO Dolores Fernandez Alonso said the goal is to make the anniversary feel inclusive and participatory.
“To celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s independence, we wanted to do something truly remarkable and invite all Americans to share their hope for the American Dream at America-Dreams.com,” Alonso said. “We are extremely proud of the cross-section of voices from across our nation and we want to capture these stories, experiences and perspectives so that people feel included in this historic national conversation.”
Emmy Award-winning producer David McCourt said the project builds on the documentary team’s nationwide reporting.
“As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, this project asks a simple but powerful question: ‘What is your hope for the American Dream?’” McCourt said. “We want to hear directly from people across the country.”
The campaign arrives at a moment when interactive documentary projects and audience participation are becoming a larger part of public media storytelling. With AMERIGO, the combination of a PBS documentary and a nationwide video submission initiative gives the project a broader cultural footprint than a traditional film release.
Submissions are now open at America-Dreams.com. A trailer for AMERIGO is also available on Vimeo.
For entertainment audiences, the project stands out less as a conventional documentary launch and more as a large-scale invitation to participate in a national media moment ahead of America’s semiquincentennial.
Catch the latest in movies, TV, music, pop culture, and live events in STM Daily News’ Entertainment section.
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Viewpoint Hosted by Dennis Quaid Brings Attention to a Little-Understood Condition Affecting Families Nationwide
A new Viewpoint hosted by Dennis Quaid segment with APFED raises awareness of eosinophilic esophagitis, its subtle symptoms, and its impact on families.
For more information, readers can visit viewpointproject.com and apfed.org.
For many families, health conditions do not always begin with a dramatic diagnosis. Sometimes they show up in small, everyday habits that seem easy to explain away. Cutting food into tiny bites. Drinking extra water with every meal. Quietly avoiding certain foods altogether. A new educational segment from Viewpoint hosted by Dennis Quaid is shining a light on those subtle warning signs through a collaboration with the American Partnership for Eosinophilic Disorders, helping more people recognize the realities of living with eosinophilic esophagitis, or EoE.
Viewpoint hosted by Dennis Quaid
The segment, distributed to Public Television stations across the country, focuses on making this chronic inflammatory condition easier for the public to understand. For viewers, that matters because EoE is often misunderstood or overlooked, even as it affects daily routines, family meals, and quality of life. By connecting medical information to real-life experiences, the program gives audiences a more human picture of what people with the condition may be facing.
When everyday habits tell a bigger story
Eosinophilic esophagitis occurs when eosinophils, a type of white blood cell, build up in the esophagus, causing inflammation that can lead to tissue damage and narrowing. But what stands out most in this story is not just the science. It is the way people often adapt without realizing it. Behaviors like chewing excessively, avoiding certain textures, or relying on liquids to help swallow can become so routine that they no longer feel unusual.
That is one reason the segment carries real community value. It encourages people to look more closely at symptoms that may have been normalized for years and to seek evaluation from specialists such as gastroenterologists or allergists. It also raises awareness among parents, caregivers, and primary care providers who may be the first to notice that something is not quite right.
More than awareness
The program also explores the emotional and social side of the condition, especially for people navigating dietary restrictions and the uncertainty of delayed diagnosis. In that sense, this is not only a story about medicine. It is also a story about advocacy, support, and the importance of helping people feel seen.
APFED Executive Director Mary Jo Strobel noted that many people with EoE do not realize they have adapted their lives around a medical condition. That message gives the segment its strongest human element: awareness can change lives, not only by leading to diagnosis, but by helping families better understand experiences that may have felt isolating or confusing.
Originally distributed in January 2025, the documentary will continue to be made available to stations through March 2027, extending its reach to more households nationwide.
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Read more from STM Daily News on community issues, public television, health awareness, and stories that connect national topics to everyday life.
For More Information
- Visit the official Viewpoint hosted by Dennis Quaid website
- Learn more about the American Partnership for Eosinophilic Disorders
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