The United States government devotes about $40 billion each year to means-tested housing programs, plus another $6 billion or so in tax expenditures on the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). The history of low-income housing programs in the U.S., and then summarize the characteristics of participants in means-tested housing programs and how programs have changed over time. We consider important conceptual issues surrounding the design of and rationale for means-tested housing programs in the U.S. and review existing empirical evidence, which is limited in important ways. Finally, we conclude with thoughts about the most pressing questions that might be addressed in future research in this area.

Public concern about housing conditions among the poor dates back at least to the “muckraking” of Jacob Riis and the publication in 1890 of his book, How the Other Half Lives, which described living conditions in the Lower East Side tenements of New York City. However, as we note in Section II of our chapter, the federal government did not get involved with low-income housing in earnest until the passage of the Housing Act of 1937. Economic stimulus played a large role in motivating the government’s initial move into housing. This rationale does not come up much in current housing policy discussions but is perhaps not surprising when one considers what the economic conditions were at the time the Housing Act was passed. Another important motivation was the concern of advocates about the substandard quality and inadequate supply of low-income housing (see for example Hunt, 2009, p. 9), and by the desire to promote “slum clearance.” Given these rationales, for the first several decades, the government was mostly involved in directly supplying housing in the form of federal subsidies to local public housing authorities (PHAs) for the construction of public housing developments.