PHAs Selected for Rental Assistance Improvement Program

Two public housing authorities (PHAs)—Boulder Housing Partners in Colorado and Lexington-Fayette Urban County in Kentucky—have been selected to participate in HUD's Moving To Work program (MTW). The program allows PHAs to design and test innovative strategies to strengthen the delivery of services to families living in public housing or who are assisted through HUD's Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program.

The MTW program was created in 1996 as a “test project” to give PHAs the opportunity to design and test innovative, locally developed housing and self-sufficiency strategies for low-income families participating in HUD's public housing and HCV programs. HUD waives certain reporting requirements and permits these PHAs to combine multiple sources of HUD funding into a single PHA-wide funding source. MTW PHAs also get considerable flexibility in determining how to use their HUD funding. But they must serve substantially the same number and type of households as they would without the MTW designation.

MTW has three goals:

• Reduce costs and achieve greater cost effectiveness in federal expenditures;

• Give incentives to families with children where the head of the household is working, seeking work, or preparing for work by participating in job training, educational programs, or programs that help people obtain employment and become economically self-sufficient; and

• Increase housing choices for low-income families.

The PHAs in Colorado and Kentucky join 33 others in the MTW program and will have MTW designation until 2018.