Vulnerable Renters Are Fearful as Emergency Housing Vouchers Wind Down

When 28-year-old Brianna Beadle finally secured an Emergency Housing Voucher (EHV) in 2022, the single mother of five exhaled for the first time in years. After she’d been bouncing between a domestic violence shelter, short-term hotels, and her car, the voucher made a four-bedroom home in Pompano Beach, Florida, possible — a place where her kids could sleep, study, and heal. But now, with the federal program set to end in 2026, Beadle fears losing it all.

“It’s kind of scary,” Beadle said. “With me being in school and working, [it’s] already all I can afford.”

Beadle earns about $2,100 a month. Her rent is nearly $4,000. Without the voucher, she has no plan.

“I’m not looking to depend on this for the rest of my life,” she said. “[It’s just] until I [can] get on my feet.”

Confusion and Uncertainty

Launched under the 2021 American Rescue Plan, the EHV program was designed to help people at risk of homelessness during the pandemic. The program, run through local public housing authorities, functions similarly to Housing Choice, or Section 8, vouchers and typically covers 70% of rent, up to the area’s fair market rent, as defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Unlike Section 8, the EHV program had no local residency requirement, allowing families to move.

Nationwide, the EHV program housed more than 60,000 families like Beadle’s. But as federal funding runs out due mostly to skyrocketing rents post-2021, advocates warn that thousands could be pushed back into homelessness, especially in high-cost regions such as South Florida, where rents have soared over 30% in recent years.

Beadle first applied for city public housing in 2016; her name was called six years later when waitlisted applicants were reviewed during the EHV rollout. The voucher allowed her children to have bedrooms and attend school regularly. Her eldest son, who is autistic, relies on consistent routines and therapy.

“Where we live and where you sleep before you start your day in the morning is the most important thing,” Beadle said. “If you don’t get rest, you’re grumpy. If you don’t eat, you’re angry.”

In September, Beadle received notice from the Broward County Housing Authority (BCHA) that EHV support will end in June 2026. The letter asked recipients to fill out a survey for follow-up, but Beadle said she has heard nothing since. She has applied to other housing programs, but waiting lists are closed statewide.

“There’s nothing open right now, even out of state,” Beadle said. “I was promised this, and they just take it away.”

The median rent for a two-bedroom in South Florida exceeds $2,700. Broward County alone distributed 162 vouchers. Without renewed funding, hundreds of families could lose their homes next year.

In Hollywood, Florida, Kathleen Strainis, who has previously experienced homelessness, faces the same uncertainty.

“It was rough, and during that time, I broke my hip,” said Strainis, 74. “I cannot go back on the streets.”

Strainis lives in Hudson Village, an affordable housing complex with units set aside for voucher holders. She pays 30% of her rent, and the EHV covers the rest. Her $1,350 monthly Social Security payment barely covers food and medical costs.

When she received BCHA’s letter dated Aug. 28 announcing the program’s end, she said she was devastated. She hadn’t realized the housing was temporary. The letter stated that “due to historic increases in rental prices,” HUD would only have funds to cover EHV families “through a portion of 2026.” BCHA determined her participation would end June 30, 2026, and urged her to start planning for “alternative housing arrangements.”

Strainis has called every program she can find, but all are closed.

“It’s making me more depressed than I usually am,” Strainis said. “My physical health as well.”

The impact isn’t limited to Florida. In Denver, 43-year-old Housekeys Action Network Denver (HAND) organizer Ana Miller faces similar confusion. A trans woman and recovering heroin user who is seven years sober, Miller received an EHV in 2021 after entering a pandemic hotel program for people with health conditions. She’s lived for two years in her current Denver Housing Authority apartment.

“I had been trying forever to get them to explain to me how my voucher worked,” Miller said. “They have no idea when the funding will actually end, which has put me into a major quandary.”

Her lease ends in December. The unit’s rent is $1,125, which Miller said she cannot afford; she currently pays roughly 30% of her income, plus utilities.

“At worst, I could be living in a tent,” Miller said.

She has already applied for permanent vouchers and been denied.

“I am now an openly trans woman, and there’s no safe space for us in Denver,” Miller said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I will lose everything I’ve built in the last three years to try to get my life back on track and help the community.”

Miller said the EHV has played a crucial role in her life’s new trajectory.

“Once you’re on the streets, it’s insanely hard to get off them,” Miller said. “That lottery is like winning the literal Powerball lottery. I never would have come out as a transgender woman. I most likely would have drank myself to death. That’s the path I was on.”

New Approaches

HAND founder Terese Howard said the turbulence reveals a structural flaw: relying on subsidies tied to market rents.

“This is a prime example of why vouchers are not the answer to our housing need,” Howard said. “As more money goes into vouchers, that doesn’t equal more people in housing with those vouchers.”

Howard pointed to Denver’s traditional Section 8 process as proof. In 2022, 20,000 people entered the voucher lottery; 1,000 names were selected. After the paperwork and landlord searches, only 77 people, or less than 8%, actually leased units.

She added that Denver’s decline in the number of people counted as being “unsheltered” has more to do with police sweeps and temporary winter beds than real housing gains.

“Our mayor has an elaborate and forceful strategy to police houseless people out of sight,” Howard said. “Homelessness overall has increased 12%” since last year.

For Howard, real investment looks like actual housing and humane treatment. HAND backs social housing: publicly owned, mixed-income buildings kept affordable with rents tied to income and insulated from speculation.

“Housing is not a commodity; it’s a human need,” Howard said. “We need to take housing off of the market, make it a public resource through public ownership, and invest in it as such.”

In Seattle and the surrounding counties, Adam Rice of the Washington State Human Rights to Housing Collective said agencies are bracing for a funding cliff amid rising homelessness.

“We’re seeing a marked increase in homelessness and a rapid decline in services,” Rice said. “Housing agencies are wondering where their funding is coming from next year.”

He’s especially worried about Housing and Essential Needs vouchers, smaller, temporary subsidies that are set to end this year. Rice said most of the low-income housing in and around Seattle is for sober living.

“That’s in trouble right now,” he said. “They’re the ones whose benefits going away [will put] people back out on the streets and at risk of addiction again.”

Rice sees promise in Seattle’s nascent social housing public development authority, created by ballot measure, but he said the conservative City Council has slowed funding. The developer hasn’t yet broken ground, he said. Still, he argued that social housing is “an effective alternative” if the city fully funds it.

He added that public agencies are sitting on vacant, city-owned properties that could be converted into permanent homes.

To Paul Boden, executive director of the San Francisco-based Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP), the EHV sunset reflects a decadeslong pattern: temporary aid standing in for long-term housing policy.

WRAP formed in 2005 to connect grassroots homeless rights groups and publish research tracing the rise of modern homelessness to federal cuts to affordable housing in the 1980s. Boden sees EHV repeating a familiar arc.

“These programs were temporary when they were created,” Boden said. “How do you do temporary programming for the homes of families and disabled people?”

He warned that parallel cuts to safety net programs will compound housing loss, disproportionately harm seniors, disabled people, undocumented and trans communities, and Black and brown renters.

“If ever there was proof this is systemic, it’s what we’ve got coming now,” Boden said.

The downstream response, Boden fears, is increased criminalization.

“Communities have gotten really good at trying to make us disappear,” he said, citing police sweeps that push people out of sight rather than housing them.

Strainis of Hollywood, Florida, said police already hound unhoused people around her city. “The cops won’t let you stay anywhere,” she said. “They tell you to wake up and move on. It’s unreal. It’s frightening me to death, because next May, I’m going to be on the street, and I don’t know what that’s like anymore.”

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