The paper deals with one of the most important program of the US housing Policy. The program taken for this paper is the Family Self Sufficiency Program. The Family Self Sufficiency Program is the federal government initiative to reduce the burden of the voucher families by making them self sufficient and providing employment opportunities. This program of the government has involved Department of Hosing Urban Development (HUD) as well as public housing agencies (PHA) and welfare organizations for this purpose. Through this program, the voucher families i. e.
families getting the section 8 housing assistance vouchers are assisted in acquiring the vocational training and job placement services through which they can get independence of the assistance that has been provided to them by the federal government. The government through the Department of Hosing Urban Development has been giving several incentives to the public housing agencies (PHA) to assist these families. This paper provides a brief background of the program started by the government. This program was started by the government through a legislation passed in 1990.
The aim of this law was to encourage employment and savings among certain sections of the society which were getting the assistance of the federal government. This paper also looks at the current status of this family self sufficiency program. Initially, the program did not receive a lot of enrollment of the resident families in HCV and public housing agencies. But due to the mandatory provisions of the HUD, the housing agencies had to concentrate on increasing the size of the programs. There is a new legislation which is awaiting the approval of the Senate and which seeks improvement in the current law concerning the FSS.
There are various problems in this program which have been discussed in depth in this paper. At the end, various recommendations have been given to improve this program. Family Self-Sufficiency Program The Family self-sufficiency is a program developed by the US housing and urban development (HUD). The purpose of this initiative taken by the federal government is to help the local communities in developing strategies that would provide assistance to voucher families in getting employment which would result in economic independence and self-sufficiency for them.
Under this program, incentives are doled out to the public housing agencies (PHA) on assisting the local welfare agencies, schools and businesses which help the voucher families in getting vocational training and job placement services. The voucher families are those families which are receiving section 8 housing assistance vouchers (Cramer, 2004). This federal government initiative was established through the National Affordable Housing Act in 1990. According to the government reports at any given time, around 50,000 families are participants of this program.
The purpose of this program was to providing assistance to the families through subsidized housing. The aim of this policy was to decrease the dependence of these families on government aid and obtain economic independence. In order to study the feasibility of this program, the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) conducted a study of this FSS program. Through this study, they analyzed the various factors of the participating families. These factors included levels of education, employment, earnings and assets of the different participants under this program (Cramer, 2004).
This Family self-sufficiency has helped to serve as a bridge between public housing agencies (PHA) and various agencies and organizations who are working towards the development of the community. This working relationship between these different agencies has helped PHA in reaching out their assistance and access. They have included various works like rendering access to education related to services, providing job training and placement, transportation, child care etc.
