UHERO Insights

Housing Choice Voucher Program in Hawai‘i

September 16, 2026

JoonYup Park Housing Insights

INSIGHTS ARE PRELIMINARY MATERIALS CIRCULATED TO STIMULATE DISCUSSION AND CRITICAL COMMENT.
The findings and recommendations are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views or official positions of UHERO, the University of Hawai’i, or any funding or supporting organization.

By JoonYup Park

@misc{park2026,
  author  = {JoonYup Park},
  title   = {Housing Choice Voucher Program in Hawai‘i},
  year    = {2026},
  month   = {September},
  howpublished = {\url{https://uhero.hawaii.edu/housing-choice-voucher-program-in-hawaii/}},
  note        = {UHERO},
  url     = {https://uhero.hawaii.edu/housing-choice-voucher-program-in-hawaii/}
}

Read the full report: The State of the Housing Choice Voucher Program in Hawai‘i

About 12,000 low-income households in Hawaiʻi pay their rent with help from a Housing Choice Voucher (HCV), the program most people refer to as Section 8 Vouchers. While this program represents about 7% of renter households in the state, it operates under a growing fiscal strain. In 2024, the federal government spent approximately $170 million on these tenant-based vouchers, a threefold increase from 2003. Yet, despite this massive surge in spending, the number of families assisted has grown by only 20%.

In the UHERO report, “The State of the Housing Choice Voucher Program in Hawaiʻi,” I analyze every assisted household in the state from 2003 through 2024 using administrative records from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). My goal is to map how one of Hawaiʻi’s largest federal housing subsidies is functioning, explain the widening gap between program spending and caseload growth, and offer pathways to improve its efficiency. This post summarizes the key findings.

How a voucher works

A voucher household pays about 30% of its adjusted income toward rent and utilities, while the local public housing authority covers the remainder, up to a ceiling known as the payment standard. Five local agencies administer these vouchers in Hawaiʻi: the four county housing authorities and the state-run Hawaiʻi Public Housing Authority. While other voucher types exist, such as project-based vouchers attached to specific housing developments, this report focuses on tenant-based vouchers as they represent the core of the Housing Choice Voucher program.

The government owns none of this housing; every voucher is used in a private market unit. Once a family reaches the top of the waiting list and receives a voucher, they have between 60 and 120 days to secure a unit. The unit should rent within the payment standard, pass a housing inspection, and have a landlord willing to accept the voucher. If the search fails within that window, the family loses the voucher and is returned to the bottom of the list.

For the families who do receive one, the voucher works. In 2024, two-thirds of voucher households paid less than 30% of their income toward housing, the conventional threshold for affordability. Among Hawaii renters overall, fewer than half clear that bar. The contrast is sharpest at the extreme: 9% of voucher households are severely rent burdened (paying more than half of their income on rent), compared to 29% of all renters in the state. However, the program does not eliminate the rent burden entirely. About a third of voucher households remain burdened, some by choice when they stretch above the payment standard for a larger space or a particular neighborhood, and others because local rents leave few options below the ceiling.

It is also important to note that a voucher is not an entitlement. Unlike programs such as Food Stamps or Medicaid, rental assistance ends when the allocated vouchers are exhausted, which typically occurs long before the need is met. In Hawaiʻi, only about one in five income-eligible households receives a voucher, leaving the vast majority on waiting lists that are notoriously difficult to access, as local housing authorities often open them for only a few days every few years.

Spending tripled, but the program barely grew

Figure 1A. Tenant-based voucher households by county, 2003-2024

Figure 1B. Federal dollars supporting voucher leases, 2003-2024

In 2003, the subsidy paid on Hawaiʻi’s tenant-based voucher leases totaled about $55 million. By 2024, that figure reached approximately $170 million, which represents a 70% increase even after adjusting for inflation. Yet, the number of families assisted has barely budged. From 2003 through 2020, the program size remained at roughly 8,000 households. The recent rise to 9,800 is almost entirely due to temporary pandemic-era Emergency Housing Vouchers. Because those vouchers are not reissued when a family leaves, this recent bump is already fading away.

What grew instead was the cost of each lease. The average monthly subsidy per household rose from about $560 to about $1,400, about 40% after inflation. Compared to the national average of about $1,100, a federal dollar buys fewer vouchers in Hawaiʻi than it does in the rest of the country, and the gap is widening.

Why rent increases fall almost entirely on the federal subsidy

The program’s cost relies on two moving parts: what the unit rents for, and what the tenant’s contribution is. Between 2003 and 2024, median gross rent on voucher leases in Hawaiʻi more than doubled from $870 to $1,860 per month. Meanwhile, tenant contributions remained virtually flat, moving from roughly $200 to $300. Because tenant payments did not keep pace, nearly all rent growth passed directly to the government subsidy, which increased to a median of $1,320.

Figure 2 – Median gross rent, federal subsidy, and tenant payments on voucher leases

Tenant payments stayed flat because recipient incomes remained stagnant. In 2024, the median voucher household lived on $17,300—about one-sixth of the statewide median income. Adjusted for inflation, voucher households are poorer than they were two decades ago, experiencing a 9% decline in real median income while statewide incomes grew. This disparity creates a structural fiscal strain. Because families contribute a fixed share of their income toward rent, stagnant tenant earnings transform rising market prices into higher federal subsidy costs. As market rents increase, every additional dollar of rent must be absorbed by government subsidies just to maintain current caseloads, leaving no room to assist families waiting on closed lists.

The program is aging and turnover is slowing, while need intensifies

In 2003, 61% of voucher households included children, while 17% included someone aged 62 or older. By 2024, those shares had shifted to 44% and 38%, respectively. Hawaiʻi is aging, but the voucher population is aging roughly twice as fast as the state. As more families grow older within the program—and new enrollees are increasingly elderly—pensions and Social Security have become the primary income sources for nearly half of voucher holders.

Figure 3. Households with children, an elderly member, or a disabled member

This shift in demographics matters for the budget in two ways. First, fixed incomes like pensions mean tenant rent contributions do not grow; second, elderly households rarely leave the program. Turnover is the engine that allows the program to issue a voucher to a new, eligible family on the waitlist. Currently, about 900 households enter and 900 leave each year, and the engine is slowing. Half of admitted families remain in the program seven years later, and a quarter are still there after fourteen years.

Simultaneously, the demand for the program is rising. In the mid-2000s, roughly one in twenty newly admitted households was homeless. Today, that share is about one in five. The voucher program has become a critical exit path from homelessness, yet it operates while waiting lists remain effectively closed for years at a time. The underlying need is deep: statewide, more than half of renters spend over 30% of their income on housing, and about a third spend more than half. At the same time, rising operational costs for landlords—driven by insurance premiums, association fees, and disaster-risk requirements—are pushing up market rents. Ultimately, the program is being asked to do more with a caseload that has not grown in twenty years, operating in a market that makes each voucher more expensive every year.

What could help

The report broadly points to two main levers that go beyond simply managing the existing caseload.

The first lever is housing supply, which directly moderates rent growth. On O‘ahu, rents on new voucher leases in single-family homes and townhomes jumped 42% over the last three years. In contrast, apartment rents rose at roughly half that pace during a period when Honolulu added a significant amount of multifamily housing, both market-rate and income-restricted. This new supply not only slows overall rent growth but sets off a “chain of moves” that frees up older, more affordable units. For the voucher program, building more housing does double duty: it lowers the subsidy the program must pay on every lease, and it keeps private rentals within reach of the families the program serves.

The second lever is tenant income. When a tenant’s earnings rise, their share of the rent mechanically increases, reducing the federal subsidy burden. A family that experiences upward economic mobility can eventually exit the program on their own terms, freeing up a voucher for the next household on the waitlist. This transition is already a reality for some: about 40% of the households (mostly younger working families with children) that left the program in 2023 and 2024 did so after their real incomes more than doubled.

The catch, however, is that the rent formula itself potentially discourages the very earnings it depends on. Because tenants pay 30% of their adjusted income toward rent, every additional dollar earned raises their rent payment by 30 cents. When combined with the phase-out of other public benefits like SNAP or Medicaid, a raise or a transition to full-time work can leave a family financially no better off–if not worse off.

Job training alone may be insufficient to overcome this phase-out, or the “benefit cliff” as it is often called. The more promising direction is policy rules that let households keep more of what they earn, turning work from a penalty into a pathway out of assistance. HUD’s Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program, for example, already sets aside a tenant’s rent increases in a savings account, which they can collect upon successfully exiting the program, turning work into a true wealth-building tool. If successful, this approach would pay off by freeing up vouchers for the thousands of families still waiting, ensuring that one of Hawaiʻi’s primary sources of housing assistance for low-income families remains sustainable and effective for generations to come.