Many social safety net programs struggle with incomplete program take-up, oftentimes due to high participation costs.  The Housing Choice Voucher Program involves a complex, multi-step take-up process and coordination with the private rental market, creating considerable barriers to entry for participants.  Potential voucher recipients also must navigate an increasingly difficult housing search process in a limited amount of time, making it even more challenging to use their vouchers at all, and to find a home that meets their preferences.  In this paper, I evaluate the effects of two unique features of the voucher program: the timing of voucher issuance, and variation in how long voucher recipients are given to search.  In the aggregate, the timing of voucher issuance causes a decline in the likelihood of using a voucher within a certain time frame, and but has no effect on the chance of a participant ever using their voucher.  However, housing authorities vary in their time restrictions on voucher use and their leniency in granting extensions.  At housing authorities that do not offer extensions, end-of-month issuance results in a 6 percentage point decline in voucher success rates.  Households at these PHAs see shorter search times, and are more likely to end up in over-crowded housing situations.

Despite the significant benefits the Housing Choice Voucher program provides, recent estimates suggest that only 60% of households that receive a voucher successfully use it within one year (Ellen et al, 2025). Landlord discrimination against voucher holders is a significant barrier to their success. In this paper, we are the first to directly study the effectiveness of one effort to prohibit this discrimination, Source of Income Discrimination laws, on the ability of new voucher recipients to use their voucher to lease a home. Using a staggered difference-in-differences and matching approach, we find that the enactment of an SOI law leads to a 3 percentage point increase in the likelihood of new voucher holders using their vouchers a year and a half after enactment, and that this effect grows over time. Effects are largest for households with children and Black households.