The Department of Housing and Urban Development is exploring the idea of giving struggling Americans cash aid instead of vouchers. That might seem like an unlikely, bold new move for the federal housing agency — except it turns out that back in the 1970s, HUD was already testing the idea.

Before the cash-aid results were even in, however, HUD launched its voucher program that now serves millions of people. A few years ago, a HUD employee came across the reports from its 1970s tests and wondered whether the idea was worth a new look.....

.....James Riccio, with the research group MDRC, has taken up HUD’s call to explore cash payments and will help design one pilot program. It needs more funding, but so far has signed up six housing agencies across the country, including the one headed by Preston Prince in Santa Clara County.

Riccio says they will evaluate whether having money on hand helps more people find a place to live. “Will the whole process of leasing up happen more quickly? Which could save time and money for the housing authority and certainly for tenants as well,” he says.

He also wonders if cash could make it easier for people to move to better neighborhoods.

That was a core aim when then-President Richard Nixon called for letting people make their own decisions about where to live. In a special message to Congress in 1973, he said traditional public housing had left people isolated in “monstrous, depressing places — run down, overcrowded, crime-ridden, falling apart.” But half a century later, Riccio says it’s still the case that “voucher recipients tend to concentrate in a smaller number of higher poverty communities....."

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