From Hoodline:
Fourteen percent of Washington community college students have experienced homelessness, but at Highline College in Des Moines, a small group of them are staying in school at nearly double the typical rate thanks to a rare partnership with the King County Housing Authority. Students in the college's housing voucher program returned for a second year at an 89 percent clip during the 2024-2025 school year, compared with 45 percent for comparable students who weren't in the program. The initiative pairs homeless and housing-insecure students with Section 8-style rental vouchers tied directly to their academic progress.
The program, detailed in an investigation by The Seattle Times, covers participating students' rent for up to four and a half years, or until six months after graduation. Saido Alinur, who oversees the housing program at Highline, said the assistance encourages students to finish their degrees rather than drop out to chase stable housing. Eighteen percent of Highline students specifically have experienced homelessness, according to the same reporting, underscoring why the college built the initiative in the first place.
Students accepted into the program must attend school full time, remain on track for an associate degree or bachelor's of applied science, and pass their classes. They're also required to meet quarterly with an adviser, and if they disappear without communicating, Highline staff issue warnings before Alinur can ask the housing authority to terminate the voucher. Since launching, the program has expanded from 40 vouchers to 70, though only about one in four students offered a spot has actually secured housing — a reminder that even with a voucher in hand, finding a landlord willing to accept it in King County's tight rental market remains a real obstacle.
Takayla Lee, who enrolled at Highline at age 28, entered a shelter with her two children before joining the program. She failed her first class and took several months to secure housing, but eventually built momentum studying early childhood education; she now hopes to open her own day care and expects to stay in the program through a four-year degree. Bilal Ali also took several months to find a place before earning his associate degree in multimedia design and graduating through the program; he plans to remain enrolled as he pursues a four-year degree.
Seattle/ Community & Society
Highline College Housing Vouchers Push Student Retention to 89 Percent
By Emily Tran
Published on August 17, 2026
Source: Google Street View
Fourteen percent of Washington community college students have experienced homelessness, but at Highline College in Des Moines, a small group of them are staying in school at nearly double the typical rate thanks to a rare partnership with the King County Housing Authority. Students in the college's housing voucher program returned for a second year at an 89 percent clip during the 2024-2025 school year, compared with 45 percent for comparable students who weren't in the program. The initiative pairs homeless and housing-insecure students with Section 8-style rental vouchers tied directly to their academic progress.
How the Voucher Program Works
The program, detailed in an investigation by The Seattle Times, covers participating students' rent for up to four and a half years, or until six months after graduation. Saido Alinur, who oversees the housing program at Highline, said the assistance encourages students to finish their degrees rather than drop out to chase stable housing. Eighteen percent of Highline students specifically have experienced homelessness, according to the same reporting, underscoring why the college built the initiative in the first place.
Students accepted into the program must attend school full time, remain on track for an associate degree or bachelor's of applied science, and pass their classes. They're also required to meet quarterly with an adviser, and if they disappear without communicating, Highline staff issue warnings before Alinur can ask the housing authority to terminate the voucher. Since launching, the program has expanded from 40 vouchers to 70, though only about one in four students offered a spot has actually secured housing — a reminder that even with a voucher in hand, finding a landlord willing to accept it in King County's tight rental market remains a real obstacle.
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Highline's program can exist at all because the King County Housing Authority holds Moving to Work status from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a federal designation that gives select public housing authorities statutory flexibility to redesign voucher allocations for local needs, according to the King County Housing Authority. That waiver, established by Congress in 1996, is the same mechanism that let Tacoma pioneer student-specific vouchers years earlier. The King County Housing Authority administers one of the region's largest voucher programs, serving more than 14,800 households in 2025, with over 4,700 vouchers dedicated to specialized populations experiencing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence.
Robin Walls, CEO of the housing authority, said Highline's time-limited, progress-tied voucher model aligns with the Trump administration's support for self-sufficiency-oriented housing assistance, per the Times reporting. The housing authority plans to continue investing in the program even as the administration has reportedly proposed significant budget cuts to housing assistance. Separately, HUD issued a proposed rule in March that would let housing authorities impose Section 8 time limits as short as two years and work requirements up to 40 hours a week, while explicitly exempting full-time college students from those work mandates, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Highline got the idea for its program from a similar partnership in Tacoma, where the Tacoma Housing Authority and Tacoma Community College launched the nation's first college student voucher program, the College Housing Assistance Program, in 2014. CHAP was named one of the Harvard Kennedy School's Top 25 Innovations in American Government in 2018, but the Tacoma Housing Authority voted to end the program in 2022, shifting its funding priorities back toward the general low-income population it serves.
Sara Goldrick-Rab, who reviewed the Tacoma program before it ended, said it showed better outcomes for the students who received housing and that housing can improve students' academic performance once they're stably housed. Experts told the Times that Highline's program is now the only one of its kind operating in the country, though it has not undergone any outside evaluation. The program has so far served 50 students who went on to obtain two- or four-year degrees or certificates.
Zoning You Don’t Control, Funding You Can’t Replace
This week, CLPHA urged HUD to withdraw a change that would adjust the local inflation component of FY27 Renewal Funding Inflation Factors (RFIFs) and reduce Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) funding for families already under lease based on decisions made by units of local government that PHAs neither control nor influence. CLPHA objected to this proposed land use penalty in our comments to HUD on the notice establishing FY26 RFIFs for the Housing Choice Voucher program. The notice also asks whether HUD should refine the local inflation component of the RFIF for FY27 to discount the local inflation adjustment in areas where housing supply appears constrained by land use, permitting, or development approval policies. CLPHA strongly opposed this proposal in our comments.
We recommend that HUD publish RFIFs a year in advance and incorporate private-sector rent data and VMS-reported per unit cost data into the local factor and compare assigned factors against realized cost growth annually. Most importantly, a change of this consequence should not be adopted through the annual RFIF notice. HUD should publish the specific methodology for a full comment period, and should not implement it in the same year it is proposed.
Local Inflation Adjustment Reaches the Wrong Parties
CLPHA’s central objection is that the adjustment reaches the wrong parties. Zoning ordinances, permitting timelines, impact fees, and development approval processes are set by city councils, county boards, planning commissions, and state legislatures—not by PHAs. Most PHAs have no vote and no formal role in those decisions, and many of our members wait in the same permitting queues as private developers when they build or rehabilitate housing.
Geography compounds the problem, since RFIFs are calculated at the FMR area level and a single metropolitan area routinely spans dozens or hundreds of land use jurisdictions, so a central city that has already reformed its zoning could be penalized for its suburbs’ rules.
Data Sources Supporting Inflation Adjustment Does Not Exist
The comments also make the case that HUD has no data source capable of supporting the adjustment. The data sources cited in HUD’s notice include building permits and housing completions. These housing metrics fluctuate based on buyer and renter demand, interest rates, labor availability, and rising material and insurance costs as much as they do from regulatory shifts.. National permit authorizations fell to their lowest evel since May 2020 as the federal funds rate rose above 5 percent, a movement that likely has little to do with zoning.
The outcome measures HUD also lists, such as rent-to-income and price-to-cost ratios, are confounded in the same way. If HUD nevertheless proceeds, we ask that any such factor be applied only as an upward adjustment, never reducing an area’s factor below what the current methodology would produce, and that the methodology and area-level data be published for full notice and comment at least one funding cycle before taking effect. CLPHA also strongly opposes the suggestion that HUD target the change to PHAs above a voucher threshold, which would concentrate the loss on the large agencies serving the most assisted families.
On the current methodology, the comments document a gap members are living with now. Fifty-one members, approximately 60 percent of CLPHA membership, are in areas that received a 0 percent FY 2026 inflation factor. They include one member reporting an approximately 80 percent increase in average HAP payment over three years and another operating at 102 percent budget utilization. For these reasons, we recommend that HUD publish RFIFs a year in advance, incorporate private-sector rent data and VMS-reported per unit cost data into the local factor, release the underlying area-level calculations, and compare assigned factors against realized cost growth annually.
Eliminates the 50-Voucher Cap
Recently, HUD announced it is making $38.2 million available for Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) vouchers and replacing the 50-voucher annual cap with a need-based limit. A PHA may now request as many vouchers as it has referrals, minus any FYI or FUP vouchers already on hand from turnover. Requests may be as small as one voucher. HUD will accept and process requests on a rolling basis until the funding is exhausted.
The notice supersedes PIH Notice 2023-04. Requests for FYI vouchers already submitted under that notice do not need to be resubmitted, although HUD will review any that are not yet funded under the new requirements.
FYI is not a new initiative and has been operating since 2019. Congress renamed it the Melania Trump Foster Youth to Independence Initiative last year, but the acronym FYI remains unchanged. Notice PIH 2026-19 does, however, make substantive changes to how the program operates:
- Revised definition of "at risk of becoming homeless." The definition now pairs a 50 percent AMI income test with one of six housing conditions and covers youth who are homeless under McKinney-Vento and other federal statutes. It applies to all vouchers awarded under this notice and, upon turnover, to FYI noncompetitive vouchers from Notices PIH 2020-28, 2021-26, and 2023-04, but not to FUP or competitively awarded FYI vouchers.
- Voluntary recapture now available. A PHA that determines, in consultation with its partnering PCWA, that it no longer needs some or all its FYI noncompetitive vouchers may return them and the associated funding to HUD at any time by emailing [email protected], [email protected], and its FMC Financial Analyst.
- HUD-initiated recapture is directed but not yet in effect. The FY26 Act requires HUD to review utilization and recapture assistance that is no longer needed. HUD will implement this through separate guidance at a later date and will reallocate recaptured funds through this notice rather than a new competition.
Two items carry over from prior guidance:
- MTW Agencies: Moving to Work agencies must administer FYI vouchers consistent with this notice, and FYI funds remain ineligible for MTW funding fungibility.
- Special Fees: PHAs awarded new FUP/FYI vouchers in 2026 also receive a one-time Special Fee of $750 per voucher as outlined in Notice PIH 2026-12. HUD provides these funds automatically with the award, and no separate application is required. These funds may be used for landlord recruitment, housing search assistance, and landlord/tenant mediation, or for FYI expenses such as owner incentives, retention payments, and security deposits.
How to Apply
A PHA cannot request vouchers until it has received a referral of an eligible youth from its partnering PCWA, so requests cannot be made in anticipation of need. Funding is awarded on a rolling basis until exhausted. PHAs should enter into a partnership agreement with a PCWA and amend their Administrative Plans now, before a referral arrives. The notice sets out the application process and required documentation. Direct questions to [email protected].