USVI Fair Market Rent Benchmarks Lag Years Behind, Still Anchored to 2020 Census Data

Federal rent benchmarks that help determine how much rental assistance Virgin Islands families can receive through the Housing Choice Voucher program remain anchored to territory-specific housing data collected in 2020, even as most of the United States enters fiscal year 2027 with substantially newer local rental-market information. The disparity is spelled out in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s newly published methodology for FY2027 Fair Market Rents, or FMRs. For most of the country, HUD begins its calculation using American Community Survey data collected from 2020 through 2024 and supplements those figures with recent-mover information. But the ACS is not conducted in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Instead, HUD says its base rents for the territory continue to come from the long-form housing survey conducted as part of the 2020 decennial Census. That does not mean HUD simply carries 2020 rent prices forward unchanged. The agency updates the territory’s 2020 bas...