Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program (MRVP)
(Line Item 7004-9024)- $35.4M
This request level funds the program and maintains the existing level of vouchers at the same benefit level.

Why MRVP?
MRVP helps tenants with low-incomes to pay their rent in private apartments, ensuring access to market-rate apartment for people with extremely low incomes. Rental assistance is the quickest, most efficient way to move people from shelter to permanent housing and to assist people with specialized housing needs to find housing. MRVP also provides operating support to produce new rental housing affordable to homeless and extremely low income people.

There are 5,100 tenants served by MRVP with approximately 150 additional committed to housing in development. This minimal request to maintain funding for each of these vouchers reflects the current budget crisis. As we work to prevent and end homelessness, additional rental assistance will be critical.

Households currently enrolled in MRVP have an average household income of less than $11,000 per year ($917 per month). Yet the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in MA is as high as $1,345. Rents are significantly higher than their incomes.

Adult Basic Education, ABE

Adult Basic Education provides literacy and English proficiency services to adults. ABE includes English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), General Education Development (GED) programs, and adult basic education (non-reader to pre-GED), with targeted services in Workforce Development, Family Literacy, and Transition to Higher Education.
The yearly cost of adult basic education is about $2,000 per person. Insufficient marketable skills are often the gatekeepers that prevent families from leaving a shelter more quickly or avoiding homelessness early on.
About 24,000 people are on the waiting lists for Adult Basic Education programs due to underfunding. Waiting lists vary from 2 to 8 months for Adult Basic Education and 6 months to 2 years for English for Speakers of Other Languages.