WASHINGTON – The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Health and Human Services today announced a model agreement that public housing authorities and state and local welfare agencies can use to help families that receive HUD housing assistance move from welfare to work.

Families that receive welfare assistance from HHS and Section 8 rental assistance vouchers from HUD will benefit from the model agreement, which helps public housing authorities and welfare agencies target assistance to individuals to help them become self-sufficient. The assistance includes job training and placement, mentoring, counseling, transportation and childcare.

"By helping people get jobs, we free them from dependency and enable them to climb out of poverty under their own power and build better futures for their families," HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo said.

"This is government at its best – working together to ensure families receive the critical supports they need, right where they live, to move from welfare to work," said HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala.

The welfare reform law signed by President Clinton in 1996 dramatically reformed the nation’s welfare system into one that requires work and mandates time limits for cash assistance. Welfare reform also gave states the resources and tools needed to help families move from welfare to work.

Efforts to move people from welfare to work with the support of housing assistance are linked in the Public Housing Reform Act of 1998’s requirement that the agencies operating these programs work together.

About one-third of families with children receiving some form of HUD housing assistance also receive welfare assistance from HHS – amounting to nearly 500,000 families around the nation.

The model agreement identifies common goals and purposes of housing authorities and welfare agencies that support economic self-sufficiency efforts of low-income families. To be in compliance of the Public Housing Reform Act of 1998, housing authorities and welfare agencies must make their best efforts to enter into cooperation agreements to accomplish three goals:

• Target services and assistance to families that receive welfare assistance and live in public housing or receive Section 8 tenant-based rental assistance from HUD.
  
  
• Improve the delivery of assistance to low-income families receiving welfare and living in HUD-assisted housing to help the families become self sufficient.
  
  
• Reduce and discourage fraud and non-compliance with welfare self-sufficiency program requirements.