The State of the Housing Counseling Industry

Despite the growing importance of housing counseling, there is little systematic information about the industry. The industry is known to be marked by significant diversity in a number of dimensions, including the types of organizations involved, their organizational capacity, the types of clients served, the types of services delivered, and the funding sources used. The primary goal of this study is to provide a systematic overview of the housing counseling industry as of 2007. The study covers all types of education and counseling services, including services for people seeking to purchase homes, for existing homeowners, for renters, and for people experiencing homelessness. A secondary goal is to investigate the challenges facing the industry and how HUD can best support the availability of good quality housing education and counseling. The study draws on four distinct data sources to provide a multifaceted exploration of the housing counseling industry: In-depth interviews with national and regional intermediary organizations and state housing finance agencies that support the housing counseling industry; a detailed survey of all HUD-approved counseling agencies conducted over the Internet with telephone follow-up; analysis of program data maintained by HUD, including aggregate information on clients and outcomes submitted by counseling agencies via the annual HUD 9902 report, and information on applications for funding and amounts awarded; and Extraction of data from successful grant applications on counselor qualifications.