Every housing search costs money.
Not every grant will pay for it.
Twenty-two costs a housing search actually incurs, set against the four funding sources most likely to be paying, the Medicaid arrangements that increasingly reach them, and the Emergency Housing Voucher services fee — closed to new spending since August 2025, and kept here because it priced this work more plainly than anything since. Every one of the 132 cells says what that source’s own rule says, and links the text it came from. Click any cell to read it.
No costs match that search. Clear the box above.
Click any cell for the rule behind it and the citation. Nothing here is our opinion about what a grant should cover: where a rule simply does not mention a cost, the cell says not on this source’s list rather than “ineligible” — these lists are closed, so absence is a fact, while prohibition would be our inference.
What the published figures actually are
There is no benchmark for the share of a program budget that should go to housing search, and this page does not invent one. These are the numbers that exist in the rules themselves.
Not tied to a specific household, so a PHA could concentrate it on the families whose barriers were expensive. EHV service fee spending closed on August 19, 2025; the historical allocation is still the clearest price HUD has put on this work.
The same number in two rules with different authorities behind it. ESG adds one month of last month's rent, which counts against the 24-month rental assistance limit.
The cap most likely to bite a program that front-loads its work, because the preparation this article argues for happens inside that window.
A floor rather than a term: HUD required the initial voucher to run at least 120 days, PHAs could set longer, and the ordinary extension policies applied after it. HUD waived the 60-day minimum at §982.303(a) for EHVs, having concluded 60 days may be inadequate for these households — a finding that outlasts the program.
Available free from all three bureaus through AnnualCreditReport.com. What costs money is the staff hour to read it with the participant, which the CoC Program funds, and EHV did.
The rule sets $1,800 and VA adjusts it each January; this is the 2026 figure. Application fees and the other costs of securing housing all come out of this one pool.
The objection is real
Money spent settling one household’s arrears is money not spent housing someone else. That is a genuine trade-off and nobody should pretend otherwise. What it is not is a reason to leave the spend undecided until a caseworker is on the phone with a landlord.
Price the failure, not just the cost
An application fee is spent whether or not the application succeeds, and 68 percent of renters pay one. A rejection that a credit report would have predicted costs the fee, the trip, and the days — against a median successful voucher search of 60 days and a clock that keeps running.
Decide it once, in the plan
The costs above are eligible or they are not; that question has an answer before any individual household needs the money. A program that budgets the barrier check has made the trade-off deliberately. One that has not has still made it, case by case, under time pressure.
Check the fund that is not yours
The columns disagree more than people expect. EHV, while it ran, named landlord incentives, mitigation funds and essential household items that neither CPD program does; CoC names credit work and legal services that ESG does not. SSVF names a landlord payment and move-in household items through its annual funding notice, both capped. Where a community runs several, the question is which fund names the cost.
Every cell quotes the authority it cites. Reading one rule proves what that rule says and never proves absence, so each column is built from its whole chain rather than a single list: CoC from 24 CFR 578.53 and 578.51 together; ESG from 576.105(a), 576.105(b) and 576.106; SSVF from 38 CFR part 62 and VA’s FY 2027 funding notice; HCV from 24 CFR part 982 and Notice PIH 2022-18, which made its own eligibility contingent on appropriations continuing to fund “other expenses” — Notice PIH 2026-12 confirms the 2026 Act does, and sends PHAs back to 2022-18 for the detail; EHV from Notice PIH 2021-15 as amended by Notice PIH 2023-23, with spending closed by Notice PIH 2025-19 and the closeout carried through 2026 by Notice PIH 2026-02. Medicaid has no national answer to give: CMS rescinded its health-related social needs guidance in March 2025, and what remains are state-specific approvals, so every Medicaid cell sends you to your own.
This accompanies Ready, Search, Sign: A Housing Search Strategy for CoCs, which sets out the seven steps these costs attach to. Rules change; if you find a cell that has gone stale, tell us.