The research question

HUD's Public and Indian Housing directory contains 3,780 Public Housing Authority records with reported Section 8 / Housing Choice Voucher authorization fields. Those records are distributed unevenly across states: some states contain many city and county records, while others contain relatively few. This page ranks states by that recorded count and sums the authorization values attached to those records.

The states with the most authorities

Texas tops the list with 379 HUD PHA directory records reporting roughly 183,544 authorized vouchers between them. The chart and table below show the fifteen states with the most records. The ranking describes the directory's state-level structure; it does not establish a particular record's jurisdiction or current program status.

Fragmentation versus consolidation

Counting authorities tells only half the story; the other half is how big each one is. The final column of the table divides a state's authorized vouchers by its number of authorities to show the average program size. A state can rank high on raw count while running mostly very small authorities, or it can sit lower on count while concentrating vouchers in a few large agencies. Among states with at least three authorities, Nevada is among the most consolidated, averaging roughly 5,917 authorized vouchers per authority. This ranking measures the structure of HUD directory records and reported authorization counts. It does not show a PHA's service area, waitlist, eligibility rules, staff capacity, or current application options.

Fragmentation carries a different research problem: a city, county, regional, or statewide record can all appear in the same state directory. The count cannot establish which record serves a particular address or whether any program is currently available. Use it to locate and compare the source-backed records, then confirm service area, eligibility, and current program details directly with the relevant agency.

How a renter should read this ranking

Read this table as a map of reported directory coverage, not as advice about eligibility or applications. Find your state, open the linked state directory, and compare each record's source-backed location and authorization count. Before relying on a record, ask the agency whether it serves your address and whether it currently has a program or application route relevant to you.

A state count is therefore a starting point for research, not a verdict on a reader's options. Individual PHA pages preserve the HUD directory contact details and reported unit counts; they do not verify live waitlists, availability, or application outcomes.

Methodology

We grouped the 3,780 Public Housing Authority records in HUD's Public and Indian Housing Open Data directory by their state code, counting records and summing their reported Section 8 authorization counts. We preserve the source directory records rather than inferring agency status. Every number on this page is queried live from the PlainVoucher database at request time, so the ranking reflects the current data vintage. Authorized unit counts are the federal ceiling on how many households an authority may serve, which is a sound proxy for program scale but not a measure of current waitlist availability, since HUD does not publish live waitlist status centrally. The average-per-authority figure is a simple arithmetic mean and can be pulled up by a single very large agency in an otherwise small-authority state. See our methodology page for the full pipeline and field definitions.

What this analysis cannot tell you

A state count is not a measure of access. This dataset does not provide live waitlists, service boundaries, eligibility decisions, applications, available units, or an agency-specific program status. It also cannot determine which records apply to a particular address. Use the state and PHA pages as a source-backed directory, then verify any current program directly with the relevant agency.