The di culties of using housing choice vouchers

BY NINA JOSS NJOSS@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

About a year and a half ago, David Hernandez received a call from a number he did not recognize. When he called the number back, he heard news that would drastically change his housing situation.

“I was confused,” he said. “At rst I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ She’s like, ‘You got chose (from the) lottery, so we’d like to go forward with it.’”

At the time, Hernandez was living with his grandmother in Westminster. But then, after spending years unmoored, moving between states and staying with family members, Hernandez got approved for a voucher for government-subsidized housing.

“When I got it, it was a big relief,” he said. “It was so much stress that was taken o my conscience … It was kind of lifesaving, to be honest.” e news was a complete surprise to him. What Hernandez didn’t know is that it took ve years for that call to come. His aunt had signed him up for a housing choice voucher lottery at Maiker Housing Partners, the public housing authority in Adams County, without telling him. anks to her action, his unknowing patience, and, some would say, his luck, Hernandez became one of 2.3 million families and individuals in the United States to bene t from a housing choice voucher program, federally funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.

Formerly, housing choice voucher programs were known as Section 8, but experts have widely replaced this language in an e ort to be more accurate about the type of rental assistance and to avoid the stigma the term carries with it.

Housing choice voucher programs, which are implemented by local authorities like Maiker, subsidize rent to help “very low-income families, the elderly and the disabled a ord decent, safe and sanitary housing,” according to HUD.

On one hand, vouchers make it possible for those without other options to have a roof over their heads. But, according to housing experts, the program is not a fast-track to housing for many people in need, as it faces a range of issues from lack of funding to scarcity of units.

Eligibility

Within housing choice voucher programs, vouchers may be earmarked by local authorities for di erent types of rental assistance.

For example, some public housing authorities o er vouchers speci cally for veterans or for families whose lack of adequate housing is the primary cause of the separation of a child from their family.

Another type is what HUD calls “project-based” vouchers. ese offer rental assistance that can only be used for speci c properties approved by the public housing authority. is is the type of voucher Hernandez received.

Hernandez said the voucher helped him nancially, emotionally, physi- cally and mentally, but being tied to one apartment complex has its downfalls. If he could choose, he said, he would rather live in a place with di erent management. In his complex, he feels like he and his neighbors are treated poorly, partially because they have low incomes. e voucher approval process begins with an application, said Brenda Mascarenas, director of housing services and programs at Maiker.

But the most common type of housing choice voucher allows a recipient to choose where they want to live among properties in the private market. A HUD senior o cial told Colorado Community Media in a call that after 12 months, participants in the project-based voucher program can typically request to have this type of voucher, which is more open-ended.

Properties for a typical housing choice voucher must meet standards of health and safety before a tenant can move forward with a lease. In addition, public housing authorities review rents to ensure they are reasonable for the speci c housing market, according to HUD.

Families with vouchers generally pay 30%-40% of their monthly adjusted gross income for rent and utilities, according to HUD. e public housing authority covers the rest.

In Colorado, landlords are required to accept housing choice vouchers and are not allowed to discriminate against rental applicants based on source of income, per a 2021 law.

“ e couple of things we look at under formal eligibility (are) background, income, and citizenship,” she said.

Generally, a household’s income may not exceed 50% of the median income for the county or metropolitan area. But most vouchers go to applicants with incomes much lower than that. By law, a public housing authority must provide three quarters of its vouchers to applicants whose incomes do not exceed 30% of the area median income, according to HUD.

In Adams and Arapahoe counties, a single person who earned no more than $41,050 was eligible for a housing choice voucher in 2022, according to Maiker and South Metro Housing Options, a public housing authority in Littleton.

Wait times and lotteries

Unfortunately, the likelihood of getting a voucher is not solely dependent on whether a person is eligible.

Because of lack of funding for the program, HUD acknowledges “long waiting periods are common.” e o cial with HUD, speaking generally about the department, told Colorado Community Media that for households that receive a voucher, the average wait time is 28 months. e o cial noted that this number only includes people who actually receive a voucher, so the true average wait time is likely signi cantly longer.

Some public housing authorities use a lottery system to select voucher recipients. At Maiker, Mascarenas said the team aims to open their lottery pool every other year, meaning applicants could wait up to two years if they are selected from the lottery their rst time. If not, they might wait through several cycles.

At South Metro Housing Options, the voucher waitlist was last open in 2012, Executive Director Corey Reitz said. ey anticipate it opening again this year, more than 11 years later.

ese long wait times are not unique. Only two housing agencies among the 50 largest in the U.S. have average wait times of under one year for families that make it o of wait lists for vouchers, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute based in Washington, D.C.

To Hernandez’s bene t, he wasn’t aware he was waiting for his voucher. He said it would have been challenging to be in “limbo” for so long.

“If I would have known I’d have to wait ve years for that, I probably personally wouldn’t have done it,” he said.

Peter LiFari, executive director at Maiker, attributes long waitlists at public housing authorities to lack of federal funding and a massive demand for housing vouchers.

“It’s a program designed to exist in scarcity, which is really disappointing,” he said. “I get emails every day, basically from folks (saying) ‘How do I sign up?’ and ‘I’m homeless and I’ve never asked for help before and I’m ready now,’ and it’s like, unfortunately we don’t we don’t have the vouchers to be able to meet the need.” e HUD o cial interviewed by CCM agreed that a main shortcoming of the program is that there are not enough vouchers. e o cial said rental assistance programs are an outlier compared to other federal safety net programs in that many people qualify but do not receive the support. e o cial attributed the lack of funding to the fact that the voucher program was created in the 1970s, after other programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program were already underway.

Because of limited funding for HUD, designated by Congress each year, only 1 in 4 households eligible for a housing voucher receive any federal rental assistance, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Congress increased funding into the voucher program throughout the pandemic, but the funding generally went to special populations as opposed to the entire program, LiFari said. e American Rescue Plan Act, for example, provided 70,000 emergency vouchers to assist individuals in violent, dangerous or homeless situations. Mascarenas said Maiker received 46 vouchers from the funding.

Last year, the Biden administration awarded more than 19,000 housing choice vouchers to more than 2,000 public housing authorities. Twentynine of the authorities are in Colorado, including agencies in Adams County, Je erson County, Denver, Aurora, Lakewood, Englewood and Arvada.

But even with the extra funding, housing authority employees say it is challenging to keep up with the demand.

“One of the challenges with any … new sources of funding to support housing, it’s still administering the money and the funds and the vouchers,” said Reitz from South Metro. “So we still need sta to do so. And we’re no di erent than most other agencies or industries right now in terms of sta ng, so that’s a challenge.” e demand for vouchers in Adams County is higher than Mascarenas has ever seen.

“I’ve been with Maiker for 30 years and I’ve never seen the market in such a bad condition,” she said. “I’ve never seen the need grow so great.” form of cover or protection from the elements other than clothing.”

Maiker has about 1,625 housing choice vouchers to distribute in Adams County. In July 2022, the last time their lottery was open for applications, over 3,500 people applied.

“Even two-parent households are still nding it very di cult to make ends meet with two incomes coming into the home,” Mascarenas said.

“ ere’s this illusion that you need this stick to connect people to services,” Howard said. “ at’s a lie, it doesn’t work. You can just look back at the last 10 years of Denver to see the reality of that lie. It’s meant, rst and foremost, to push people out of sight, out of mind.”

According to one national study from 2013, criminalization can create a cycle of incarceration that perpetuates itself.

Noting a loop of jail time and homelessness, the report says: “Incarceration has been noted to increase the risk of homelessness” as it can weaken community ties, limit employment opportunities and make it more di cult to get public housing.

“ is bidirectional association between homelessness and incarceration may result in a certain amount of cycling between public psychiatric hospitals, jails and prisons, and homeless shelters or the street,” the report concludes.

A homeless count across the metro area

Nationwide, at the start of every year, a count is taken to try and estimate the unsheltered homeless population.

At the same time, a count is made of people who have stayed in a participating shelter at some point across the country. ese counts are run by HUD through volunteering shelters and local governments.

In the 2022 point-in-time count across Je erson, Broom eld, Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas and Denver counties, there were nearly 2,000 people living unsheltered, and just over 3,000 in emergency shelters.

According to the data, most of the homeless population is in Denver. HUD’s de nition of homelessness includes those who are in imminent risk of losing their housing. However, the annual report does not include that data or consider people who are couch sur ng, or temporarily living at a friend or family member’s home.

Jason had been working, but with a broken back, he could no longer work or a ord needed medical care.

Like Garner, Jason requires a wheelchair to get around, which creates another level of di culties for those experiencing homelessness.

The cost of a disability

One day in the spring of 2018, Gar-