MANSFIELD ā The agency responsible for administering federal housing assistance vouchers in Richland County is about to reopen its waitlist.
The Mansfield Metropolitan Housing Authority will open its Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) waitlist on Oct. 28 at 7 a.m. and close it again on Oct. 31 at 11:59 p.m. Applications can be completed online via the authority’s website.
What is a Section 8 housing voucher?
The MMHA administers the countyās Housing Choice Voucher program, also known as Section 8, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
The program aims to assist very low-income households, the elderly and the disabled to afford decent, safe and sanitary housing.
Voucher holders must meet certain income requirements. Voucher holders are required to pay 30 percent of their monthly adjusted gross income for rent and utilities.
It will be the first time the waitlist has opened in almost 20 months. The agency had more than 2,000 applications on file when it closed its waiting list in January 2023.
Last October, the MMHA began pulling names from the waitlist for the first time in over a year. Now, the waitlist is down to just 600 applications.
Executive Director Steve Andrews said the agency should be down to around 200 applicants on the waitlist by the time it reopens.
MMHA will adjust its waitlist procedure going forward
On Tuesday, the MMHA board voted to change its policy on re-opening the waitlist.
The policy previously stated that the agency could close the waiting list “when the estimated waiting period for housing assistance for applicants on the list reaches 24 months for the most current applicants.”
At Andrews’ recommendation, the board voted to change the policy so the waiting list can be closed “after a designated period of time or when the number of applicants is sufficient to provide 3 months of waitlist pulls.”
Andrews said the change will allow the authority to set an end date each time it opens the waitlist, which will result in shorter application windows and more up-to-date applications.
Over the past year, agency staff moved through the waitlist backlog quickly because many applicants were no longer eligible or didn’t respond by the time their application was pulled.
“We had information (from waitlist applications) that was two years old, so by the time we try to contact people, their phone numbers had changed. Their addresses had changed,” Andrews said.
“We can pull 200 vouchers in a month and end up with only about 60 people who actually even respond, and out of that 60, maybe only get 20 or 30 vouchers issued.”
The MMHA is authorized to administer up to 1,833 housing choice vouchers and 78 mainstream vouchers each month.
Mainstream vouchers operate like other housing choice vouchers, but are restricted to households where at least one non-elderly family member has a disability.
As of Aug. 27, the authority had 1,640 housing choice vouchers and 63 mainstream vouchers in use ā meaning the voucher holders had secured housing and were using the voucher to pay for that housing.
Once an applicant is issued a housing voucher, they have up to 120 days to find housing. If a voucher holder does not find housing within four months, they have to wait for the waiting list to reopen and apply again.
Andrews said current voucher holders are having a hard time finding housing because of the competitive market. The board voted Tuesday to reinstate a landlord incentive program in an effort to address the issue.
“There are not a lot of the units out there,” he said. “We have 130 people with vouchers in their hand right now, looking for a place to move in, but they’re really struggling to find it.”