MANSFIELD — Rising housing costs are making it tougher for low-income Richland County residents to get assistance.
Steve Andrews, director of the Mansfield Metropolitan Housing Authority (MMHA), said the agency won’t be issuing any new Section 8 housing vouchers this year.
Anyone on the agency’s waitlist will remain on the waitlist until at least January.
The MMHA is also working to reduce the number of housing vouchers it administers in the coming months.
The agency, which is allotted up to 1,833 Section 8 vouchers at any one time, had just 1,733 active vouchers this month.
Executive Director Steve Andrews said he expects that number to drop to 1,683 in September.
The reason? Housing costs are rising faster than federal funding for vouchers.
What’s Section 8?
The MMHA administers Richland County’s housing choice voucher program (also known as Section 8), funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The program provides financial assistance to help low-income families, the elderly, veterans and disabled individuals afford housing in the private market.
Under the program, voucher holders typically pay no more than 30 percent of their income for rent and utilities.
Every year, HUD tells public housing authorities how many vouchers it can administer, and how much it can pay landlords per unit.
HUD also determines how much funding agencies receive to carry out voucher programs.
Amid rising housing and utility costs, Andrews said the allocated funding isn’t enough to fully fund its voucher program.
“The cost of living is going up. People’s utility allowances have gone up and people’s rents have gone up,” Andrews said in June. “Our cost-per-unit is going up through the roof.”
The authority budgeted $12.3 million for the housing subsidy program in 2025 — including the agency’s own carryover and a $929,724 monthly allocation from HUD.
At the end of August, the year-to-date costs for the program are projected to be 1.2 percent more than planned for the first eight months of the year. That’s about $99,908 over the spending plan.
“Because of funding, we’re actually having to drop a bunch of vouchers, and our (voucher use) numbers will go back down again,” Andrews said at a board meeting Tuesday.
“It’s a little frustrating, after all our hard work to get them up there, and now we have to work to get them back down.”
Agency stopped issuing new vouchers in June
Andrews said the agency has reduced the number of active vouchers by outsourcing a small number of vouchers to other agencies.
He told board members Tuesday the agency has “ported out” more than 30 active vouchers. This means those vouchers are now being administered and funded by housing agencies in Crawford and Seneca counties, which had funds to spare.
The ported out vouchers are still being used by Richland County residents and the MMHA has to pay the other housing authorities a small administrative fee for each one.
The agency is also taking advantage of regular program attrition.
Andrews told board members around 18 households move off of the program each month for various reasons, like moving out of Richland County or a change in income that makes them ineligible for assistance.
In the past, the agency would have pulled names from its waitlist once those vouchers became available.
Instead, the MMHA stopped issuing new vouchers in June and “suspended” 240 vouchers for residents who had been approved or were actively looking for housing. Those voucher holders were put back on top of the waiting list.
Director said agency has applied for more federal funds, could absorb shortfall
Andrews said he’s also applied for shortfall funding from HUD and has a meeting Sept. 2 with HUD officials to discuss that application.
Despite rising costs, Andrews remained fairly optimistic about the agency’s financial position.
If HUD grants the MMHA’s request for shortfall funding, the agency could still end the year in the black.
If not, the agency will absorb the shortfall. Andrews said the MMHA’s Section 8 checking account has a balance of around $800,000.
Andrews told board members initial estimates from HUD showed MMHA would have a $645,000 deficit in its Section 8 fund by the end of the year — but he said that doesn’t take into account the 240 vouchers the agency effectively froze in June.
With updated inputs, Andrews said HUD’s tool predicts an end-of-year deficit of $95,000. But Andrews said if the agency can continue to reduce its voucher use through attrition, he believes it will be between $20,000 and $40,000.
The director told board members dipping into the agency’s coffers a bit shouldn’t hurt its credibility with HUD. In fact, it may lead to a larger allocation of Section 8 funds in 2026, since allocations are based on the prior year’s spending.
“HUD allocated us less this year than we were allocated last year, because we didn’t spend it all last year,” Andrews said in June.
“Had they allocated us the same amount they allocated last year, plus our prior year reserves, we would still have some room (in the budget).”
The agency also has around $1.7 million in its development fund — though the goal is to use that to build and acquire additional housing.
“When the housing supply is low and the housing demand is high, you can charge whatever you want, and you will get a line of people hoping to get in there,” Andrews said.
“That’s why we (MMHA) have to own housing. If we don’t own housing, if we don’t get more skin in the game, we have no influence over our market.”
Footprint could shift for Turtle Creek expansion project
In addition, Andrews said the MMHA is working with The Provident Companies to redraw plans for a new, 120-unit affordable housing complex on the south side of Mansfield.
The original project plans called for the construction of 10 buildings on James Avenue, near the existing Turtle Creek Apartments, affordable senior units managed by the MMHA.
The project has faced delays due to issues with the agency’s former development partner. Andrews said the MMHA is re-evaluating its plans with The Provident Companies as its new development partner.
That may mean fewer buildings with more units.
“Ten buildings is simply cost prohibitive,” he said. “If you have 10 buildings, that means 10 roofs, 10 HVAC systems.
“If instead, we only build three buildings, that’s only three roofs, that’s only three HVAC systems. But we can still have 120 units.”
Andrews said the cost to have new architectural drawings done could be between $300,000 and $400,000.
Nevertheless, Andrews said he hopes to break ground on the new development in early 2026.
MMHA seeks new maintenance director
In other news, Andrews told the board he fired the agency’s maintenance director two weeks ago.
“I have since then interviewed three people, and we will be making a decision this week to get our new maintenance director hired,” he said.
Andrews told Richland Source the former maintenance director had been “undergoing a corrective process” for over a year and had received verbal warnings as well as multiple official write-ups.
“Ultimately, none of the issues that we were bringing up were being addressed appropriately,” he said.
He also told board members that under the maintenance director’s watch, there were 81 property inspections required by HUD that went uncompleted over the last year.
