Posted on by Californiacontrarian

The Fate of Section 8

Section 8, a housing lottery, will reopen in L.A. this month.
This is the first time Section 8 will be opened since 2004, because there has not been enough federal funding. For the last eight years under a Democratic president there was not enough federal funding and now under President Trump, there is . . . so did I miss LA’s Mayor Garcetti thanking “Washington” for reopening Section 8? I don’t think so! In fact what Mr. Garcetti said was, “Washington should meet the urgency of this crisis and increase the number of people who can get help through Section 8.”

For those who are not familiar with Section 8, it is a rent subsidy given to low income families whose income is less that $36,050. Tenants pay 30% of their salary on rent ($900/ mo. for a salary of $36,000), and the Section 8 voucher pays the rest of the rent to the landlords in exchange for accepting low income renters as tenants. However now the problem is trying to find landlords that will accept the vouchers, and so the Housing Authority has started offering landlords incentives in the hope that the landlords will accept Section 8 tenants.

The estimate is that approximately 600,000 will sign up for the open 20,000 wait list Section 8 spots which are then assigned by lottery. Vouchers become available when someone who is receiving a voucher goes off the list. This happens when either when the income of a Section 8 recipient becomes too high to qualify (>$36,050) or when the voucher holder dies – both rare occurrences.
The rents in LA increased 5% last year, and there is no indication that this increase will be getting less anytime soon, and as the rents go up, the amount of the amount that the voucher pays must go up. Since the average rent of a 1 bedroom place in LA is $1380/mo. ($480/mo. potentially subsidized for someone who earns $36,000 per year, and $780/mo. potentially subsidized for someone earning $20,00 per year), and the average cost of a 2 bedroom rental in LA is $1740/mo. ($840 potentially subsidized for so one earning $36,000 per year and $1140/mo. potentially subsidized for someone earning $20,000 per year). This obviously amounts to a very large amount of dollars for subsidies every year – this before any further additional potential landlord incentives by the Housing Authority.

To qualify for a Section 8 rent subsidy, the applicant must work or live in LA. Incredibly there is nothing that says or even implies that the applicant must be a US citizen, and as many of us know, a high percentage of LA residents are not US citizens.

So let me get this straight, Mayor Garcetti wants the federal government to increase rent subsidies for people in LA, even though the recipients may not be US citizens! This is from a city and a state that have declared themselves to be “a sanctuary city and a sanctuary state.”
How do you spell, c-h-u-t-z-p-a ?

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