Finding a Way to Live in Section 8 Housing

by Tony Chavira

Very few people will be never have to do a lick of work. Others will work all their lives and die poor. It’s the way the world has always been, and the way the world will continue to be until we forcibly redistribute everyone’s assets. Otherwise, most people just make their salary and watch as large chunks of it vanish before their eyes each month to mortgage bills, utility bills, credit card bills, hospital bills, car, life, house, etc. insurances and any number of late or legal fees accrued from who-knows-where. Ultimately, how much you make is less important than how much you sign away each month. Imagine how much more money you’d have if you paid off your mortgage, your school loan, or your car loan. Think of how much more time you’d have if you didn’t have to work so hard to make that cold, hard cash.

Section 8 housing is a federal voucher program designed to help you break free of this unholy cycle of economic self-flagellation. You may not have the resources, education or time to find a better job, or you may have made some bad financial decisions in the past. But by asking you to pay only 15% of your income for rent and covering the rest, the Section 8 program will save your financial life. All you have to do is follow its rules.

The difference between state-certified low income developments and Section 8 housing is simple: state-certified includes an entire development, whereas Section 8 units can be included in any kind of rented property. Scummy derelict developments put together by cost-cutters and managed by slumlords can have Section 8 units, but so can ultra-posh celebrity condos with sparkling swimming pools, multi-level gyms,, and million-dollar entertainment rooms. Also, rent for low-income units is paid to the development’s owners and managers (who have to manage the program and the people living in their units). People who utilize Section 8 are given government caseworkers, auditors, inspectors and the like to check in on their status annually, at their request, at the request of the landowner, or whenever-the-hell they feel like it. As long as you’re following the rules, you’re good to go. That’s true of both programs.

Section 8 rules are sometimes a little wonky, and other times counterintuitive to the program’s financial constraints (which have grown dramatically over the years while the number of available units and employees have not). For example, if you miss part of your monthly payment, you have to make it up at the end of the year. That sounds perfectly acceptable to Joe Section-8-er, except that the remaining payment checks go to the government and the subsequent fine is upwards of $1,000. Why the government would collect a payment that’s supposed to be for a landowner, I have no idea. Why the government would charge someone already struggling to pay their Section 8 housing costs a fine of $1,000 seems beyond reason. It makes sense that the fine should deter people from missing their monthly payments, but at what point is it unreasonable? Maybe when the renter cannot afford their next year’s payment because they’re too busy paying off last year’s ludicrous fine. To people who need to use Section 8 housing, $100 is a lot of money to most people; $1,000 is almost impossible.

Another set of strange, almost absurd rules involve cohabitation. An example of this absurdity: two roommates with Section 8 status. Everyone gets a voucher for the number of rooms he or she can use. If two people each have a one-bedroom voucher and they find a two-bedroom place, can they pool their 15% resources and play “Two’s Company?” It would certainly save the government some cash, but the rules say no. Why? Who knows?

If the roommate scenario seems inconsequential, consider that the same rule applies to people you date. If you ever ask someone to move in with you (or they just happen to be sleeping over when an inspector came by), you’d be in danger of losing your Section 8 housing. Though if you married them, that’s okay. Aside from being an obvious mood killer, this puts a lot of people who need to use Section 8 into isolating situations. Only registered Section 8 applicants, their underage children and their legal spouses can use Section 8.

I interviewed a good friend of mine who is utilizing Section 8 housing and who has a not-so-unique personal situation affected by this rule. He entered the Section 8 program quickly as part of an initiative in the ’80s and ’90s called Family Unification. Instead of waiting years to get a Section 8 space, he was able to move in within six weeks and was able to take his three-year old son with him. But Family Unification has been absorbed into another assistance program and was eventually slashed. Now so few housing assistance programs exist that you might believe that we didn’t have a housing affordability problem in the U.S. at all.

Though my friend only says great things about Section 8 and how useful it has been to him, he has to play by some strict rules to keep afloat. And the most impossible, for him, involve the limitations for cohabiting. He has a 19-year-old daughter he could never offer residence to lest he be tossed out of his Section 8 housing. He has a 14-year-old son who will go to college in a few years. If his son returned from school and needed to stay with his dad (as many college graduates do these days), the son would no longer be a minor and they would both be tossed out of Section 8. My friend isn’t the kind of father to allow his children to sleep on the street. If his son or daughter needed a place to live he would voluntarily leave Section 8 housing and find an unaffordable place for them. But then what? Likely, he would run up an incredible debt until his kids got back on their feet. Then, once they are stable, he would be forced to re-apply for Section 8 housing until he could pay off that debt.

My friend would love to date and slowly rekindle the relationship with his ex-wife, the mother of his children. But then what? If she were ever caught at his place, he’d be at risk of losing his Section 8 housing, unless he married her. Which is not an option for gay people on Section 8? Since they can’t legally marry, are they supposed to be alone and poor?

This isn’t to say that the program’s heart isn’t in the right place, and obviously being too lax on the issue of cohabiting can lead to situations where all kinds of unregistered people are living in a single Section 8 unit. But in such a comprehensive system of inspection and evaluation, you’d think that the rules outlining how much leeway a guy like my friend has could be re-evaluated. What’s the point of having caseworkers if things can’t be taken on a case-by-case basis?

Obviously, if you’re in Section 8 housing, you’ve shown that you really need to use it. You simply cannot afford anything else. The math for how this can immediately improve your living conditions is easy to figure out. The median rent in Los Angeles County in 2009 (at the very lowest point of the economic collapse) was $1,049 per month, with the lowest quartile at $793 monthly. Let’s say that you are a family of eight. Your poverty line falls at $37,630. There is no way you could afford a house for eight people if you were paying $9,516 a year on rent (at $793/month). And forget $12,588 a year (at $1,049/month); that would be a third of your annual income. And, at that price, you might be living in a cramped dump 50 miles from work. But with Section 8, you would only you pay $5,644.50 a year, less than one-seventh of your annual income, for a unit that has been pre-selected as livable,.

Imagine what you could do with another $4,000 to $7,000 per year. Now imagine what people like my friend, or the family of eight, could do with the same amount of money. It is mindboggling that some people pay more than half their income in rent. Wouldn’t you rather be paying only 15% of your income for housing?

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