Low-income Arkansans in need of affordable housing sometimes have to wait years for assistance from their local public housing agencies after being put on waiting lists, according to public housing experts.
Section 8 housing choice vouchers allow recipients to choose their own residences that are within a housing authority's jurisdiction but are not necessarily owned by the housing authority. Demand for affordable housing outweighs the supply of both Section 8 vouchers and available rental units, housing authority directors said, and some landlords' refusal to accept Section 8 vouchers contributes to tenants' struggles to find places to live.
The overarching issue behind the years of waiting for a voucher is simply a scarcity of housing nationwide, according to tenants' advocates. Only one in every four households eligible for housing assistance actually receives any, said Diane Yentel, president and chief executive officer of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
"Housing is not considered or funded as an entitlement in this country, and that's different from other social safety net programs, like food assistance or Social Security or some forms of health care," Yentel said. "With housing, it's an arbitrary [federal] budget cap, and it's first come, first served, and that leaves many people without the assistance they need."
About 2.6 million Section 8 vouchers are currently available or in use, according to a regional spokesperson from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The department allocates vouchers to housing authorities based on a variety of factors, including each state's need for housing and each housing authority's individual application for vouchers.
Some Section 8 programs prioritize some clients, such as elderly and disabled people, over others.
In the months and years between low-income people joining a Section 8 waiting list and receiving a voucher, housing can be "very precarious," Arkansas Renters United organizer Neil Sealy said. And finally receiving a voucher does not necessarily end their struggles.
"I've received calls from people in smaller communities who just can't find a landlord who will take a Section 8 voucher, or it's very, very difficult," Sealy said. "Sometimes, despite HUD standards, they end up in very bad housing, too. ... The housing may be affordable, but it's not terribly safe or healthy."
SUPPLY AND DEMAND
In June, the Conway Housing Authority opened its Section 8 waiting list for the first time in three years, and hundreds of people applied within the first few days, Executive Director Diedra Levi said. The agency has 301 Section 8 vouchers.
Levi said the program's attrition rate is about three vouchers per month, and as soon as a voucher becomes available, the housing authority is required to give it to the next household on the waiting list. She said the reasons for attrition vary.
"A lot of them pass away [because] at one point we had an elderly preference, and some people just drop out of the program," Levi said. "We hope they drop out of the program because they no longer need assistance."
The wait for a voucher in southwest Arkansas can take two to three years, Texarkana Housing Authority Executive Director Brandy Bradley said, with the waiting list sometimes as long as nearly 400 people.
In Sebastian County, the wait can take up to two years if applicants do not meet the Fort Smith Housing Authority's preferences for elderly, disabled and employed applicants, Executive Director Mitch Minnick said.
The Fort Smith agency has one of the larger Section 8 programs in Arkansas, with about 1,500 vouchers and an attrition rate of about 20 to 30 per month, Minnick said.
While clients wait for their vouchers, the agency is trying to help them find housing in the meantime via the Arkansas Development Finance Authority's temporary rental assistance, he said.
"Once their name comes up for the regular voucher, we can transition them from temporary assistance over to Section 8," Minnick said. "We're hopeful that we'll be able to cut into the two-year wait time pretty significantly if we're awarded those funds from ADFA."
Not every Section 8 voucher waiting list in Arkansas takes longer than a year. The Northwest Regional Housing Authority, headquartered in Harrison and covering seven rural counties, has 676 vouchers and a five-month waiting list, Executive Director Neil Gibson said.
The wait will most likely increase in 2022 because the agency digitized its Section 8 application process last year due the covid-19 pandemic, and this made it easier for more people to apply for vouchers, Gibson said.
"We've been so overwhelmed with applications that a few weeks ago, we had to close that for now," he said. "We'll hopefully open them again after the first of the year. We're trying to process the backlog."
Gibson agreed with Sealy and Yentel that there are not enough housing units for everyone in need of them.
However, Little Rock has plenty of available units, particularly apartments, but not enough landlords who are willing to accept Section 8 vouchers, said Kenyon Lowe, board chairman of the Metropolitan Housing Alliance.
The alliance administers about 3,300 vouchers, Lowe said, and some people have been on the Section 8 waiting list for five years.
Minnick and Levi both said the federal moratorium on most evictions due to the pandemic made it more difficult for Section 8 voucher recipients to find vacant rental units. The moratorium ended in August after almost a year in place and after several extensions.
"The turnover that typically happens in the course of a normal month of the year wasn't happening" during the moratorium, Minnick said.
Yentel said this "just points to another real flaw in our housing system."
"Without a pandemic, if our housing system relies on a certain percentage of low-income people being evicted from their homes in order for another percentage of low-income people to move into those units, we have a deeply broken system that's not working for anyone," Yentel said.
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