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Section 8 wait list opening in Alameda on Jan. 29

by Lynda Carson (tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com )
Low-income households with Section 8 vouchers may use them in the private rental market to rent their housing if they can convince a landlord to accept them. During the first year in the program the tenant may not have to pay more than 30% of their income for their monthly rent, and the housing authority pays the remainder to the landlord.

Section 8 wait list opening in Alameda on Jan. 29

By Lynda Carson - January 22, 2015

Alameda - On Thursday, January 29, at 10:00 A.M. the Housing Authority of Alameda will open the wait list for the Housing Choice Voucher Program (Section 8 tenant based vouchers) and will start accepting online applications at: http://www.waitlistcheck.com/CA955 . The housing authority will stop accepting applications on Tuesday, Feb. 3, at 9:59 A.M.

Applications can only be submitted online. Individuals with disabilities who cannot complete the online application can seek accommodations by emailing at: RA [at] alamedahsg.org or sending a written request to P.O. Box 3199, 1415 Webster St., Alameda, CA 94501.

Low-income households with Section 8 vouchers may use them in the private rental market to rent their housing if they can convince a landlord to accept them. During the first year in the program the tenant may not have to pay more than 30% of their income for their monthly rent, and the housing authority pays the remainder to the landlord.

Those who apply for the housing assistance vouchers will be placed into a random lottery selection. As many as 750 individuals or families will be chosen by lottery to be placed on the wait list out of the 70,000 expected applications that may be filed. Click here for more information: http://www.alamedahsg.org/

The Housing Choice Voucher Program (Section 8 program) assists around 2.1 million households in the United States with their rents and utilities, and is run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

According to HUD’s records Alameda has 1,845 units in their Section 8 inventory. San Francisco has 8,972. Berkeley has 1,935. Oakland has 13,380. Richmond has 1,750. Contra Costa County has 6,381. Alameda County has 6,282, and Marin County has 2,145.

The Section 8 voucher program was started during the Nixon Administration and is a very popular program among the poor, elderly and disabled who need housing assistance to avoid homelessness.

During recent years from 2013 through 2014 the program faced massive funding shortfalls due to the sequestration budget cuts, and HUD lost the ability to fund around 100,000 vouchers as a direct result. Sequester budget cuts are expected to continue during 2016, and will harm the voucher program and poor people even more.

Additionally, the so-called affordable housing industry has been lobbying Congress and HUD to allow more section 8 tenant based vouchers to be converted to Project-Based Vouchers for their so-called affordable housing projects. In essence, the affordable housing industry wants to take housing assistance vouchers away from the poor to use them to fund their own housing projects.

Another drain on the program is the Rental Assistance Demonstration program (RAD) which uses funding from the section 8 program to help privatize our nations 1.2 million public housing units, and sell them off to the so-called multi-billion dollar affordable housing industry. Currently 180,000 public housing units are being privatized under the RAD program, which syphons funding from the section 8 program and harms low-income people in the process.

It shall remain to be seen how well the voucher program will hold together when the Republicans start gutting the nation’s safety net during future months for FY 2016 under the name of austerity in their efforts to steal from the poor, to give to the rich.

Recently section 8 wait lists have also opened up in King County, Washington, Frederick County, Maryland, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Muscatine, Iowa, New Rochelle, New York, and Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Lynda Carson may be reached at: tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com

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