Nearly 70,000 people have signed up for the waiting list for Baltimore’s Housing Choice Voucher Program, formerly known as Section 8 housing, but authorities said they will soon trim that number to 25,000.
Housing Authority of Baltimore City officials further warned that the number of people from that 25,000-person waiting list who will actually receive vouchers will be limited to around 1,000 per year.
As of 8 a.m. on Oct. 30, the last day the Housing Authority accepted applications for the waiting list, 69,104 persons had submitted an application. In an interview with the AFRO, Commissioner of Baltimore Housing Paul Graziano said housing officials estimated that they would receive between 70,000 and 75,000 applications by the close of the submission period.
Commissioner of Baltimore Housing Paul Graziano
From that total number, 25,000 applications will be selected randomly in order to establish the new waiting list, which will have a shelf life of six years. After that point, the Housing Authority will again accept waiting list applications and create a new list.
“We felt that anything more than 25,000 names on a list was just way beyond the realm of any feasibility of assisting, and that even the 25,000 is probably not likely, barring some major increase in funding, that we’re going to get to all of those,” said Graziano.
The Housing Authority does not expect to be able to provide more than approximately 5,000 to 7,000 vouchers over the waiting list’s six-year period due to a lack of support from Congress for housing authorities, whose sole revenue stream is federal funding.
Because federal funding for new vouchers is more or less non-existent, the Housing Authority of Baltimore City is limited to the roughly 1,000 to 1,200 vouchers that are turned over every year. Those vouchers are freed up by persons who no longer need the assistance, allowing a name to be selected off the waiting list. While Congress occasionally provides special set-asides of a limited number of vouchers for specific populations—homeless veterans, for example—those vouchers, because they are set-aside, are not available to those on the general waiting list.
Since the number of vouchers is limited, and because, over time, people move and can no longer be contacted at the addresses or phone numbers that the Housing Authority received on their initial applications, the waiting list is refreshed on a periodic basis.
The total number of received applications will be culled down to 25,000 by March 1. The Housing Authority has committed to notify those who have been selected for the waiting list by that date.
ralejandro@afro.com