Over the last week, more than 630,000 households applied for a rare chance to land crucial federal housing assistance in New York City, according to data from the agency running the Section 8 program.
For the first time in 15 years, the New York City Housing Authority started accepting Section 8 applications, from June 3 to just before midnight on Sunday. Hundreds of thousands of households are vying for one of just 200,000 spots on a waiting list for rental vouchers issued by NYCHA.
The federal program, which is administered locally by the housing agency, pays the majority of the rent in privately-owned apartments for recipients who qualify based on their income. Families and individuals in the Section 8 program pay no more than 30% of their income toward rent.
NYCHA officials say they will use a random lottery to select the 200,000 applications for the waitlist and will finalize it after Aug. 1.
Just before the application period started, Lakesha Miller, NYCHA’s executive vice president for leased housing, told Gothamist that she was expecting 500,000 applicants but wouldn’t be surprised if the number came in higher, given rising rents and dwindling affordable housing options in the city.
“It says to me that there is a need for people to have affordability in where either they currently live or where they're seeking to live,” Miller said.
Nine in 10 New Yorkers earning less than $25,000 a month currently spend at least half their income on rent, according to city housing data. Most New York City tenants are considered “rent-burdened,” meaning they spend at least 30% of their income on housing.
“There was very little rollout and still over a half-million people applied,” said Justin La Mort, a managing attorney at the nonprofit legal group Mobilization For Justice. “That shows there’s such a huge need.”
Only a fraction of households on the waiting list will get one of the few remaining housing vouchers.
NYCHA says that after establishing the waiting list, it plans to issue 1,000 new vouchers a month until reaching a cap of about 115,000 vouchers in circulation set by the federal government.
More than 96,000 households now have NYCHA-issued Section 8 vouchers that they are using to rent or search for apartments, which leaves about 19,000 available for waitlist participants, according to agency statistics. Vouchers also become available when existing recipients lose them.
The roughly 3,700 households already on the waitlist for new vouchers will stay there, as long as they continue to renew their applications every two years, per agency rules.
NYCHA is still accepting paper applications by mail from people who received the form at offices in Brooklyn and the Bronx during the submission period last week.
