LA's Section 8 housing program plagued by failures, including unused vouchers, landlord rejections
The ABC7 Eyewitness News investigative data team has found chronic, troubling failures of the federal Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program in Los Angeles leading to thousands of the vouchers going unused while the city's homelessness problem grows worse.
"It is very challenging and tough for our tenants to connect with a landlord and find a unit," explained Carlos Van Natter, the director of Section 8 at HACLA. "The landlord is not required to accept a Section 8 voucher holder. We hope that they do and many of them do do that." "We have a couple of thousand vouchers that people could use, but we need landlords to be willing to take those vouchers," Bass told Eyewitness News.
The last time the city opened up its Section 8 voucher waiting list, more than 200,000 people applied. Roughly 30,000 are picked in the lottery and are placed on a waiting list, where they can remain for several years before receiving a voucher. "There's just not enough protections that are out there, so many landlords continue to just say, 'No Section 8' blatantly," said Manuel Villagomez, an attorney for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.
HACLA officials say they are now boosting the Section 8 rent money offered to landlords in higher cost areas in an effort to get more people housed, but experts say there are still many other obstacles to making Section 8 more successful.
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