Tenancy in your USA property: Section 8 Advantages and Disadvantages

What is Section 8?

Section 8 of the United States Housing Act of 1937 (often simply known as Section 8), is a system where the government provides payment of rental housing assistance to private landlords on behalf of the tenant. Approximately 3.1 million low-income households currently are using this system to pay for they rent.
It operates through several programs. The most popular one is the Housing Choice Voucher program which pays a large portion of the rents and utilities of about 2.1 million households in the US.

The main benefit about this is that you get a guarantee from the Federal government to make up the difference between the tenant;s contribution and the rent specified in the owner's contract with the government.
It will be in the best interest of the tenant to stay in this program as if he leaves it he will loose access for good.

Another great benefit its the amount of potential rents.

This could be some of the reasons why a landlord might decide to not have a section 8 tenant:

• Believe that the sec 8 tenant will not be able to properly maintain the property.
• don't want the government to be involved as there are inspection required by law and standards to be meet.
• wants  to charge a rent for the unit above Fair Market Rent
• fear to have to   initiate judicial action for eviction of a tenant (HUD requires that Section 8 tenants can only be evicted by judicial action, even where state law allows other procedures)
• racial profiling  (as a large percentage of Section 8 tenants are minorities)

Section 8 was quite criticized as it allowed low income earners to live in more affluent suburbs where they would be able otherwise.


If you want to read more about this go to
http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/public_indian_housing/programs/hcv/project