The Georgia Department of Community Affairs received 177,000 applicants for its housing voucher program to help low-income families with housing.
From Oct. 17 until Oct. 20, thousands of residents in Georgia’s 149 counties applied for the Housing Choice Voucher program. Once known as Section 8, the program provides funding for families to rent a house or apartment. In order to be eligible, applicants must be a Georgia resident, U.S citizen, and have a yearly gross income that is less than half of the median of the county that they live in.
But while over 177,000 applied for the program, their are only 13,000 slots available.
Officials at the program will use a lottery system to select the 13,000 to join the waiting list. From that number, 5,000 will receive vouchers.
The program, created by the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 and funded by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), had closed in 2021 due to the high volume of applicants. With the re-opening of the program, it proves that more families in the state of Georgia need assistance when it comes to affordable housing.
Residents in Fulton, Dekalb, Clayton, Cobb, Chatmen, Glynn, Muscogee, Richmond and Sumter counties were not able to apply. Each of those counties have their own programs to help families retain funding for housing.
In Atlanta, residents can apply for the Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation Program which is a unit-based rental subsidy program for low and moderately low-income individuals and families. HUD provides rent subsidy payments to private and nonprofit property owners for rental units rehabilitated under this program. These subsidies provide both rental support to the family as well as funds to service the debt incurred by the property owner for the unit’s rehabilitation.
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