Expanding Section 8 is cost effective, humane during COVID-19 pandemic
August 13, 2020
As part of the Federal Housing Act of 1974, Section 8 ensures housing affordability by allowing qualified low-income households to rent in the private market.
Voucher holders pay 30% of their income toward rental housing; the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development pays the difference up to fair market value, directly to the landlord.
Some suggest that Marin should simply fund more vouchers, rather than build new affordable housing, but this is beyond the purview of Marin County officials. Although locally administered, the Section 8 program is a federal program that, simply said, is grossly underfunded.
Another misconception is that landlord discrimination is a thing of the past. In a recent commentary, Marin IJ political columnist Dick Spotswood wrote, “the old dilemma of not having enough landlords willing to participate in Section 8 has evaporated.”
Not true. Marin’s racial disparity is the worst in California. Though discrimination against voucher holders is unlawful, it persists. According to Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California, Marin landlords still find ways around renting to Section 8 tenants. With low vacancy rates around the county, competition for existing units is fierce; after waiting sometimes for years to receive a voucher, only 62% of voucher holders are successful in finding a place to live in Marin.
It is well documented that a lack of decent housing and poor educational opportunities foster a cycle of poverty, especially for Americans of color — even here in Marin. Ideally, distributing Section 8 rentals throughout the community would more fairly integrate renters into areas of greater opportunity, but the numbers don’t work. There are 816 qualified households on the Section 8 waiting list, but no vouchers for them due to lack of federal funding. The California Housing Needs partnership estimates that Marin would need 9,465 affordable homes to meet the current need among low-income households.
All of this means that there aren’t enough rental units available for Section 8 voucher holders, and there aren’t enough Section 8 vouchers to meet the need.
With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing, we must look ahead to what an impending eviction apocalypse might mean. The state and county have adopted temporary moratoriums on pandemic-related evictions. But, fundamentally, it is unsustainable to assume that landlords will – or can afford to – allow tenants to live indefinitely without paying their rent. From a tenant perspective, being temporarily protected from eviction is much better than being evicted, but moratoriums simply mean that debts pile up, leading to massive financial collapse and eventually homelessness when the moratoriums eventually expire.
There is much more our local Marin governments could do for renters and landlords during this time, and we need to permit more housing to be created.