Rents could go up for 149 low-income families and individuals in Cambridge and Somerville who hold federally funded Section 8 vouchers distributed by the state’s affordable housing agency in an unusual program.
The Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities has also closed the waiting list for the vouchers.
The change, reported earlier by MassLive, does not apply to two well known state-funded rent voucher programs, known as MRVP and AHVP, agency spokesperson Kevin Connor said. It also doesn’t affect federal rent vouchers provided by local housing authorities: the Cambridge Housing Authority and Somerville Housing Authority. Connor said there are 113 households affected in Cambridge and 36 in Somerville.
The executive office is changing the way it calculates voucher holders’ rents by removing “added benefits” that could reduce tenants’ rent, Connor said. The move came because of increasing rents and “a lack of expectation for increased federal funding,” he said.
Higher market rents raise the cost for such agencies because each pays a landlord the difference between 30 percent of a recipient’s income and the market rent.
The executive office acted to lower costs because it wanted to preserve the overall federally funded rent subsidy program, which serves 23,000 tenants statewide, Connor said.
The added benefits that will end are: paying the tenant’s security deposit; deducting the first $5,000 of income from work to help residents meet the Section 8 income cutoff and to lower ongoing rent calculations; and paying utility allowances for cooking and hot water. Not all tenants used the benefits – and the utility allowance and income deduction were intended to be temporary, Connor said. The changes will take effect no later than May 1.
The Section 8 program is unusual in that the executive office, a state agency, acts as a housing authority in distributing federal Section 8 vouchers. The executive office also had special status to deviate from federal rules so it could establish the benefits. It is now returning to the regulations imposed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Connor said.
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