Over the past week, more than half a million New York renters have applied to get on a waiting list for federal Housing Choice Voucher, which is colloquially known as Section 8. If it wasn’t clear before, it should be clear now: there is tremendous demand for the government to help renters pay for affordable housing. We know, from years of experience, that the federal Housing Choice Voucher will never be enough to meet this demand.
This is why the city and state have advanced smaller voucher programs designed to meet different needs, like the Family Homelessness and Eviction Protection (FHEPs) voucher, which replaced a host of previous voucher programs. This is also why the city and state should be expanding the availability of vouchers and striving for a universal voucher program to meet the need. One step in that direction would have been passing the Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP), which has been floating around Albany for the past few years.
Our organization, the Community Housing Improvement Program, has been speaking directly to New Yorkers about this program for the past month. Encouraging the legislature to pass it and letting renters know how it might help them. The response has been eye-opening.
Thousands of renters have messaged us to ask how they can help, why it hasn’t passed yet, and to share their personal stories. An elderly person told us they are in a shelter in one county and they want to find permanent housing with a voucher in another county, bu.