Officials suggest closing Section 8 application process

CEDAR RAPIDS - A four year waiting list is prompting city housing officials to move to indefinitely stop taking applications for the federal Section 8 housing voucher program.

With more than 3,500 households on the local list, the City Council's Development Committee on Monday endorsed a proposal to close down the application process. Committee member Pat Shey noted that 25 percent of the program's staff time is devoted to handling new applications for a waiting list that is only growing longer. The full council is expected to endorse the action in October.

As proposed, new applicants - including “very low-income” families, the elderly and the disabled - will have until Oct. 28 to get on the waiting list before the application process closes. The city then would review the closure next summer.

“I guess we're not really taking all that much away, other than we're not going to let you on a seven year waiting list,” said council member Chuck Swore.

LeSheila Yates, the city's assisted housing program manager, told the committee that three factors are driving the city to stop taking new applications for now: an increase in applicants; an increase in the time people stay in the program once they receive a voucher; and the increase in program costs.

Yates said the average per-month cost per voucher has gone up from $357 a year ago to about $380 now, in part, because recipients have less income and therefore can't pay as much of their own rent.

Each month, the city-administered Section 8 voucher program provides rental assistance to between 1,000 and 1,200 area households, with the current number 1,071.

There is no limit to how long someone can retain a voucher, though the average length of stay for participants in the Cedar Rapids program is 3.7 years. Between January and July, about one-tenth of the current recipients left the program, making room for those on the waiting list.

Yates said her office might go through 500 names on the waiting list to find 100 who are still positioned to qualify for a voucher and to enter the program. Some have moved on and some don't qualify, she said.

A long waiting list has been a feature of the local program. In fact, the city stopped taking applications in January 1982 for about two years, according to Yates. Ten of the 43 public housing programs in Iowa currently have closed the application process for Section 8 housing vouchers, city officials report.

Closing the application process for now, Yates said, will allow the city to “better manage” the existing applicant pool within a reasonable period of time.

Most recipients in the Cedar Rapids program live in Cedar Rapids, though a few live in Benton County and about 10 percent live in Marion, according to the city's figures.