Cedar Rapids looks at local preference for Section 8 housing vouchers

CEDAR RAPIDS – City Hall has had a buy-local policy in place for some city purchases for several months now, and the City Council now wants to create a local preference in a program that hands out housing vouchers for low-income households.

The council is expected this evening to approve changes in its Section 8 Housing Voucher program with such a local-preference amendment in place.

The program currently provides vouchers to 1,237 households and has a waiting list that can take from three to five years to climb.

Under the new rule, the city will give preference to families with children under age 18, elderly families or disabled families who are residents of Cedar Rapids at the time of application and whose name comes to the top of the waiting list in the Cedar Rapids Housing Agency's jurisdiction.

The second preference will be for families with children under age 18, elderly families or disabled families who are not residents in the Cedar Rapids Housing Agency's jurisdiction.

A third and fourth preference is for those with no children who are residents and those who are not residents.

The new preference system would seem to make it all-but impossible for someone living elsewhere to obtain a voucher here if they apply for a voucher in Cedar Rapids with plans to move here once the voucher becomes available. It's unclear, though, how long someone must live here first to establish local residency.

Vern Zakostelecky, the city's land development coordinator who is temporarily managing the city's Housing Services Office, said on Tuesday that the local preference is designed to keep as much of the federal funds given to the city each year for Section 8 housing in the city.

He said the intent was not unlike the city's new buy-local policy on some purchases, a policy that has gotten criticism from businesses located in other cities in the metro area.

Housing vouchers are portable, and the new city policy won't have any effect on someone with a voucher from another city who comes to Cedar Rapids to live in Section 8 housing. The city from which the voucher has been secured typically uses its federal funds to support the voucher no matter where the voucher holder ends up living.

Zakostelecky said Cedar Rapids' local preference may cut down on the number of people with a voucher who move elsewhere but are still supported by Cedar Rapids' federal funding.

In the last year or two, the city has seen an uptick in what Zakostelecky called “port outs,” though the current number of those is just 20, he reported.