LA to Reopen Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers

• Author: Bryan Miller
• Posted: 2024-09-30

Los Angeles, California, is one of the most populous and popular cities in the United States of America, and for generations now they have been dealing with a housing crisis. Long before the bubble burst in 2008 and drove America into the "Great Recession," people from LA were dealing with housing issues. The only reason this has never been a national story, or declared a state of emergency, is because the Hollywood elite keep the city alive as a tax base, living in million-dollar homes. Everywhere else in the entire county, however, is full of despair, homelessness, drugs, crime, and people who are trying to flee. Five years ago, LA closed down its Section 8 housing choice voucher program, due to so much demand but so few houses to put people in. As of September 21, however, it has been announced that LA will be reopening its housing choice voucher program for the first time in five years. After so many people have been forced to move out of LA due to rising cost of living expenses in California, the county once again has vacant homes that can be filled with Section 8 recipients.

If you're an LA resident and are excited about this news, it might not be as great as you think. First and foremost, this program will not be officially reopened until the end of October. All that's happened so far is the announcement, and things are subject to change. Secondly, all that's opening back up is the waiting list. This means that if you're in need of housing, you're not going to receive a voucher based on that need. You're going to be placed on a waiting list. Lastly, this waiting list is already full and has been full for some time. Even though the program has not officially been open, people who have applied for regular Section 8 are going to be on the list ahead of people who apply for the reopening. The county isn't going to be able to move people up on the list just because their old program is reopening after five years.

It's good news insofar as people who are at the top of the list will actually get some semblance of normalcy by being granted the freedom to shop around for their own home. What this means is that if a person who needs housing gets a Section 8 housing choice voucher, they can have Section 8 pay the rent on a house that isn't smack-dab in the middle of a criminal gang zone, or some type of ghetto that's falling apart. For the past five years, these are the sorts of homes that LA was placing people into. Without housing choice vouchers, the state gets to dictate where poor people live, and the state has a habit of shoving poor people into the worst possible areas, which just ends up creating a generational problem with poverty instead of empowering the upward economic mobility of people.

Hard to Choose When There Is No Housing

The real issue that was affecting LA residents was that there weren't very many houses available in the county, and especially not in the actual ritzy city. For years prior to the pandemic, California's real estate market was going through the roof, and so if there did happen to be a home vacancy, entrepreneurs and companies would buy these properties, fix them up, and flip them for a profit. LA was doing great financially then, and there were even a few different television shows about flipping houses that used to air on networks like HGTV. A wealthier class of people were coming into LA, and thus there were no vacant homes. Everything was being purchased. LA had no choice but to shut down its voucher program.

After the pandemic, and after increased crime, much higher taxes, etc, more and more Californians are moving out of the state, especially out of LA, and this is creating more and more houses that are opened up. This means that LA can now reopen the section 8 housing choice voucher program, and begin placing people on a wait list for homes in the area.

If you are an LA resident and are looking into Section 8, now is the time to act. The longer you wait, the more likely it is that your name will be buried deep down on the waiting list. If you're not in LA, make sure you apply to your local government agency right away to avoid long waiting times.