The Maine Affordable Housing Coalition (MAHC), an NLIHC state partner, and the Maine Association of Public Housing Directors (MAPHD) launched earlier this month a pilot program tracking Housing Choice Voucher expirations across Maine’s 21 public housing agencies (PHAs). As is the case across the country, Maine’s voucher recipients often struggle to find landlords who will accept their vouchers and the vouchers expire. The goal of the project is to better quantify and articulate the challenges faced by voucher holders across the state.
The struggle for Maine voucher holders was brought into stark relief by the tragic death of Russell Williams in Brunswick, Maine. Despite having a voucher and being actively engaged in the housing search, Mr. Williams, a Navy veteran, died before he could find a permanent home because his search period expired. An estimated 19,000 households are waiting to receive a Housing Choice Voucher in Maine. As Russell’s story illustrates, however, a lack of housing options means getting a voucher is just a preliminary step in the struggle to find permanent affordable housing.
Maine’s 21 PHAs share the common challenge of voucher lease up in a broad range of urban and rural communities. Participating PHAs cover urban centers experiencing the pressures of gentrification and rising rents and rural towns with limited and aging rental stock.
For a three-month period, Maine’s PHAs will report on each voucher that expires before a recipient finds housing. The project asks PHAs to collect information about the reason the voucher was returned. These reasons include but are not limited to:
- Recipient is unable to find an apartment with a rent below the payment standard;
- Recipient is unable to find an apartment that passes the HUD Housing Quality Standards;
- Recipient is unable to find an apartment based on a recipient’s history – including eviction, criminal or credit history; and
- Recipient is unable to find alternative housing without a voucher – subsidized or market rate.
These reasons for non-lease up will be cross referenced with recipient-household characteristics including, but not limited to, household size and voucher size, race or ethnicity, and whether the recipient has outside case management support. Depending on the results gathered, the project may continue beyond the three-month pilot period.
Through this project, Maine hopes to add to the national conversation prompted by important studies on voucher lease up that focused on larger urban communities, including the 2018 Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Pilot Study and the 1999 Urban Institute Study in Chicago, among others. Quantifying the challenge across the state will inform how PHAs and advocates can improve voucher administration and protect recipients from discrimination.
Ultimately, MAHC and MAPHD hope to better understand how voucher holders, like Mr. Williams, can more easily find a place they can call home.
For more information about the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition and this project, or to connect with MAPHD participants, contact Greg Payne at: [email protected] or 207-245-3341