As previously reported, the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority (CRHA) is set to reopen the Section 8 Rental Voucher Program waiting list for the first time in four years, and now the housing authority has released a date: Starting on September 10, CRHA will accept applications through September 16, when the list will close again.
The last time the waiting list was open was 2004. The sheer number of people who applied forced the housing authority to close the list until all of them were helped. Noah Schwartz, executive director of CRHA, says it is normal for the list not to be open for long.
“We get calls from all over the country asking if our waiting list is open,” Schwartz recently told C-VILLE. “Charlottesville is a nice place to live.”
Section 8 is a federally funded program that enables the local public housing authority to pay landlords the difference between 30 percent of household income and the authority-determined payment standard, which is 80 to 100 percent of the fair market rent.
CRHA will give priority to residents who are working and living in the city, to those who have been victims of domestic violence in the past year, to the homeless or those living in substandard housing, to those paying more than 50 percent of their income in rent and to those affected by a natural disaster.
CRHA will reserve 75 percent of the spots on the list for families with an income that does not exceed 30 percent of the area median income. For a family of four, that is $20,550 per year.
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