The Uphill Battle Facing Section 8 Recipients

Ethan Ward describes the challenges plaguing the federal Section 8 housing voucher program, which provides rental assistance to low-income people but fails to reach many of those who need it most. According to Mark Vestal, co-author of "Making of a Crisis: The History of Homelessness in L.A.," a report from the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy, "About 50% of people who get vouchers can't find housing. Landlords can discriminate against voucher holders and they have complete discretion."

As neighborhoods gentrify, Vestal says, voucher recipients find more and more limited housing options. After experiencing difficulties using vouchers for various reasons, one Los Angeles nonprofit, the Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System (HOPICS), decided to try a new approach: because landlords often express concerns about potential damage to units rented by voucher recipients, HOPICS has started negotiating with landlords to manage buildings themselves—including maintenance and repairs. HOPICS director Veronica Lewis says she hopes the experiment can provide a scalable model for other housing nonprofits and calls for a 'damage mitigation fund' to aid organizations like hers in taking similar actions. 

"Lewis said a shift in the way things are done is necessary to get people housed faster. Vestal said unhoused people are at least elevated in the eyes of those who have the power as being full fledged political subjects who have ideas about how they want to live and who they want to live," writes Ward.