Chris Nyman says when the wait list for Section 8 housing vouchers is at least two years long, the county can put a freeze on it and purge the list of people who have moved, died or no longer qualify. Photo: Monica Sandreczki
Nov 12, 2019 —
Housing can be a stress in the North Country. If you earn minimum wage, there’s not many homes you can afford. Vouchers through the federal Housing Choice Voucher Program, also known as Section 8, are a huge help, but the wait list for them can be long. The federal government only gives a certain number of them to each county.
In Essex County, the waitlist for rental assistance is about six to eight weeks; that\'s short in the world federal housing assistance. In Jefferson and Clinton Counties you could be waiting over a year.
In St. Lawrence County, the wait list was up to 1,000 people, so in May 2018, they had to stop taking names and haven’t accepted applications since.
\"Some of them move, some of them are no longer interested. Some of them are even dead. There’s a lot of things that can happen when you’re on a wait list for a very long period of time,\" said Chris Nyman, director of the Housing Choice Voucher Program in St. Lawrence County.
\"It just decreases your success rate as far as allocating vouchers to a particular family and the longer they’re there, the harder it is.\"
In Ogdensburg, most of the folks who live at Gaslight Village qualify for Section 8 housing vouchers. Lately though, it\'s been harder for the renters to get federal housing assistance.
\"My turnover rate is greater because people don’t have the financial assistance that would allow them to maintain their housing,\" said John Mikolay, Director of Operations for St. Lawrence County and head of Gaslight Village.
Section 8 vouchers allow you to move almost anywhere you want as long as the place meets certain federal rules. Then, you only pay about a third of you income toward rent. Without the vouchers, families pay much more than that.
Nyman has contacted people who could be taken off St. Lawrence County\'s wait list. He says it should be back open by the end of the year.
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November 12, 2019 at 08:15PM
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If you need federal rental assistance, you'll probably be waiting at least a year - North Country Public Radio
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