Valuable vouchers require hitting lottery
It took April Martinez only about five minutes Thursday to enroll in the program that could change her family’s lives.
While her infant suckled at a bottle on the dining room table, Martinez, 35, used her phone to navigate the website of the Denver Housing Authority. It was the first day of the local lottery for Section 8 housing vouchers.
“I’ve been applying for the last five years,” she said in an interview. “The economy came to be so high, it was difficult for me to pay rent, making enough money to get a big enough house.”
But Denver’s Section 8 lottery, available online at denverhousing .org until midnight Friday, has seen its number of applicants double during the past decade. That’s in part a result of an easier online system — but also because of a crushing housing market.
Today, Martinez and her family live in a four-bedroom, one-bathroom unit off Federal Boulevard — a place just about big enough for her five kids still at home. The family income is $3,000 per month from her husband Cesar’s work at Torchy’s Tacos. Rent is $1,900.
“He barely makes enough to pay the rent now,” she said.
So, on Thursday afternoon, she was trying for a fifth time to get a voucher from the federal housing assistance program commonly known as Section 8. Others said they had been trying for up to 18 years. In the past, this was a hectic, all-morning affair involving block-long lines outside the housing authority’s office. Now, it’s an online-only process.
“The lines are gone away; the rush isn’t there,” Ismael Guerrero, executive director of the Denver Housing Authority, said in a separate interview.
But the ease of use hides a disheartening fact: The odds are not in Martinez’s favor. She likely will be one of about 21,000 to enter the lottery this year. They’re competing for 500 to 1,200 vouchers.
There are no waiting lists, so everyone starts fresh each time. The lottery drawings will begin toward the end of the year and continue into 2020.
For the lucky ones, it can be a lifesaver: Recipients pay at most 30% of their income toward rent, and the voucher provides for the rest, although the vouchers can be used for units only up to a certain cost. That would cut the Martinez family’s rent to at most $900, assuming they kept
the same unit.
“I think that it would take off pressure of me and my family, and we’d be able to have more money to spend to get a car and help my children now that they’re getting older, like my 16-year-old son,” she said. “Every week, he gets a new letter of colleges wanting him. He’s the first.”
Housing experts consider families to be “rent burdened” if they pay more than 30% of their income in rent. But there were roughly 107,000 households in Denver in that situation in 2017, with only about 7,000 DHA vouchers in circulation
With limited federal funding, DHA has grown the voucher program by only a few hundred vouchers in recent years. New money has generally gone toward higher rents rather than more families, Guerrero said. Renters also can apply to neighboring authorities, but their supplies are even smaller, and some are running long wait lists.
And, despite the stereotypes, Section 8 increasingly is attracting working poor families like the Martinezes.
Last year, the Denver Housing Authority noticed a 10% bump in interest from families earning more than $40,000.
Overall demand has eased slightly as rent increases have finally leveled out, Guerrero said, but that’s cold comfort for many.
Collin McGükin, 25, has been trying to move to Denver from the Gunnison Valley, where he’s “really desperate” to leave a bad social situation before winter hits. There’s plenty of restaurant work in Denver to help pay the bills. But he wasn’t optimistic about a voucher.
“It’s a lottery, and I am not the luckiest dude alive,” he said of the voucher system.
“At first it was exciting, because I thought it was something that whoever applied qualified for. After the years, it’s like, should I even do it, is it worth it? You just never know.” April Martinez
Of those 21,000 applicants, about 4,000 will eventually get a callback — but that’s only the first step. The “winners” must still verify their income and, perhaps hardest of all, find a landlord who will accept Section 8 and who charges a low enough rent. A new Denver law requires that many landlords accept vouchers.
Guerrero said it’s all about expectations. Unlike food assistance, which is available to everyone who meets the conditions, housing help is a game of chance.
“We tell people, this is not the silver-bullet answer, and for them to continue to look through other affordable housing options, and applying directly for some of the site-based waiting lists,” Guerrero said.
“The challenge is, sometimes the information is not well centralized. They have to be persistent and resourceful in looking for where they can apply for an affordable unit.”
At the last minute, McGükin decided not to enter the lottery. He had found a tiny $500 room in a Littleton-area basement. It’s not perfect, he said, “but I have nothing, and it comes with a bed.”
For him, it beat the suspense of the lottery. But for families like April Martinez’s, the waiting has just begun again.
“At first it was exciting, because I thought it was something that whoever applied qualified for,” Martinez said. “After the years, it’s like, should I even do it, is it worth it? You just never know.”