CLEVELAND — There are currently about 20,000 people on the open waiting list to get Section 8 housing vouchers from the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA).

What You Need To Know

  • Only about 50% of people who get Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers are actually able to successfully secure housing, according to CMHA.

  • There are currently about 20,000 people on the open waiting list to get the vouchers, and about 100 are randomly selected on a monthly basis to enroll in the program.

  • One voucher user said high competition for affordable housing, rental application fees and other barriers make it difficult to find places that will accept them.

Of those 20,000 applicants, about 100 are randomly selected on a monthly basis to enroll in the program.

Only about 50% of those selected are actually able to successfully secure housing using the vouchers, according to CMHA.

Voucher recipient 26-year-old Kena White said high competition for affordable housing, rental application fees and other barriers make it difficult to find places that will accept them. White said she was left in a difficult position coming out of the pandemic.  

“My oldest sister passed away, and not even 30 days later, my mom passed away,” White said.

To prevent her sister’s then 12 and one year old sons from going into foster care, White said she took them in.

But she said the cost of day care was too high for her to afford and without her mom and sister there to help keep an eye on the kids, White said she was missing a lot of work to care for them, and eventually lost her job.

“And it’s like alright, I’m just losing everything,” White said. “I don’t have my mom. I don’t have my sister. I don’t have my job. It just put me in this really bad funk to the point where I lost like 100 pounds.”

White was able to move from her one-bedroom apartment into a bigger place for her and the kids, thanks to a Section 8 housing voucher from the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority.

“Currently, I am dealing with some housing issues,” she said. “And since those housing issues occurred, Section 8 is no longer paying the rent here.”

White, now pregnant herself, said she has to be out in a few weeks.

She’s hoping to find a new place before she has to leave this one, but it’s been difficult.

One of the biggest barriers for her has been the application fees for rental properties.

In Ohio, there is no limit on how much a landlord can charge for a rental application, and they are non-refundable.

“It’s like okay, this one was $25. That one’s $40. That one’s $100,” White said. “Those application fees, they can tend to add up.”

Dorivette Nolan, Director of Policy, Planning & Housing Mobility at Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority, said only about 50% of people who get a housing choice voucher from CMHA are actually able to find housing.

“Anecdotally, we hear a lot of families say that landlords just aren’t taking the voucher, or they can’t find a unit,” Nolan said.

She said at CMHA, they’ve worked to improve the situation by giving out as much money per voucher as possible to keep up with rising housing costs and by adding a position whose role is specifically to address landlord’s issues.

After weeks of searching for rentals every day, White said she found a place that will accept her.

She said she’s hopeful that securing housing will allow her to regain stability.

“At some point, I do want to go back to school because that’s what I was doing before my mom passed away,” White said. “So, she passed away in Nov. 2021 and I was supposed to start school in Feb. 2022. So, same plan, just a different route.”

For now, she’s waiting for CMHA to do an inspection of the unit and accept the rent offer before she celebrates. 

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