The Observation Deck

I got a call tonite with a question. A friend of mine had heard that Lakewood had banned Section 8 Housing.

I said that couldn't be true, but figured I'd ask, has anyone heard anything like this?

I am no expert but that has to be against some kind of law.

That's my thought, but I promised I'd find out if I could.

sharon kinsella wrote:I got a call tonite with a question. A friend of mine had heard that Lakewood had banned Section 8 Housing.

I said that couldn't be true, but figured I'd ask, has anyone heard anything like this?

If true, I wonder how that would impact Lakewood

There is no truth to this.

Was your friend standing in line at Marc's?

No it was actually someone who works at a non-profit dealing with low-income people. Contrary to popular opinion, I'm not a fool.

It would be interesting to know the context of this information. The Voucher program, which is what most people think of when they hear "Section 8" and the Projects program, an example of which is the CMHA housing project on Rocky River Dr. just north of Brookpark and the Airport.

Maybe the city has gotten proposals for new a new Project-funding housing program? The Voucher program is pretty strong in Lakewood. The available list has dozens of landlords who are able to accept Section 8 and I assume there are many others not on the list who aren't available at this time.

I would mark this up as unfounded rumor, at least in terms of the Voucher program.

No it wasn't a projects proposal, that was one of the first question I asked.

They said that Lakewood regs were no longer going allow landlords to accept Section 8 vouchers.

I don't think they can do that or would do that, just trying to find out if anyone had heard anything about this.

It's looking no one has.

Hmm...interesting rumor, then.

I would think the city would encourage the use of Section 8 for rentals. Section 8 renters can lose their funding and thus their housing if they get in trouble, damage their unit or fail to pay their share of the rent. Landlords serving low income families will at least be guaranteed most of their rent payments per month vs. a low income family that lacks such funding.

What would be interesting to see is if Lakewood could start its own Local Housing Authority or if it has to be County level only. I would think that an LHA with a smaller group of housing to maintain could provide more on-site assistance and supervision of properties than the larger CMHA authority. They could also resolve disputes in a quicker fashion, too.

I worked the larger county agencies when I worked in Cleveland that included CMHA, Youth/Family Collaboratives, School District, Office on Aging, etc. and it is soooo much easier and more efficient and successful to work with the Lakewood-sized versions of this (Division of Youth, Division on Aging, smaller school district, etc.). To have a smaller version of CMHA on hand to work with local landlords would be cool.

Called CMHA - this is not true - called the non-profit told them.

Crisis abated.

rats. you got my hopes up.

Shawn Juris wrote:rats. you got my hopes up.

No municipality has legal authority to ban section 8 housing.

Section 8 is essentially the privatization of public housing facility, ownership, upkeep and spatial distribution. While some government owned housing facilities are still administered directly by the federal government, most have been shut down and/or sold over the last three decades as that housing money has been shifted into the section 8 voucher program.

In most cases, governments do not seek out landlords. It's a function of the private sector, driven by the landlord's interest in accepting such, factors like housing values and vacancy rates play into this decision.