For the first time in 12 years, the Orange County Housing Authority will be opening the wait list for its housing voucher program, accepting applications from Sept. 18 through Sept. 29.
The federally supported program assists very low-income families, the elderly and people with disabilities in affording housing by covering part of the rent.
The county’s Housing Choice Voucher Program waiting list will adding thousands of new eligible households until it reaches 12,000 applicants. Application preference will be given to those living or working in OCHA’s jurisdiction, which includes all cities and unincorporated areas of Orange County except for the cities of Anaheim, Garden Grove and Santa Ana, which operate their own housing voucher programs.
“When I got on the board in 2021, there were about 40,000 people on the wait list,” Fifth District Supervisor Katrina Foley said. “It was people who were no longer with us for one reason or another. Maybe they had died or they had moved or they didn’t need housing anymore and they already had taken care of their needs. So the wait list just became this artificial number of people.”
After cleaning up the list for those who were still eligible, Foley said 83 people remained as of last week.
The timing when applications are submitted for the wait list during the upcoming window will not affect one’s position. Preference will also go to applicants in this order: veterans, the elderly, people with disabilities and families. Once applications are grouped into these categories, a lottery will be held within each category until 12,000 applicants are placed on the wait list.
Income limits for eligibility depend on the number of people in a household, for example $50,250 for an individual, $71,750 for four people and $94,750 for eight people.
The county receives funding for 750 vouchers annually. The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded nearly $1.4 million to the county for its…
Read the full article here
