By Juliette Rihl | Arizona Republic
Because affordable housing is rapidly disappearing throughout the U.S., many people are increasingly willing — or even needing — to move for it. The scarcity has led to a nationwide phenomenon called “waitlist shopping,” where poor families scour the internet for open affordable housing waitlists, effectively playing a game of geography roulette as they try to secure subsidized housing far from home.
The trend is a symptom of America’s deepening housing crisis. The country has only 36 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households, according to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition. Public housing programs have long been subject to disinvestment, causing cities to lose guaranteed affordable housing stock. Local housing authorities often have years-long waits for their affordable housing programs or have stopped taking applications indefinitely.
Even if people get a housing voucher, there’s a good chance they won’t be able to use it. The vouchers can only be used for rental units under a certain price limit, and there are far too few of them available. On top of that, many landlords won’t accept vouchers because of the stigma associated with voucher users and the administrative burden of vouchers.
The problem, experts said, is that there’s a severe and widespread shortage of affordable housing — not that people are applying to affordable housing programs outside of their own city. Rather than leave a huge number of poor families to compete for limited resources, they said, the federal government needs to invest more in housing vouchers and other solutions to the housing crisis.
Glendale opened the waitlist for its housing choice voucher program in July 2021. Over just three weeks, applications flooded in from almost every corner of the country.
The city of a quarter-million people received more than 11,000 applications for just 350 waitlist openings, according to data from Glendale’s housing authority. Candidates from 48 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico were vying for spots.
Their odds of getting on the waitlist were worse than Harvard’s acceptance rate.
The housing choice voucher program, formerly known as Section 8, is a federal program that enables very low-income households to afford private market rental housing. Tenants pay 30% of their income on rent, and the voucher covers the remainder of the cost. The program is funded almost entirely by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Waitlists are necessary because housing authorities almost always have far more applicants than they are able to help.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development allows people to apply to as many housing waitlists as they want, wherever they desire, which gives people choices and a shot at a better life. It also may help address racial segregation, as discrimination has historically limited housing options for Black people and other people of color.
Like many other places, Glendale handles the deluge of applications with a lottery, meaning that every application — be it from a family in Alaska or one down the street — has an equal chance of getting picked.
While most of the families that were randomly selected for Glendale’s voucher waitlist were from Arizona, a quarter came from other states, and less than 20% were already living in Glendale. Waitlist spots were snapped up by people from all over the country, like a family of four from Colorado Springs, Colorado; a single woman from Oakland, California; and more than a dozen households from Chicago.
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