It’s a sign of the times that the Vancouver Housing Authority is hoping that people looking for subsidized housing will hurry up and wait.
Two VHA waiting lists will open to qualifying low-income people between Wednesday and Feb. 25. One is for a single available two-bedroom unit in Vista Court Senior Apartments, a 62-and-older building in downtown Vancouver.
Forty names will be drawn from all qualified applicants for that wait list. Two individuals (perhaps more if they are relatives) will actually get housed, said Sasha Nichelson, VHA’s voucher program director.
The other wait list is for a new pilot project called Shared Housing. Qualifications for a housing voucher in that program will include the same income restriction: no more than 50 percent of the area median, or $24,300 for a single person.
The Shared Housing program requires that you have a roommate before you get the voucher.
“This is not a regular voucher program. It’s a very specialized program. People will be able to use it for home sharing only,” Nichelson said. Your roommate doesn’t have to be a voucher holder, she said. In fact, the roommate could be a homeowner who wants to rent out a room to a voucher holder.
“We were thinking this could be a good thing for a homeowner who wants to rent out a room — or a couple of people who couldn’t afford an apartment separately,” she said.
To help set up strong, lasting roommate situations, VHA has contracted to use the roommate-matching service that Share started up recently. That service is a series of interviews and checks to make sure the household nuts and bolts — income and expenses, chores and food — as well as the individual personalities are a good fit.
“We are operating several group homes and we know what it takes to be able to live together,” said Share executive director Diane McWithey. Some of the folks entering into these situations may not have had a roommate — or a room — in a long time, she said, so it’s good to review the basics and make sure everybody’s on board.
If you lose your roommate it’s possible that you’d lose your voucher, Nichelson said. “People will want to make very good roommate choices,” she said.
But it’s more likely that the roommate matching service can help refill the slot quickly, McWithey said. You can go back more than once for a new match. On the other hand, it’s not mandatory to use the matching service at all, Nichelson said. It’s just meant to help.
Expectations
Because of preference policies that tilt most housing vouchers toward people in various high-needs groups — elderly, disabled, families with children — VHA is aware that too many single, able-bodied adults don’t actually get the assistance they qualify for, Nichelson said. This is an attempt to rectify that, at least a little bit, she said.
Eighty names will initially be drawn at random for 20 available Shared Housing vouchers that can be used anywhere in Clark County. Those who don’t get vouchers at first will remain on the wait list for future vouchers.
But housing officials have emphasized recently that qualifying for a voucher and getting a landlord to rent to you are very different propositions. The apartment vacancy rate in Clark County is something like 2 percent, VHA executive director Roy Johnson said last week at a public forum about the lack of affordable housing. That means landlords often have their pick of many tenants, and often avoid dealing with subsidized renters.
Nichelson said there are approximately 700 people on VHA wait lists, and a typical wait time can be 10 years or more.
“People who apply shouldn’t expect to be housed immediately,” she said.
Two-week window
There’s only one way to apply for these opportunities: between 9 a.m. Wednesday to 5 p.m. Feb. 25 at www.vhausa.com. VHA will do the initial work to make sure applicants qualify, and then random drawings of names for each wait list will take place.
“We felt a random drawing to be placed on the wait list makes the system fair for all who enter, regardless of when they apply during the open period,” Nichelson said.
Final results of the lottery will be announced by letter on April 1, she said.
