As federal cuts loom, rental housing vouchers across Mass. are being put on hold

Why? A combination of stagnating federal funding over the years and soaring rents in this state have caught up with the Section 8 program, to the point that many housing authorities can no longer afford to pay for the vouchers they distribute to low-income tenants. Together, they’ve effectively frozen the nation’s largest housing assistance program in one of the most expensive housing markets in the US.

And that’s at the current funding trajectory, before deep federal cuts that have been proposed by the Trump Administration, which local housing officials have said would be catastrophic.

“We have reached a critical point with Section 8,” said Ben Stone, executive director of the Brookline Housing Authority. “The math of the program — which has historically been the most reliable form of housing assistance — is not working how it used to.”

The 80-year-old program supports millions of renters nationwide, allowing tenants to pay around 30 percent of their income toward rent on market-rate apartments, with the voucher making up the difference. In Massachusetts, where Section 8 is the state’s largest source of subsidized housing, some 93,000 households use them to help pay the rent each month.

But many of the housing authorities that administer Section 8 here have run into a problem recently: Federal funding for the program has remained relatively flat, while market rents — and by extension rents for Section 8 apartments — have shot up. Even when the federal government maintains the same level of funding or modestly increases it year over year, rents in Massachusetts have increased faster than the rate of funding growth.

That has pushed many housing authorities into a budget shortfall, meaning they cannot fully pay for all of the services they provide. The Boston Housing Authority, for instance, is projecting to be short by about $26 million, or three weeks worth of funding, at the end of the year.

“With federal vouchers, you have to run just to stand still,” said BHA administrator Kenzie Bok. “The federal government needs to increase funding every year just to maintain the same amount of vouchers, and now we have reached a point where the funding isn’t keeping up anymore.”

Even the state housing department, which distributes roughly 23,000 Section 8 vouchers, had to stop issuing vouchers late last year due to funding constraints and closed its waitlist to new applicants, a spokesperson for the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities said.

It is also rolling back other benefits it had been providing, including reducing the amount of rent the government will pay for Section 8 rents, meaning more costs may be passed on to voucher holders. Some housing authorities, including the BHA, are taking other cost-saving measures, including asking landlords who rent to Section 8 tenants not to raise their rents this year.

The state has run into the same issue with the Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program, a state-funded voucher that has also been impacted by rising rental costs. The state housing office has stopped issuing these vouchers in order to continue providing assistance to current voucher holders, a spokesperson said. The Legislature is currently weighing a budget that would increase funds for the program, but those additional dollars would primarily serve the same purpose: funding existing vouchers.

That means that almost no one on any waitlist is being awarded a housing voucher in Massachusetts right now.

“We have folks who have been on the waitlist for 13 years, and now we have to tell people that they have to keep waiting,” said Sarah Scott, director of Leased Housing at Metro Housing Boston, a nonprofit agency that administers housing assistance programs. “It is especially difficult because there isn’t a timeline we could give people. All the programs we rely on are pulling back.”

It’s a difficult shift for programs that are in massive demand. While 580,000 households qualify for housing subsidies in Massachusetts, according to a 2022 report by state affordable housing groups, there’s only enough funding for about 250,000 to receive them. Massachusetts has one of the highest rates of housing assistance in the country, according to a recent analysis by the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

That, of course, is before any potential cuts come into play.

In its budget plan proposed last month, the Trump Administration outlined deep cuts to several major housing programs, including Section 8 and public housing, which combined would see funding slashed by 40 percent.

If that comes to pass, a state spokesperson said, it would result in an $800 million hole in the state’s budget for housing assistance, which would, in turn, force the state to take vouchers away from some low-income families who use them.

“It will be devastating if President Trump’s proposed cuts to these federal programs move forward because the state cannot backfill federal funding shortfalls,” state Housing Secretary Ed Augustus said in a statement. “These cuts will only make housing even more expensive and difficult to access in Massachusetts and across the country.”

Worry about what might come has motivated some housing authorities in Massachusetts to consider pausing new vouchers to save money in case federal cuts do come to fruition. Preemptive cutbacks, said Scott at Metro Housing, are a way to save money and keep as many current voucher holders on the programs as possible.

And it’s not just vouchers that are at risk.

Michael Lara, executive director of the Newton Housing Authority, said that his agency is concerned about cuts to the federal public housing budget, which is a separate program that maintains aging, federally funded apartment complexes all over Massachusetts that house some of the state’s poorest residents.

The Trump administration has also proposed eliminating several programs that fund supportive housing for formerly homeless people and street outreach services, including money the City of Boston uses to pay for apartment leases on private market units it rents to house people off the street.

Also at risk: Funds for wraparound services at supportive housing sites, said Lyndia Downie, executive director of Pine Street Inn. Pine Street and other nonprofits have spent decades developing a supportive housing model that includes on-site health, counseling, and case management services at apartment complexes designed for formerly homeless people. The model is more likely to keep people from becoming homeless again, but it relies heavily on federal funding, and the proposed funding cuts may result directly in rising homelessness in the city, said Downie.

It’s just this type of supportive housing program that has helped Osborne Walker turn his life around.

Walker spent five years on the street in Boston after a traumatic brain injury and amid tumult in his family. Eventually, he said, he stopped feeling like a human being when he was homeless. Having a home at Pine Street’s new permanent supportive complex in Jamaica Plain has changed things, and he is beginning to build back again with the help of a new home and caseworkers.

“This place is saving me,” said Walker. “I lost myself for a while there. I’m starting to feel like a person again.”

Andrew Brinker can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @andrewnbrinker.