News

Improving the Housing Choice Voucher Program

Last week NVAA members and others participated in an online discussion with Arlington County as part of a Housing Discrimination Subcommittee Meeting to share landlord concerns about the Housing Choice Voucher Program as well as recommendations to improve it.

They tackled many of the challenges that local landlords face with the voucher program in terms of communication, payments and inspections. NVAA will be requesting a meeting with the management at Housing Choice Voucher Program to continue the conversation and see what can be done to ease some of these challenges. Below is a bullet summary of what landlords expressed as pain points.

Communication

• Lack of communication on the status of tenants’ responsibilities
• Lack of communication on the approved amount for the tenant; this can cause confusion for both the property and tenant on how much the tenant will have to pay out of pocket.
• Arlington County should provide additional communication to the property manager on the status to prevent detrimental reactions to the tenant.
• Arlington County needs to increase staffing to meet the turnaround times that property managers need to maintain profitability.
  
  

Payments

• Long wait times for properties to receive payments from Arlington County.
• Checks received from the county do not always include tenant names; which causes confusion in applying for payments.
• If tenants apply at various companies, it affects their credit and can prevent them from obtaining any housing.
  
  

Inspections

• Inspector schedules are overwhelming, and it takes a long time to approve the unit for the tenant to move in.
• Virtual inspections work well, however, they don’t have a large staff of inspectors and timing of inspections are critical for both tenant and property manager.
• More communication on when inspectors will show up.
• The inspection dictates the amount that the county will pay, however, that can be too late for the tenant to get that unit.

If you have additional concerns or ideas around improving the Housing Choice Voucher Program, email NVAA’s executive director at [email protected].