How to turn rental property into Sect 8

[Rod Smith]

I recently purchased a property in not so pleasant part of town. Has anyone tried to get their property rental classified as Section 8 housing? If so, how did you go about getting it enlisted as such? What besides the obvious are the problems/issues going this route?

[Lisa Ginter]

Hi Rod,

What a wonderful question! I think it depends on the city/ county you are in. I personally have not gone this route but I used to help manage my in laws multi-units while I was going through college and have considered doing what they did down the road. 

Instead of getting classified for the entire property, they went down to the local housing authority and talked to the manager about their units and left handouts about their properties that was marketed around helping section 8 elderly folks. They had 3 fourplexes and we went the route of getting each unit spot approved when a section 8 housing applicant came through. They highly recommend it and loved having those tenants. Many of them were fixed income and disabled and had the entire rental amount paid through the Section 8 program and all of them lived there for years. The section 8 housing authorities would come out once a year to do an inspection on the property which would help encourage them to communicate openly with us and let us fix things as they got broken. I am sure there are horror stories out there with others, but the experience I had was very fulfilling.