Section 8 in Prince George's County, Maryland

[Lenzy Ruffin]

I've read a number of discussions on BP regarding the pros and cons of renting to Section 8 tenants. My personal synopsis of what I've read is that success/satisfaction with the Section 8 program distills to a handful of things:

1) Proper (rigorous) tenant screening.

2) A willingness to commit to learning all the ins and outs of the program...in other words, committing the time and effort required to become a Section 8 expert. It seems that landlords who focus on and specialize in Section 8 don't have the problems that landlords who are more casually participating in the program do.

3) The quality of the local housing authority that administers the program. From what I've read, the housing authority can be anywhere on the spectrum from outright hostile to landlords to being a landlord's best friend with regard to dealing with bad tenants. 

I'm not looking to rehash the pros and cons of Section 8 in this discussion. What I'm interested in is input on #3 with regard to Prince George's County, MD. For those landlords who participate in the Section 8 program in Prince George's County, MD and do their due diligence as far as screening their tenants properly, how would you characterize the housing authority? Are they a good partner in administering the program or are they more of an adversary? Or somewhere in the middle?

[Nicole A.]

I'm not sure how they differ county to county, but I've worked with Section 8 in Baltimore County. My tenant was good for the first year, then trouble came in the form of damaging my unit. I sent a copy of my Breach of Lease to the housing office just for their awareness and was pleasantly surprised that someone from the "integrity unit" reached out to me to get photos of the damage because they were probably not going to give her another voucher to move.

This doesn't mean to expect them to hold your hand or help you through your problems. Because in the end, it's your tenant. Expecting Housing to fix your tenant problems is like a bad tenant expecting you to fix their nonpayment of rent problems. That's probably where the Housing office becomes unhelpful/unfriendly.

Also, I was/am getting above-market rent, which was unexpected and nice.

I passed the inspection on the first time during the first year. The second year, I did need a second inspection, but it was fast. They didn't have us waiting for long.