Toledo's Lucas County Metropolitan Housing Authority...LMHA which administers the Section 8 program seems to have had a difficult 2016 and 2017 doesn't seem much better.

I've been renting to Section 8 for seven years now, I still have my original tenant in fact, and normally I find great satisfaction in renting to good tenants and working with the bureaucracy that comes with a government program...I had 10 properties rented section 8 at one point and have slowly prioritized standard rentals over the program and now am seeing blatant issues with their operations causing me to move away from considering their tenants.

Delays in the program: We used to have 5 business day's delay for new-tenant vouchers to be reviewed and processed for inspection but have been going weeks before we hear anything. I signed a voucher for a home on November 7th and it was turned in on November 8th. I ended the offer to rent to the tenant on December 1st and didn't receive any communication from LMHA until December 15th when they tried to schedule the inspection...that's 45 days to process a voucher.

We had another home pass inspection on November 5th and we hadn't "stopped and waited" for LMHA because it had never been a major issue before so we let the tenant move in...LMHA announced on November 15th that the tenant voucher needed to be re-evaluated by LMHA and that the rent rate needed to be adjusted (The story was the "Administrator A" reviewed and approved it but since they had resigned, now we had to wait for "Administrator B" to do it. They completed the review of the voucher on December 3rd AND REFUSED TO COVER THE TENANT'S RENT FOR NOVEMBER because they didn't have LMHA permission to move in.

We had a home pass inspection on December 20th and still haven't received permission for the tenant to move in (January 3rd)...the tenant just had to pay for an additional month's rent at their old home and we are out another month without our rental occupied, incurring carrying costs, and risking vandalism. This place has been reviewed, passed inspection, and is just waiting for permission to move in so the lease can be signed and is sitting in purgatory.

Each time we have inquired about why there are massive delays we are told that yet another administrator has left the department. This Spring the inspection scheduler "Beverly" retired and the whole program moved to a 3rd party contractor out of California who now handles scheduling (with the expected miscommunication and inability to make quick decisions resulting).

I have been a supporter of LMHA and the Section 8 housing choice voucher program here in Toledo, Lucas County, Maumee, Perrysburg, and surrounding areas but the program really is now costing far more than we get out of it. I am very perturbed by the authoritarian way the program is managed currently, it feels like landlords are being purposefully ignored because we are profiting from the relationship (lets face it, everyone is...it's called business. LMHA gets a staff of a couple dozen people and a big budget to be bureaucratic, the tenant gets cost effective safe housing, and we get steady rent checks)

Does anyone else have these issues??? If you have a back door, please by all means let me know how to use it! (BTW I was told there was a Landlord training session in early 2016, did anyone know about it and did anyone attend?)