PHA Rent determination

[Rod Youte]

We marketed our property for $1450 and we have a potential section 8 tenant who may move into our rental. We had to go through the rental offer approval process through PHA and we received our rental offer and it is $1205. We communicated with the employee at PHA and he stated the following: " $1205 would be the total rental offer, and was determined based on the comparable units in the immediate area". So, there is a $245 difference. Can we have this potential tenant pay the $245 difference?

I read somewhere that if a tenant wishes to rent a more expensive place, they can choose to pay a little extra out of pocket to make up the difference. This is called "going up to 40% of your income".

So the tenant would have to go through PHA to make this arrangement.

Also on the HUD website, it states the following:

"The housing voucher family must pay 30% of its monthly adjusted gross income for rent and utilities, and if the unit rent is greater than the payment standard the family is required to pay the additional amount. By law, whenever a family moves to a new unit where the rent exceeds the payment standard, the family may not pay more than 40 percent of its adjusted monthly income for rent."

Can I get your thoughts on this? And is this possible? I read this information online but I would rather have a more accurate measure regarding this.