And sure, if you can print money to pay them off, you'll get paid, but what will those dollars be worth when they have to flood the monetary supply (M2) to make investors whole?

Is it worth it after interest on the loan you took out to pay yourself and taxes for income are paid? 

My issue is that once I put down the required 20-25% the mortgage amount is not feasible for the regular go to banks because the mortgage amount is too small and not worth it.

But hey, we manage everything ourselves now, and the house will do $400k+ in gross rents this year, so maybe it was worth some lost sleep.

Your property is worth $75,000 so let's pretend they give you a down payment of 5% which is $3,750 and probably more than they can afford.

That is the thing that has always scared me about the whole process.The good news is you can screen all applicants the same in other areas,  so make sure you have credit/civil/criminal (not in seattle)/references criteria that you are comfortable with even if your applicant is fully subsidized.If your particular applicant has $1700ish income on their own they are probably among the stronger sec8 applicants around;  might be worth giving them a shot if the rest of their background check comes back decent.

It's bound to at least break-even, but the tenant happiness (and hence being more steady) would be more than worth it.

Thanks for the quick reply, Julie - very encouraging to hear that it's an avenue worth pursuing.I used to be concerned about my personal furniture (which is not inexpensive) but after I added up the opportunity costs of NOT utilizing my primary residence as a STR in my absence, all my concerns about it vanished.

For networking, it's a good idea to do both since we all know, your network is your net worth!

It's not worth the liability in my opinion.