The director of Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency last week told the agency's board that funding is already stretched so far that the housing voucher program isn't operating at full capacity. The agency is authorized for 11,000 vouchers to help low-income Oklahomans afford housing, but sharp rent increases have resulted in the distribution of only 10,200 vouchers. “It really depends on how much Congress appropriates for the program to determine if housing agencies can support the full number of vouchers that they're authorized to contract,” Deborah Jenkins, executive director for the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency, told the Tulsa World.
Jenkins said she doesn’t know of any authority or agency that has the funding to distribute all the vouchers they are authorized to. Department of Housing and Urban Development funding for the program “has decreased over the years" but determines how many families OHFA can serve, Jenkins said. But the agency has to make adjustments as rent continues to climb.
"We may start with 'We can serve 10,200 families this year,' (but) next year if the rent increases continue, ...
we may have to reduce that number further,” Jenkins said. More than 17,000 are on the closed waitlist for the Housing Choice Voucher program. Under the program commonly known as Section 8, tenants generally pay about 30% of their income toward rent while landlords receive a federal voucher for the balance.
Tulsa Housing Authority officials said in 2022 that the vouchers might be $646 to $925 a month, depending on the size of the family and household income. “You may have a landlord that was previously charging $600 a month, and that rent has now increased to $800 a month,” Jenkins said. “And so it's a pretty significant increase, when previously, you may have been looking at a $50 or $60 a month increase, and now you're looking at a $200-plus increase.
” Listen now and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS Feed | SoundStack | All Of Our Podcasts An increase in property insurance costs is among factors contributing to rising rents , according to OHFA officials. “We've seen a pretty substantial rise in property insurance, not just in Oklahoma, but across the country,” said Commissioner Glen Mulready of the Oklahoma Insurance Department. While several factors lead to higher insurance costs in Oklahoma, including the increasing likelihood of serious storm damage, Mulready said inflation is the main driver.
With higher costs for repairs, insurance companies have to pay out more each claim, which is why they are raising their rates. At the local level, Section 8 programs have also been affected by financial instability. The Oklahoma City Housing Authority announced a shortfall in its voucher program was imminent.
According to previous reporting from the Tulsa World , the Tulsa Housing Authority has 8,300 households waiting to receive housing vouchers. The budget shortfall should not affect families currently benefiting from Section 8 subsidies through OHFA, Jenkins said. “What we're trying to do here at OHFA is identify ways that we can reduce our costs but not increase the rent burden on families,” she said.
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