Hundreds of Wichita households struggled to find landlords who would accept their housing vouchers as payment in 2022.
After the city of Wichita opened its landlord incentive program last January, the city increased the percent of people with vouchers who found housing. The vouchers, also known as Section 8, are a form of federal government rental assistance for low-income households.
In 2022, 28% of people who were issued vouchers successfully signed leases. From January to October of 2023, that rose to 48%.
“This program has been successful in actually getting people housed,” Mayor Brandon Whipple said at a news conference this fall. “Since every voucher in the program has been utilized, the program is winding down, and we’re no longer accepting new or returning landlords to the program.”
Full utilization means the city has distributed all of its roughly 3,500 vouchers to prospective tenants. Now, Wichita faces another challenge: thousands are in line for a voucher with no answer on when they’ll get one.
The waiting list had 6,654 households as of Dec. 7, about half of which are in or around Sedgwick County.
Some people are living in shelters while waiting to hear if they’ll get a voucher.
“One of my big pet peeves about when people see us when we're homeless is that we're lazy, we don't do anything,” said Tyler, who spent part of December at the Union Rescue Mission and asked to go by his first name only. He applied for a Section 8 voucher in August.
“For most of us that are trying to get out of this extreme situation and actually trying to find a place … it's a lot more hoops for us to jump through than it would be for somebody who's just looking for an apartment for the first time.”
Landlord incentive program
The city started the landlord incentive program last January with $250,000 from COVID relief funds. It came after the city said Wichita residents with vouchers were struggling to find landlords to accept them or to locate affordable apartments. A 2023 NAI Martens report found rents in Wichita increased 10.2% in the last twelve months. The amount of rent vouchers can cover is set annually by the federal government.
The city issued about 800 vouchers in December 2022 and only about half were successful leasing up, according to Sally Stang, Wichita’s director of housing and community services. The vouchers for the other households expired.
“Part of that was due to the housing market being so tight at the time,” Stang said at a public forum about housing disparities in November. “Most landlords could choose between three market-rate tenants or an application from a voucher holder. They were taking market rate.”
The landlord incentive program gave $1,000 to landlords who accepted tenants with vouchers for the first time and smaller bonuses to those who added more voucher holders. The program would also pay for unpaid rent or damage caused by tenants.
Celeste Shideler said the complex she manages, Inwood Crossings in northeast Wichita, stopped accepting vouchers after she was hired in 2021. Its rents, even in the government-subsidized apartments, were becoming more expensive than vouchers could afford.
But last February, Shideler and her company decided they would lower the building’s rents in order to accept people with vouchers and take advantage of the program.
“With the incentive program, they gave you extra money to lease up. But they also help pay for some damages, too,” Shideler said, “which was super big because I think that's every landlord’s fear – is that you're going to have damages in the apartment.”
Less than a year later, Inwood Properties now leases to around 100 households who use vouchers. Shideler said she enjoys working with people with vouchers who are moving into the apartments.
“I had a tenant the other day that actually brought me a little card that was like, ‘Thank you so much for letting us lease here,’” Shideler said. “I was like, ‘This is what I do this job for.’”
The city closed the program in September, when the voucher program hit “full utilization,” according to Stang. The city said 46 new landlords had joined the voucher program and 559 households with vouchers were served. About 73% of the money allocated for the landlord incentive program has been used, according to the city’s most recent report from September on how it spends its COVID relief dollars.
Thousands more on the waiting list
Thousands more people remain on the waiting list to get a housing voucher from the city. The average wait time to get a housing voucher from 2020 to 2023 was 381 days, according to a document from the city of Wichita.
Tyler lost his housing in August after getting behind on rent. He said he immediately applied for a Section 8 voucher. He also said he tried to apply for the Wichita-Sedgwick County Housing First program, a program funded by local government that will pay people’s rents who are experiencing homelessness.
He’s not sure when he’ll get a Section 8 voucher – he’s heard it could take up to two years. And he said he’s unsure whether he’s even technically applied to Housing First, despite attempting to sign up multiple times.
“It's a lot. It's a mess,” Tyler said. “It's a lot of paperwork. It's a lot of stuff that you have to do.”
Since then, Tyler said he alternates between sleeping at a storage unit that he rents or the Union Rescue Mission, which has a 30-day limit on how long guests can stay. He’d like more hours at the catering business where he works or to take another job. But he doesn’t have a car, so he’s limited to working only when the bus runs: no later than about 7 p.m.
“It's not an ideal situation,” Tyler said. “Because in a situation where I am, I can't really afford to be picky about which jobs I take.”
Congress funds the housing choice voucher program, while the Department of Housing and Urban Development distributes the vouchers to local housing authorities.
Eradicating the waitlist “would be impossible with the number of vouchers and level of funding HUD has allocated which is driven by Congressional appropriations,” wrote Megan Lovely, a city spokesperson, in an email to KMUW.
At the public forum, Stang said she hopes every year that the federal government will issue more vouchers.
“It’s only happened once in the last 15 years where they’ve actually issued more regular vouchers,” she added.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive D.C.-based think tank, estimates only one in four families who are eligible for rental assistance receive it due to funding limitations.
People in need of vouchers can apply here. People can also receive assistance applying at the first floor of City Hall, neighborhood resource centers or libraries.
Applicants can check their status at the applicant portal any time to update their information. Stang advised applicants to keep their contact information up to date and to ensure they answer the question about where they live and work correctly.
