America's Talking - ‘Lap of Luxury:’ Section 8 Covering Arizona Rents up to $6,020 a Month

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

(The Center Square) - Taxpayers are covering rents of up to $6,020 per month in Arizona, leading taxpayer advocates to question the growing duration of federal Section 8 housing choice voucher (HCV) usage. "Section 8 needs to focus on lifting people out of the trap of poverty, not putting them into the lap of luxury," said National Taxpayers Union president Pete Sepp in an interview with The Center Square. "It's unfair to ask taxpayers who can't afford mortgages or rents of six thousand dollars per month to foot the bill for subsidies amounting to that much." Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx Read more: https://www.thecentersquare.com/arizona/article_3a65f31d-61ed-478b-a097-937019c81985.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

four, five, $6,000 a month that can get you in a pretty nice house, including one with a pool, a horse stable, and maybe a three-car garage. But why are Section 8 housing vouchers picking up that kind of rent? My name is Art Kane. I'm Investigations and Enterprise Managing Editor at the Center Square, and I'm joined by Kenneth Shrup, who wrote a story about Section 8 housing in Colorado and Arizona, and the high price of that kind of stuff. for taxpayers. Kenneth, tell me, why are indigent families getting housing at $5,000 a month, but most taxpayers can't do that? Hey, Art, a lot of these pricing issues come from how the program is structured and what the

goal is. Section 8 used to be they would actually build apartments that people would live in. This is what's called project-based housing. You're stuck with that home. There were often a lot of problems with these. And sometimes people would be in these very dilapidated units and they really would have nowhere else to live. So eventually there is this project voucher program, this voucher based program, which lets you pretty much move once you're in the program when one place, you can pretty much move anywhere you want. And it'll cover up to about 40% of the median rent in the area for housing. So 40th percentile rents would be supposed to be a little bit below average,

but these calculations don't always end up being entirely accurate because I'm looking at some of these houses here in Arizona, in Colorado. In Colorado, the voucher, the maximum covered amount, the so-called payment standard was often almost double what the largest houses in the area were going for. So you couldn't have even spent that money if you wanted to based on what's available in the market. So why are what is, how does someone get into Section 8 housing and why are taxpayers picking up the tab for someone's rent? Well, understandably, because it does provide pretty much unlimited benefit. There's no limit on how long you can be in Section 8.

As I've explained, you can get into quite a nice house. In Arizona, for example, there are some payment standards that were up to $6,020. a month. In California, I've seen $7,030 a month as the highest. And so getting into this program is something a lot of people want to do. The wait list to get into Section 8 are years and years and years. And again, because it's portable, people just will apply for whatever program that they can get into and they can bring it wherever they want. Usually sometimes there is a bit of a limit on when you can apply to move it and who pays what. There's the public housing authority. that you apply with, they might be the ones paying for you regardless of where you live.

So you could end up being somewhere in, say, Nevada, which I looked into, the payment standards are actually pretty reasonable. If you get into the program in Nevada, that program in Nevada could still end up paying for your rent in California or Arizona. That's a lot more expensive. So I mean, I think the thing that would surprise most people is there's not a cap. If you're paying $5, $6,000 a month for a property, that's such a nice property that I think the majority of people who work for a living and pay their own rent couldn't afford. So why isn't there a cap on this project?

Well, by cap, I assume you're talking about duration of benefits. Well, duration and price. I mean, you know, there is a cap on the price. The payment standard is up to $6.20 a month in Arizona for the P.E. that I think we're talking about. So there is a cap on what the taxpayer will carry. You're allowed to rent a more expensive property if you want and you have to pay for it. That's not really likely, though, because the average HUD household income for someone

getting this voucher is estimated to be $18,558 per year. And that includes welfare payments of all kinds. That includes TAMF. That includes all the other supplemental money that you might be getting. So the program here, I think, is important to note that for the person who's renting the home, they are required to contribute part of their income to the rent. So if this person who's making this household that's making $18,558 a year, they'd be required to contribute $463.95 per month to that house. But that's fixed, right? So no matter how expensive a home the Section 8 beneficiary decides to move into that is under the limit, it's costs the same to them. So there's no incentive for you. There's the incentive for you to move into the nicest, most expensive house that you can with this program. Another thing we have to look at is the income level at which a household get kicked off of Section 8. So if you're making, again, we're talking about the $6,020 a month home. If you're a seven-member household in that six-bedroom home, you're going to get kicked out if you are making more than $69,600 a year.

At least that's the limit to apply for Section 8, at $69,600 a year, if you don't want to be rent burdened, the most you can really afford to spend on rent is $1,740 a month, which is a lot less than that benefit you get from Section 8. This also means that this household would have to make about $240,000 year or about three and a half times the threshold at which the family would not be able to be on Section 8. I did look at some newer updates from the HUD secretary Scott Turner. And he explained in this recent video, and he's been explaining to Congress, this is part of a proposal that he has to limit the application, to limit the tendencies under Section 8 vouchers to two years. He says there's this lady he met who was born into Section 8, who grew up in Section 8, and is now raising her children and has raised her children in Section 8. So we have multi-generations of Americans who have lived with this program in their whole lives. And the question then is, is how long is the taxpayer are going to pay for this?

The average Section 8 tendency is over 15 years. So that is a very long tendency. 15 years of $6,000 a month, that's a million dollars that's paid for by taxpayers. So it sounds like the administration is looking into this. Do you have any sense that or any kind of hope that anything will change? Or do you think it'll just keep going on like this? I think we can look to the Medicare school work requirement actually being adopted as an indication of what could happen. A few months ago in the quote unquote one big beautiful bill passed by the Trump administration

and congressional Republicans, they created a requirement that if you're getting Medicaid and you're able-bodied working age adults, you have to be doing something productive at least half time. That could, that's allowed to be education. It's allowed to be training. It's allowed to be volunteering. Pretty much anything that isn't just sitting on the couch and lounging around. So they are willing to make changes. for able-bodied adults. I'm not really sure what's going to happen if this requirement is going to end up being two years. That's the proposal right now from HUD for the 2026 budget.

I haven't seen indication that it will pass, but the Medicare Medicaid rule change is an indication of what the Trump administration seems to be willing to do. Great. I'm glad you looked into this, and I'm glad people now know what they're paying for. for some people to live in luxury housing. That's it for our episode today. Thanks a lot.