Housing Voucher Program Info Session for Property Owners 10.30.23
Transcript of video
We'll have stuff to contribute certainly so I guess we can jump in I don't know Kristen before Cecilia get started would you like to introduce yourself sure I'm Kristen Haas I'm the assistant director for policy and implementation uh in the division of rental assistance so I'm the one you were getting emails from I'm just very grateful that you're all here if you have any Tech issues or things if you want to send me a chat during the presentation I'll try to work with you on the side but Maryssa and Cecilia will be the ones presenting so thank you again and I'm Cecilia Woodworth I oversee the state voucher programs in our division of rental assistance at EOHLC great thank you so today we're going to be talking about housing vouchers and in general what the housing voucher does is the household pays a percentage of their income typically around 30% in rent and then the voucher pays the rest of the rent directly to the property owner so if the household's income is $1,000 a month they'll pay about 300 and then the subsidy will cover the remainder of the rent the biggest voucher program by far is the federal Voucher Program formerly known as Section 8 also known as the Housing Choice Voucher program that's a federal program it's administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development or HUD we do not work for HUD we work for the state but we have our own vouchers from HUD we have about 22,000 vouchers we don't administer those meaning we don't work directly with tenants and Property Owners instead we work with nine Regional agencies so those are agencies like metro housing Boston SMOC ARCAP Wayfinder CTI and they cover different pieces of the state and then HUD also works directly with many housing authorities in Massachusetts on their own Section 8 vouchers so Boston Housing Authority Worcester Housing Authority LOL Housing Authority they all have relationships directly with HUD to administer these Federal vouchers and so one thing you'll notice if a Housing Authority is working directly with HUD we're sort of not in that relationship at all as the state and then this is not all of the federal vouchers there are a lot more smaller voucher programs there's a program with Veterans Affairs different populations but in general by far the biggest program that you'll see is Section 8 or the housing Choice voucher program and I'm going to get to MRVP vouchers so these are the state vouchers these are what I oversee these are directly funded by the state so HUD is not involved at all the biggest program is MRVP or the Massachusetts rental Voucher Program it is very very similar to the Housing Choice Voucher program or Section 8 and again we don't administer these vouchers ourselves instead we work with those same Regional agencies and then we also work with about 100 housing authorities to administer MRVP there are also a couple smaller programs that work primarily work with disabled individuals so as with everything that the government creates these are complicated and there's a lot of paperwork but in terms of Eligibility requirement they sort of vary by program by far the biggest common denominator is that they must have households have to be low income to qualify that's the biggest piece the other piece about these vouchers is that there can be a lengthy weight I believe the wait for our Section 8 vouchers is about 10 years so vouchers are not it's not like Medicare where if you qualify you get it it's you only get it once there is one available for you and unfortunately the demand for the vouchers is far greater than the number available so only once that applicant reaches the top of the wait list will they start to get screened for eligibility and that'll be done at the Housing Authority or with the regional agency they'll look at income eligibility they'll look at criminal history so they'll run a criminal background check and then for the federal programs they'll also look at their immigration status what the Housing Authority or housing agency won't do is they're not going to do additional assessments to determine if the household is going to be a good tenant we rely on property owners to do that screening based on what they consider most important really the housing agency is looking primarily at income and criminal background I will just jump in if you don't mind my jumping in right here just to say that you know if you're a property owner and you have tenants that are without vouchers you would screen a voucher tenant the same way you would screen any other tenant coming to you to rent one of your units so while we do some of the program rule eligibility screening like Cecilia was saying you would do your tenant screening just the same way you would do for any other tenant you're renting to absolutely so if you list your unit and then you start to get applicants and some of those have a voucher like Maryssa just said you would use the same screening criteria as you would for someone without a voucher so if you don't do credit reports on anyone you wouldn't do credit reports just on your voucher holders the only thing that would be different is you wouldn't look at the voucher holders income because even if their income is really low the voucher is going to pay a large portion of the rent so you shouldn't have to worry if their income is like three times the rent and another point as I said before households with vouchers are low Income by definition and so their credit might be lower than some other applicants but one of the good things about the voucher is that it offers that extra layer of protection right so the voucher is going to cover a large portion of the rent that they can't afford so it's an additional protection for you as the property owner knowing that at least that subsidy piece is going to be paid no matter what so the next step once you screen a household with a voucher and you decide yes I'm willing to rent to them you're going to start connecting with the housing agency each housing agency has a slightly different process and different timelines so it's helpful to ask them exactly what their timelines and processes are we can tell you in general this is how it works but each agency is a little bit different in most of these programs you can use a standard lease so whatever lease you typically use you should still be able to use but again the housing agency can verify that for you a lot of these programs do have a lease addendum or tenant addendum that's going to get attached to your lease so if you want to read that they can provide you a copy of that they can also give you a copy of the housing assistance payment contract which can vary by program and that's a contract that you're going to sign directly with the Housing Authority so that you can receive subsidy payments you're also going to be submitting paperwork to the housing agency so the first thing is information on the unit there is typically a program specific for form that you're going to fill out with the applicant and it's going to list the address the bedrooms the utilities and the rent you want for the unit you're going to have to provide proof of ownership so something like a deed you're going to have to provide a W9 for tax purposes so the housing agency can report the subsidy payments to the IRS most of our housing agencies do direct deposit so they'll have a form for that and then if the household has any children under the age of six the housing agency is going to want to verify that the unit is deleaded so in general this is how the lease process would go and again each program is a little different and each agency is a little different but in general the first thing you're going to do once you decide to rent a someone with a voucher is complete that initial form in Section 8 it's called an RFA or request for tenancy approval you're going to send that to the housing agency the next step is going to be a housing quality check something like an inspection once that's done the housing agency is going to look at the rent you requested and look at that compared to comparable unassisted units in your area once everyone agrees on a rent you're going to sign a hap contract again that's the contract between you the owner and the housing agency and then you're going to sign your regular lease more than likely with the tenant and then the tenant is going to move in and live happily ever after we hope Maryssa I'm on mute you'd think I'd know this by now picking up on some of what Cecilia was saying so you as a property owner as a housing provider can request any rent there are you know to begin with when you submit your request for tedancy approval you can request any rent but all the rents are going to be subject to approval within the guidelines and sorry I'm just jumping in some of the steps oh yeah we can we'll get to some of the inspection things sometimes it takes some time let's go through and if there's anything that we don't address we will get to those and we'll also have time for questions at the end so if there's anything that we miss or don't answer for you throughout we can also pick that up afterwards so there are a couple of steps for approval of a rent amount and one of those like Cecilia mentioned is an analysis to make sure that the requested rent is reasonable based on other comparable market rents for unassisted units in the area so the market analyst will do a survey of other rents in the area for a comparable unit similar amenities similar size things like that and that's why we try to do the inspection ahead of time so that we know what we're looking at in your unit to compare it with other ones so we will do that market analysis and if a requested rent is determined to be unreasonably High we cannot approve it but you as housing provider can submit if you have other units that you believe are comparable if you have a large building with other similar units in there that are unsubsidized you could appeal the agency's decision and we also we're always happy to negotiate with Property Owners if you're willing to lower a rent to make it fit within the guidelines so that's the rent reasonable piece and I think I actually do get into that a little bit more afterwards I keep on getting ahead of myself I'm getting ahead of Cecilia also I got so excited about the 10 screening piece so once the rent has been approved and agreed to the housing provider cannot change the rent however you can do an annual increase that does have to be submitted to the agency that has to go through the rent reasonableness process again to make sure that it's acceptable but you are able to get a get regular rent increases as long as generally it's not more than once within a 12-month period and then in terms of the tenant portion it is up to the housing agency to do the calculation based on the tenant family's income and come up with their portion and accordingly the housing agency's portion also and you're always going to get the total amount of your approved contract rent regardless of who's paying which portion if the tenants income goes down might end up paying a little bit less but the housing agency will end up paying a little bit more to cover to get that whole amount so you
should not be at risk of not getting your entire rent amount and just one other thing that housing providers cannot charge tenant anything in excess of the tenant portion like okay here just you know pay me an extra 10 bucks on the side we're not allowed to do that you're not allowed to do that tenants are not allowed to do that everybody can get in trouble for that and if there are additional amenities you can charge for additional amenities as long as they are applied equally to all tenants and are specifically outlined yes we can certainly distribute these right cool so I touched on rent reasonableness and I think I for the most part covered this already a rent is reasonable if it does not exceed the rents currently being charged in the area for comparable unassisted units and that can be in the same building that can be properties that you own that can be properties that you don't own the agency has a market analyst who will do this analysis and then like I said if you disagree with the analysis and you have supporting documentation we would always consider your supporting documentation so we take into account location size type quality amenities facilities management and maintenance of each unit so those are some things we would be looking at and you've probably all heard about payment standards and payment standards and rent reasonable reasonableness are two separate things and they both go into setting what is a rent amount that can be approved so the payment standards the maximum possible amount of subsidy that a housing agency can pay for a unit it doesn't mean it's the maximum rent that you can ask for it doesn't mean it's a minimum rent you can ask for there's a whole formula that goes into it and that's why if anyone ever asks oh what's the maximum I can get for my unit we can't say it because we need to be able to see it and do the rent reasonableness analysis before we can make that decision it's a it's really a case by case basis there's no magic formula so a unit might be determined to be rent reasonable but the contract rent amount is lower than the payment standard another function in here is the tenant family's income because at certain times they're not allowed to pay more than 40% of their income see this is really complicated I don't know how much experience people in this room have with the vouchers but that's why we're here to answer questions and try to make it as uncomplicated as possible so there's a formula of rent reasonableness payment standard and tenant family income that will get us to a place that that gets us to a place of approvable contract rent if the tenant family income is high enough because they can go over their usual 30% we actually might be able to approve a contract rent that's higher than the payment standard so while it's the maximum amount of subsidy we can pay it is not necessarily the maximum amount or minimum amount of contract rent we can pay I know I said i' do a little more question stuff later but given that this is complicated any questions on this before we move on to the next I think the big takeaway is that again you should ask for a rent that you think is reasonable for your unit that you want to charge and the housing agency will get back to you if that's reasonable or not yes and if it's higher than we can approve and we can't approve it unfortunately we can't approve it we would love again back to the negotiation
we would love to you know work with you to see how we can get to a place where we can get to a rent that we can approve because we are always really really happy to find Property Owners to work with because unit
availability is so low right now so we want to make sure that we're finding as many available units as possible so okay security deposit oh sorry looks like someone has a question sorry I'm so sorry I have a question about if what if somebody is already in a rental property so my mom and I have a rental property with my husband and my mom was in housing so we kind of like uh our condo opened up we figured we would you know put my mom in there she's 85 she has a very low income but it's three years later and she pays a very small amount of rent but it doesn't it's not even rent it goes to condo fees and town taxes so would she be eligible would I be eligible to apply for her for a voucher yes going back yes definitely I mean anyone can apply for a voucher going back to what Cecilia was saying the waitlists are so you know a voucher is not an immediate I keep on saying golden ticket it's just not and it's you know rarely going to come immediately we have some priorities for people with disabilities or for you know difficult housing situations but apart from those it's just a long process this is getting into the weeds because getting very far ahead of ourselves there's also a rule that you cannot rent from a family member a close family member unless you're a person with a disability and need a reasonable accommodation to do so and oftentimes that's very important you know you might be a caretaker for your mom who has a disability spec you know I'm not specul I'm just you know hypothetical you might be a caretaker and the accommodation might be she needs
to stay in this unit because you know for XYZ so that is like there's the general there's always the general rule and then there are the exceptions to the rule so yet another reason to be in touch with your housing agency so okay yes but in general if someone is a if someone is a tenant of yours and gets to the top of the wait list and suddenly gets their voucher they could stay in your unit but it would have to go through the inspection process it would have to go through the rent reasonableness process so the unit itself would then have to would the unit itself would then have to make you know be approved yes and that does happen a decent amount so okay great thank you sure of course any other questions before I move on to security deposits as a landlord a landlord can request first can request last can request security deposit with you know in keeping with the Massachusetts landlord tenant statute chapter 186 section 15b I believe so as long as it is in keeping with that you can't charge additional fees but you know you can charge a month of security deposit you can charge first and last we would pay the subsidy portion and again because it's G you know government guaranteed rent I try to steer people away from collecting last month's rent because you're going to to get last month's rent at the end of the tenancy anyhow because it's a government program so we do have more and more programs that are assisting tenants with security deposits so if you ask for that that might be something that you can work with housing agency on because oftentimes security deposits are barriers for low-income tenants to renting a unit but there's more and more assistance with that and another option is to try to collect the security deposit over a longer period of time so a family isn't hit with a onetime upfront large large payment but could spread it out somewhat okay inspections getting to inspections and hopefully this will address Jeff's question on inspections in general it shouldn't take so long if a unit is in good shape it should take you know a request for tendency approval will get submitted something should get scheduled within a few days to a couple weeks it's not the same as moving someone in the very next day it does require some sort of verification so you know every rental unit in Massachusetts voucher or no has to be in compliance with the state sanitary code so that's there right off the bat different municipalities have different rules about what kind of certification of compliance is necessary and when that you know when those Board of Health inspections need to happen so for our state programs we do require that we have confirmation of compliance from the local Board of Health from for the federal programs we have a prescribed inspection system called housing quality standards hqs if you have experience with that and that's when we send out our inspectors the standards are set by Hud and we inspect for that and that also would cover the minimum requirements you know the state sanitary code so if you're getting your hqs inspection you generally won't need to get the board of health inspection also but that also might depend on your municipality and like I mentioned before the rent reasonableness review market analysis that's completed after the unit has been inspected so that a we can verify that it's in compliance and B we know what we're looking at when we're trying to compare it to similar units so Jeff back
to your question yes most of those steps that we've talked about so far are things that we do right around yeah during the lease up process you can always you know M you know do repairs on a unit to make sure that it is more likely to pass inspection while you're waiting for things to happen but most of these happen most of these things get kicked off when the tenant and the prospective landlord sign the request for tenancy approval request for lease approval together saying we want to make this happen here housing agency help us make this happen that's when the ball really gets rolling so in a standard landlord tenant relationship you have the lease and it's between the housing provider property owner and the Tenant and that's it it's just it's the two of you everything is between the two of you enforceable between the two of you when you add in a voucher you add in in another party and that is us so we would be the housing agency and then obviously like Cecilia mentioned the subcontractors and then the local agencies who do the direct Administration we're sort of the umbrella organization and they would do the direct Administration they their agreement with the tenant is the voucher itself and they agreement with the landlord with the property owner is the housing assistance contract you might have heard it called a ha contract housing assistance payments and so that is the contract between the housing agency and the property owner and that sets forth the rules that the property owner needs to comply with and we need to comply with under the program and then we also have the lease between the tenant and the housing provider there are some you know so the housing agency is not a party to the lease there are some places where there is interplay between the lease and the housing assistance contract and sometimes that depends on the different programs because like we said we we run a whole bunch of different programs which often have their own intricacies so in terms of the relationship between the parties like I said the housing agency is not a party to the lease we can't enforce terminate it so just like any other landlord tenant relationship it would be on you to enforce provisions of your lease um where it gets tied in is a lease violation can also be a violation of program requirements and so there you know could be a parallel process there that deals with the tenants relationship with the housing agency and their compliance with their program um so yeah just moving on so the tenant is responsible for their own payments the housing agency is responsible for their payments and not vice versa a housing provider cannot evict a tenant because the agency has not paid if it's the agency's responsibility the provider cannot evict the tenant for that because it's not on the tenant and the housing provider would need to work with the agency to you know sometimes there is a mistake sometimes a check literally gets lost in the mail sometimes a recertification hasn't happened at the right time and it will all get worked out but so and then there are other times
where a housing agency might withhold a payment because of inspections issues
because we're waiting for assigned contract we can't make a first payment until we have received the signed hap contract so if you are participating in this it's always really well
it's important and it's in your benefit to get the signed contracts back to us as soon as possible because the sooner we get those the sooner we can start paying you and then like I said income verification a recertification if a tenant loses a job and their income drops we need to do a recertification to readjust the portions to make their portion a little bit lower based on their job loss and to make our portion higher to cover to make sure that you are getting your entire contract rent okay and Cecilia touched on the lease and lease addendums also the different programs I think we have a model lease for all of our programs but you're not required to use it we certainly encourage it because sometimes it's easy it's been vetted by our legal department but you are certainly welcome to use the same lease that you would use for any other tenant that you're renting to we do have tenancy addendums the federal one is set by Hud and it's required the mrvp one is set by the state also required and there are some Provisions there where if there is a difference between a provision in your lease and the tenancy addendum the tenancy addendum will prevail because it will be something programmatic you know it's not going to be like the tenancy addendum is going to say you must allow smoking in your unit when your lease says absolutely no smoking in your unit like never going to override anything like that and yeah the addendum will outline the grounds for termination and a little bit more of the interplay between the lease and the housing assistance payment contract and yeah it has basic tenant protections yeah rights and responsibilities of the tenant and of the property owner just in terms of in terms of supplementing the lease any questions there okay so yeah the contract with the housing a agency that is our housing assistance payments contract hap contract it you know spells out the agreement between the housing agency and the property owner and certain verifications by signing the hap contract you are you are attesting to certain verifications as are we so the housing provider what you need to do to receive the housing payments and if there is a sale of the property or any notices to the tenant we need to get copies of those also just to make sure things are continuing smoothly um and we agree that we will make voucher payments in a timely manner and making sure you know as long as we're all in compliance with our contracts and the Tenant is still a participant in the program and we have to put this in here voucher payments are subject to appropriation things have been thankfully financially fine for a good while and that hasn't been an issue but it's you know always looming over there because we are subject to State Appropriations we are subject to Federal Appropriations so if we are told that we don't get any more money we have no money to pay and hopefully that's not going to be an issue this is a huge huge program we are lucky to have a lot of money because there obviously is a lot of need and so we are hoping that will continue so I think Cecilia back to you yep so the next piece is if the household has any children under six or if they're already living there and someone has a baby the housing agency is going to verify that the unit is in compliance with lead laws in Massachusetts just to be clear like the state sanitary code the state's lead laws apply to every unit in Massachusetts the only difference with the voucher program is they're actually going to collect that paper to make sure that you really are in compliance and these are for homes built before 1978 so if you are a property owner you need to provide notice to the tenants prior to occupancy but you still need to delead the unit and even if the tenant signs off acknowledging that there's lead paint in the unit you could still be held liable for lead poisoning so proper deleading not only protects the children under six but it also can protect you as the property owner to limit your own liability and then this is important in Massachusetts you can't refuse to rent to a household who has a child under the age of six because your unit isn't deleted so you can't say like in your ad not deleaded no children under six you have to be willing to rent someone and to delead your unit and there's a link there to the lead law and a bunch of different resources for property owners so like I said the housing agency is just going to verify what should already be true if there's a child under six if the unit was built at after 1978 they're probably going to want a building permit but even if you've done a down to the studs renovation they're still going to want a letter from a letter inspector saying that the unit's deleted and then most housing agencies are going to take one more step and they're going to look up the unit in the lead safe Homes Database the link is there this is all public information um it's just sort of verifying when the unit was last inspected if it ever was and if there were any potential lead problems Etc so they're just going to verify your paperwork in that database Maryssa did it again we're also usually on teams and I
think having the mute button right in front of my face on teams is a better reminder than the mute button that goes away on Zoom anyhow this leads nicely into fairhouse fair housing is the law it is especially the law I mean not especially the law in Massachusetts it's Federal there are Massachusetts protected classes and basically housing providers and housing providers is a very broad term here it's Property Owners landlords real estate professionals are prohibited from discriminating against applicants and tenants on the basis of certain protected classes like I said federal law state law and some municipalities have their own additional protections so fair housing is it aims to provide equal access to housing and applicants and tenants all applicants and all tenants need to be treated equally regardless of whether they belong to a protected class or not so we've talked about you know credit scores and some minimum required income a property owner can't set a different can't set a higher credit score for applicants with a voucher a higher required minimum score because they have the voucher you can set a lower score um it's not discrimination against a voucher holder to go a little easier on them knowing that they have a voucher but you can't treat them more stringently than you would any other tenant and the Massachusetts and I'll get into the protected classes oh also if anyone is interested in a deeper dive into fair housing training we have we work with some agencies who provide training and they're great and I think they're really helpful and we love having Property Owners take them so yeah housing provider Section 8 source of income use of a voucher is a protected class in Massachusetts so just like you can can't say this unit is not deleaded don't apply here you can't say this unit isn't approved for Section 8 or we don't take Section 8 that's kind of a strict liability thing right there Massachusetts law protects that right there obviously there are other regulations and compliance that come into play like setting a rent and you're you get you get to make the choice in all of that so not every unit is going to necessarily work for Section 8 I'm sorry I'm saying Section 8 I should be more General vouchers sorry Cecilia stake vouchers too so not every unit is going to work for a voucher program but every unit should at least have the opportunity to work for a voucher program so a housing Pro provider really needs to be able to accept an application from anyone and give it a good consideration without you know refusing or steering them to oh you might want to go here because the rents are cheaper here this might be better for you with your voucher so just it's just something to keep in mind just to make sure that everyone's being treated fairly and equally and you know like I said with the source of income it's a strict liability thing it's the law and it's not knowing is not an excuse sorry and again this is this is a pet area of mine this is some of my background so I enjoy talking about it so anyhow so some of the protected classes in Massachusetts there is a lot of overlap with the federal fair housing act and then Massachusetts has additional protected classes so we add source of income we add marital status I don't even know that veteran and Military status is protected under federal law but it is protected under under Massachusetts law so you know if someone is being discriminated against because of their military status that's not going to fly either so but for the most part these are things that are pretty standard we hear about them all the time and these are protected by law in Massachusetts any questions on Fair Housing stuff and if you do want further training reach out to any of us and we can hook you up with we can hook you up with our trainers okay now Cecilia you get the fun slide yeah so to close out we just wanted to review really quickly the benefits of having a voucher holder as a tenant and this is tricky because voucher holders are just like every other tenant they're just like any other household who's looking to rent a unit in Massachusetts except that portion of their rent is going to be paid by one of our regional agencies or housing authority and a portion is going to be paid by them but otherwise they're just regular people another benefit is as we saw during Covid regardless of what happens to that household's income the rent will be paid so when covid happened and people were losing their jobs uh folks who are renting Dev voucher holders they still got their full amount of rent every single month throughout all of covid because the tenants portion went down but then the subsidy portion went up and so that can be as we've seen a really good protection for property owners the next piece is there's an extra housing agency involved and that can add an extra layer of review and protection so the housing agency is going to do a quick review of the lease they're not going to read it but they'll just review it and make sure that you signed it and people checked off who's paying for what utilities and that alone could save you a whole headache having something like a third party inspection especially Massachusetts can be super helpful prior to move in but in general again your relationship with the tenant day to day is exactly the same whether or not they have a voucher it's just on the first of the month you get two payments instead of one and again like in terms of your lease and your requirements a lot of the things that most Property Owners care about smoking cleanliness guests parking pets none of that is covered by these programs that's all you can still set your own terms in terms of all of that stuff okay great and if you are currently a landlord or even if not you may have heard of the raft program it's the residential assistance for families in transition [Music] program and I see the question down there and we are just about ready for questions so we'll get there in just a minute thank you so raft is a program and this is run by our division of housing stabilization not rental assistance but we can if this is something that ATT tenant you know might need we can put you in touch with the right people but other than that I'm going to be reading a little bit because this is not our program so the raft program helps keeps helps keep households in stable housing situations when facing eviction foreclosure loss of utilities and other housing emergencies caused by a loss of income an increase in expenses or both so it serves households who are experiencing an eligible housing crisis putting them at risk of homelessness or housing instability it also can serve those who are homeless or unstable housed and need assistance moving to New housing due to an eligible housing crisis and eligible housing crises include but are not limited to a household receiving a notice to quit an eviction notice summary process a utility shut off notice U mortgage arear or documentation showing an inability to remain in the current home due to health safety or other reasons if the tenant meets all eligibility guidelines they can apply directly through the Massachusetts emergency housing payment assistance portal and that is linked on the slides here and then you're completed at the completed application would be routed to the regional administering agency in the proper region for processing maximum benefit is 7,000 in a rolling 12-month period and house are able to reapply until they have maxed out wow there's a lot there's a lot in here yeah and it looks like once the tenant applies they will provide an email address for their landlord and then an email will go to the landlord for them to follow up to complete their part of the application and if they don't receive that information they can reach out directly to the Raa the main takeaway here is that households must have an elig both an eligible housing crisis and be income eligible in order to qualify for raft and so eligibility no more than 50% of the area median income and on the slides also the AMI limits for all communities are in there and no more than 60% Ami if the household is also at risk of domestic violence and must be at risk of homelessness or housing instability so that is raft I would say feel free to ask any questions on raft but I don't know if I can answer them but we can always point you in the right direction I have a quick question on that I currently have a tenant who applied for the raft and they did send me an email and they wanted me to set up like a username and password uh to participate and give my portion of the information but when I did that I couldn't find out where to where to give my information and then I called the number that was there and it's just like a voicemail so I'm just trying to figure out like you said the r the r a AA is there a number on there I I don't have that that slide up because I'm listening to you I'm on my phone oh that's fine what where is the unit it's in uh Dorchester B just the line okay so it would be metro housing Boston we can do you have you have the invitation to this Kristen is there do you have a direct yeah you've been sending the emails could you send Kristen an email and we can get you a contact person yeah uh because I think the number is like the 6700 number for Metro and it's just a voicemail so that's what yeah feel free to email me AR um
the same email address that uh was used for the invitation so Kristin.Haas@mass.gov I'll put it in the in the chat and I'll get a little bit more information from you and we can try to figure out what the status is all right beautiful thank you thank you oh and one more fun slide um advertising your unit to voucher holders we are always looking for available units again we know there's a tremendous shortage of affordable housing so there are a couple of things you can do you can post it on affordable housing.com other apartment websites and are I think if not all most of our Regional administering agencies and local housing authorities will maintain a list of available units so you could get in touch with your local Housing Authority or your Regional Raa to let them know that you have a unit available and If you're not sure who to contact we have contact information here for the regional administering agencies but again you can reach out to us and we can always put you in touch with the right person if you have any questions but we are always happy to
take listings for available units and if you know other people who have available units and they want to list them please spread the word so that is our presentation you also have my contact info and Cecilia's contact info in addition to Kristen's so you can feel
free to reach out to any of us so stop the recording just before we go
into questions sure so Marissa there was a question in the chat where someone has
a single family house and want 6,000