LA housing vouchers will soon cover less rent. City officials blame Trump funding cuts

More than 50,000 low-income families in Los Angeles are only able to afford the city’s high rents because of the Section 8 housing choice voucher program. But soon, those vouchers will cover less rent — leaving many tenants with fewer places to go.

Officials with the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles say Trump administration budget cuts have forced them to reduce how much rent they can subsidize moving forward.

Starting Aug. 1, rent limits for new Section 8 leases will decrease by 10%.

Heeyoung Linda Park, a Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles attorney who works with voucher holders, said tenants will have to face tough choices.

“They have to settle for worse or smaller housing,” Park said, “or they could lose their voucher.”

How Section 8 works

Section 8 tenants put about a third of their personal income toward rent, with federal funding paying the remainder. Next month’s changes won’t affect existing leases. Voucher payments will only be reduced if tenants move somewhere else after Aug. 1.

The change will affect tenants who have received a voucher, but who have not yet found a place to use it. California law bans landlords from refusing to rent to a tenant solely based on their participation in the Section 8 program. But recent undercover testing found that most L.A. area landlords still discriminate against voucher holders.

Javier Beltran, deputy director of the L.A.-based Housing Rights Center, said the payment reductions will make it increasingly difficult for renters to find options in wealthier neighborhoods. And that undermines one of the program’s key goals.

“It keeps it more segregated to the areas that are just poor, low-income neighborhoods,” Beltran said. “Part of the purpose of Section 8 is to get folks out of those neighborhoods.”

A look at the new rent caps in one neighborhood

Section 8 limits vary by ZIP code. For example, the current cap on a one-bedroom apartment is $2,820 per month in 90034, a ZIP code that includes L.A.’s renter-heavy neighborhood of Palms.

Starting Aug. 1, the city will reduce that ZIP code’s limit to $2,585 per month for a one-bedroom unit. According to RentCafe.com, the current average rent for an apartment in Palms is $2,815.

Earlier this year, the city stopped handing out new vouchers in response to budget constraints imposed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, known as HUD.

Carlos Van Natter, the L.A. housing authority’s Section 8 director, said future federal budget cuts could further limit the city’s ability to accept new tenants into the program.

“Our first concern is not to negatively impact people already receiving assistance,” Van Natter said.

Like other cities across the nation, L.A. does not have enough Section 8 vouchers for all the low-income renters who qualify for the program. In 2022, when the city opened its waitlist for the first time in five years, nearly 225,000 people applied.

About 24,000 applicants are on the city’s Section 8 waitlist. Officials don’t know when they’ll be able to resume issuing new vouchers.