Stable tenants and consistent rent payments are just two of the benefits Northern Nevada landlords could reap by participating in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Housing Choice Voucher Program, which provides rental assistance for tenants.

That's the message housing officials tried to get across at a recent workshop in Reno, where they aimed to recruit landlords to join a program designed to house very low-income tenants (generally people with incomes not exceeding 50 percent of the median income for the county or metropolitan area they reside in). The push for landlords to participate in the voucher program comes as the loss of federal rental assistance distributed during the pandemic raises fears among housing advocates that it will exacerbate evictions.

At the end of last year, the average asking rent for an apartment in Southern Nevada was $1,420 — a cost that is more than half the per capita monthly income for someone living in Las Vegas. In Northern Nevada, the average rent was $1,490 in December 2022, or 46 percent of the per capita monthly income of a Reno resident.

According to Sarah Glover-Johnson, a HUD employee who works with local housing authorities mainly in Northern California, the voucher program provides tenants with stable environments, more disposable income to stimulate the economy and the opportunity to move into higher-income neighborhoods, but there is more tenant demand than landlords who are willing to rent at the moment. 

“There's a lot of talk about deconcentrating poverty,” Glover-Johnson said. “Just on a larger macro scale, moving into higher-income areas really is a great tool for breaking generational poverty.”

Coleman Welty, the regional manager at the MG Properties Group property management company, said the program doesn’t just benefit tenants. Though it has plenty of government red tape — particularly when it comes to local housing authority inspections that can take one or two hours — the voucher program benefits his company.

“Every single day a unit is vacant we lose money on that. This program allows us to occupy the units and collect rent for those units when our apartments are fully occupied, at least for our company. That also brings up the [cost of] rent as well,” Welty said. “If I have 10 units and four of them are vacant, I'm offering those at a lower rate to fill them up. If I have 10 units and nine of them are [occupied], that 10th one is going to be at a higher rate.”

Housing vouchers serve very low-income families, those with disabilities and the elderly who can’t afford “decent, safe, and sanitary housing in the private market.” Recipients can select housing of their choice as long as the owner accepts vouchers and the housing meets minimum health and safety standards of the public housing agency (PHA) upon inspection.

The PHA uses the market value of nearby housing — called comparables — to determine a payment standard for renting a moderately sized unit within an area, although the process becomes increasingly complex in rural areas that may not have nearby comparable housing units. The PHA then calculates how much assistance the voucher holder will receive.

The voucher holder (tenant) can select a unit that costs more or less than that payment standard, but must pay at least 30 percent of their monthly income for rent and utilities. If the rent is higher than what the PHA deems as standard, the voucher holder must pay the remaining rent. However, the unit cannot cost more than 40 percent of the voucher holder’s income. 

Landlords will receive the same rent for a unit paid with a housing voucher as they would any other unit. Landlords also retain the power to adjust the cost of the unit.

Wait times to receive a housing voucher vary from a matter of months in Northern Nevada to possibly longer in Southern Nevada, primarily because the latter has a larger population. The Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority helps provide housing for 38,000 residents. The Reno Housing Authority — which serves the Truckee Meadows area as a whole — provided nearly 3,000 households with housing vouchers throughout 2022. There are also personal factors that can influence a voucher holder’s wait time. Veterans, for example, are likely to receive a voucher sooner than other applicants.

Still, some landlords are concerned about damages to their property if they participate in the housing voucher program. According to Glover-Johnson, this is a common stigma and one that she said is unwarranted.

“They’re just regular people,” she said.

Landlords retain the power to choose their tenants and perform screenings as they would with any other tenant. Maurice Page, owner and founder of Page Strategic Solutions LLC, said that HUD provides monetary incentives and reimbursements for security deposits and damages to housing. 

Welty also pointed out that constant communication with tenants can help weed out people who may damage a unit — a practice that is useful with any kind of leasing agreement. He also said he’s had the same experiences with tenants who used housing vouchers as those who don’t.

“In conventional leasing, you get those same people [who will damage a unit],” Welty said. “That's just the property management business.”

Though there are financial benefits to landlords from getting involved in the housing voucher program, Page said the real benefit is in helping someone find a home.

“Even in our own personal lives, it may or may not be housing or may not be a loss of income, but we have done some things and we needed a second chance from somebody or something,” he said. “And so this is what we're trying to do. That may be corny to some folks, but the reality of it is everybody has to get a second chance at some point.”