KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A new program in Johnson County is designed to help more people make the move to affordable housing.
The county is testing out a landlord incentive officials hope will lead to acceptance of more Section 8 vouchers.
Jessa Molina works for the county's housing authority as a landlord recruiter.
She helps new landlords find out about the Section 8 program.
“It tries to recruit local landlords and apartment complexes and property managers to accept families that have housing choice vouchers, which is federally funded rental assistance," she said.
The county's housing authority spotted a trend of fewer landlords accepting housing choice vouchers and they conducted a survey of landlords to find out why.
“A lot of landlords are hesitant because of red tape," Molina said. "They think this process is going to take a long time or is going to cause them a lot of issues or headaches. But that is not the reality with the Johnson County Housing Authority, we tend to be really quick. What we found is landlords were interested in working with the program for specific incentives.”
By offering a month's worth of rent and making sure some damages to property would be covered, it started attracting landlords like Dale Griffin.
“There was always a reluctance," Griffin said of accepting housing vouchers. “I thought that the government red tape would be onerous. Whether it’s real or perceived, we all just have fears that just make it like, ‘Why should I do that if I could get a market-rate tenant fairly easily?"
He found accepting tenants who use housing vouchers was much easier than he thought. It's changed the way he's thought about offering housing in the future.
“Painless, I mean just totally painless" Griffin said. "The whole process worked much better than I expected. So I was thrilled and plan on doing more properties in the future."
Molina says that's exactly the outcome she hopes for.
“Helping us to get in the door with new landlords so that way they can experience that process and see," she said.
The program has already seen success, finding 59 people homes in the first quarter alone.
"And the hope is that it keeps growing as more landlords hear about it and the benefits," Molina said.
Griffin hopes the pilot program becomes permanent and that the program continues to pick up momentum.
“Truthfully, I think the benefit of it, it gets landlords willing to take a shot," he said. "Willing to risk it because it’s that little extra benefit that may make up for if any of their fears actually happen. To give somebody a reason to give it a try. And I think that’s a good idea. And it certainly worked for me.”
