March 21, 2025
Re: Important Changes to EOHLC’s Rental Assistance Program Rules
Dear Section 8 Landlord:
You are receiving this message because your tenant has a federally-funded housing voucher allocated to the state housing agency (Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities – EOHLC) and administered by Metro Housing|Boston.
Due to rising costs and insufficient federal funding, EOHLC is making several changes to its federal voucher programs. These changes will impact most tenants’ vouchers and may increase their rent shares over the next year or two.
EOHLC is a “Moving to Work” (MTW) agency, which allows us to create flexible policies in a way that regular housing authorities cannot do. Unfortunately, we can no longer afford to offer many of these special policies to our participants and we’ll have to return to using many of the same policies that most other housing authorities use. These changes will include cuts to some special benefits we had been able to provide to tenants (e.g. payment of security deposits, certain deductions from their income), as well as a reduction in payment standards, which could affect both tenants and landlords.
These changes began to take effect at regular or interim rent certifications on or after May 1, 2025.
We understand that these changes will increase costs for many households, but we have made these choices to ensure that our program can continue to serve as many households as possible given limited federal funding.
Please contact Metro Housing|Boston with any questions. We appreciate your consideration.
Very truly yours,
Maryssa Schneider McLean
Director, Division of Rental Assistance
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