S8 (MTW) Program Changes March 2025

March 17, 2025

Re: Important Changes to EOHLC’s Rental Assistance Program Rules

Dear Section 8 Voucher Holder:

You are receiving this message because you have 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.

EOHLC will make several changes to your voucher due to rising costs and insufficient federal funding that may increase your rent over the next year or two.

EOHLC is a “Moving to Work” (MTW) agency, which allows us to create flexible and tenant-friendly 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. Some of the policies we are changing are:

• We will no longer pay for a household’s security deposit upon move or new lease up.
• We will no longer deduct the first $5,000 of earned income in rent calculation.
• We will stop paying utility allowances for cooking and hot water.
• We will implement lower payment standard changes as they happen, rather than giving an extra
grace period.
• We will now count $480 of a full-time student’s earned income.

These changes will take effect at your next regular or interim rent certification, whichever comes
first, on or after May 1, 2025.

We understand that changing back to regular HUD policies will increase costs for many households,
but we made these choices to ensure that our program can serve as many households as possible given
limited federal funding.

We appreciate your consideration.

Very truly yours,
Ben Stone
Undersecretary, Division of Public Housing and Rental Assistance

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

Q. Is my rent automatically being raised as of May 1, 2025?

A. The changes mentioned in the letter will not be automatically applied to all program participants on May 1, 2025. The changes will be applied at your next scheduled regular recertification or if you have an interim recertification processed before your next regular recertification, if either occurs on May 1, 2025 or later.

Q. Do all of these changes affect me?
A. No. Some participants will see little change to their rent share, while others may experience a greater change. For example, if your household is not reporting any wages, then the change in the earned income calculation will not affect your rent calculations.

Q. How often do I have regular recertifications?
A. Most participants recertify every two or three years. If you are due for a regular recertification Metro Housing Boston will contact you via email, mail, or phone to start the process.

Q. What is an Interim Recertification?
A. Interim recertifications are the rent changes processed in between your regular recertifications. They include contract rent increases, reported income changes, changes in the number of people on your voucher, or any other change you are required to report throughout your time on the voucher program.

Q. When will my payment standard be updated?

A. Payment standards are not updated at every calculation. Payment standards get updated in calculations only when we process regular recertifications or contract rent increases. In all other interim recertifications, we use the payment standard that was used in your last regular recertification. When payment standards are updated in a calculation, we are required to use whatever payment standard that applies to the smaller of the number of bedrooms listed on your voucher or the number of bedrooms in your unit that is in effect at the time of your regular recertification or contract rent increase. 

Q. What will my new rent be when the changes take place?
A. There is no way of knowing how the changes will affect you personally or what your new rent share will be until we run the new calculations, taking into account any other changes being processed at that time. When you are due to have a recertification, regular or interim, you will be notified of the changes via mail in the same you are notified of new rent shares now.

Q. Why were these changes put into place?
A. The Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC) made these changes due to changes in funding for the Section 8 program. The changes are a way to help ensure those who are assisted by vouchers today get to keep being assisted by vouchers in the future.