Help With Low Income Housing in Fairborn, Ohio

As is the case in most cities of similar size, a family seeking low-income housing in Fairborn, Ohio, is likely to discover little more than the public housing and Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher programs funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The Greene Metropolitan Housing Authority (GMHA), which administers HUD's subsidized programs for Fairborn, strives to provide assistance to the area's neediest renters.

Need

• As the U.S. Census Bureau confirms, Fairborn, Ohio, is part of Greene County, which is part of the Dayton, Ohio, metropolitan area. A majority of low-income housing help in Fairborn serves needy renter households. The National Low Income Housing Coalition reports that the 2010 fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Greene County is $696, the same as Ohio's statewide figure. To afford that rent without spending more than 30 percent of his income on housing, a full-time worker must earn $13.38 an hour. Ohio's minimum wage is $7.30, as of 2010, enough to afford $380 in rent.

Programs

• As noted, GMHA provides public housing and Section 8 assistance to Fairborn residents. GMHA owns and operates low-rent, public housing units across the county. Through the Section 8 program, GMHA provides federal subsidies to low-income households that they can use to obtain rentals on the private market.

Process

• GMHA uses the same application process for both public housing and Section 8. A family must obtain an application from the GMHA office, complete it and return it to GMHA. With the initial application, GMHA requires copies of Social Security cards and birth certificates for all household members and a copy of a picture ID for all household members 18 years of age and older. For the public housing program, families must also provide three landlord or professional references. For both public housing and Section 8, applicants must ensure that they fall within the program's income eligibility guidelines. The initial application simply gets a family on the waiting list. Once a family's name reaches the top, GMHA contacts the family. At this juncture, GMHA verifies the information the family submitted with the application, including income. If GMHA approves the application, it issues public housing or Section 8 benefits to the family.

Eligibility

• GMHA uses HUD's income limits for the Dayton, Ohio, metropolitan area to determine eligibility for public housing and Section 8 in Greene County and Fairborn. To qualify for public housing, a family's combined household earnings cannot exceed 80 percent of the Dayton metro's median income, which is $49,350 for a family of four, as of 2010. For Section 8, HUD sets the cap at 50 percent, which equals $30,850 for a four-person household in the Dayton metro.

Preferences

• Nationwide, HUD requires housing authorities to give 75 percent of their Section 8 assistance to families with incomes at or below 30 percent of their area's median; this equals $18,500 for a family of four in the Dayton metropolitan area. HUD also allows housing authorities to set their own local preferences. GMHA uses several. These preferences, which can provide an applicant with a better position on the public housing or Section 8 waiting list, are given to seniors 62 years of age or older; single disabled persons; single pregnant women; applicants who are least 50 years old, but not yet 62; applicants displaced due to government action or a natural disaster; veterans; and households that spend more than half of their income on housing.