What to Know
- The NBC10 Investigators found that since 2017, more than 700 families have been able to get Section 8 housing in Philly using a loophole in the federal housing system-- and delaying the housing of Philly residents who have waited years for the same opportunity.
- The loophole is in a program called Portability, which allows people to transfer their Housing Choice (Section 8) voucher from one public housing agency to another-- anywhere in the country. The idea is that voucher recipients have a choice of where to live.
- But some people have been “porting” to avoid the long waits in Philly and other large cities. The Philadelphia Housing Authority has chosen to pay for the rent of the people transferring their vouchers and skipping the waitlist here-- instead of using that money to pull people off their own waitlist.
Leticia Riley walked out of the Philadelphia Housing Authority this summer disappointed and worried about the wait for public housing.
“They told me it would be up to 8 to 15 years,” said Riley, a 26-year-old mother of two.
And forget about getting a Housing Choice Voucher, also known as Section 8.
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“They said Section 8 was not taking people on their waiting list,” she said.
Section 8 homes are privately owned with the Housing Authority subsidizing most of the rent. The waitlist, which currently has 2,100 families on it, has been closed to new applicants since 2010.
But the NBC10 Investigators found that since 2017, more than 700 families have been able to get Section 8 housing in Philly using a loophole in the federal housing system-- and delaying the housing of Philly residents who have waited years for the same opportunity.
Investigations
The loophole is in a program called Portability, which allows people to transfer their Housing Choice (Section 8) voucher from one public housing agency to another-- anywhere in the country. The idea is that voucher recipients have a choice of where to live.
But some people have been “porting” to avoid the long waits in Philly and other large cities.
The Philadelphia Housing Authority has chosen to pay for the rent of the people transferring their vouchers and skipping the waitlist here-- instead of using that money to pull people off their own waitlist.
“I think if I was on the waiting list over there, I might be a little upset,” said Mike Alberts, the executive director of the Johnstown Housing Authority in Cambria County.
His agency is the largest feeder of transferred Section 8 vouchers to Philly, with 95 families having moved here with a voucher in the last five years, according to data obtained from the Philadelphia Housing Authority through a public records request.
Four Hours West
NBC10 drove four hours west to Johnstown to find out why public housing residents there wanted to move to Philly.
“A lot of those families, maybe even all of them, were originally from Philadelphia,” Alberts said. “They moved to Johnstown because it was quicker and easier to obtain housing here.”
Alberts said Johnstown public housing tends to have high turnover and a short wait of a month or two. So, people from Philly and other big cities in New York and New Jersey, move into public housing.
The day they sign that public housing lease, they are considered residents of Johnstown-- immediately giving them preference for a Johnstown Section 8 voucher.
The wait for Section 8 in Johnstown can be anywhere from a few months to a few years.
“Once you have that Section eight voucher in your hands, then you have the ability to port, you can essentially go home to where your family and resources are,” Alberts said.
Zenzi Wallace-Bey, who is from Philadelphia, said she is doing just that when she gets her voucher.
“I’ll be moving back, searching for houses, trying to look for, you know, a good place to move back to,” she said.
Wallace-Bey said she was on Philly’s public housing waitlist for eight years.
“Whereas here, I was on there for only two months,” she said.
She and others we met from Philly said they heard about the porting loophole through word of mouth.
“We don't know where the word got out from, but... they know the drill,” Alberts said.
‘Absolutely Not’
Moving from one city to another for the purpose of getting a housing voucher and moving back to the original city and skipping the wait there is allowed under the rules set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The decision of who pays for the transferred voucher-holder’s rent is at the discretion of the receiving housing authority.
When people transfer, or port, their voucher to Philly, the Housing Authority here decides whether to “absorb” and take over that voucher as one of its own, paying for the person’s rent out of Philly’s voucher allocation budget. Or, Philly can bill the housing authority where the voucher originated.
In an interview, Philadelphia Housing Authority executive director Kelvin Jeremiah said his agency was not and would not absorb incoming vouchers.
“Those 715 vouchers have not been absorbed, nor will they be,” Jeremiah said, referencing the 715 families who have ported into Philly between 2017 and 2021.
The reason, he said, is his agency’s 2,100-person long waitlist for Section 8 housing.
“We want to make sure that we are depleting our waiting list, giving families opportunities within the city, within our waiting list, to get an opportunity to have a voucher,” he said.
The NBC10 Investigators pointed to records provided by his own office that show that 715 port-in vouchers have been absorbed by PHA. That means every time PHA takes over a voucher that transferred in, it further delays the next person on PHA’s waitlist from getting housing.
“Absolutely not… I am assuming you were referring to the portability data,” Jeremiah said.
That very data, obtained through a public records request, shows that PHA is paying $10.4 million in rent annually for those 715 families who transferred here between 2017 and 2021.
It wasn’t until weeks after the interview that a PHA spokesperson confirmed via email that PHA had indeed absorbed all 715 vouchers. Jeremiah, through that spokesperson, declined the offer for a second interview.
If PHA were to bill the other agencies for the transferred vouchers, it can put a strain on that agency’s budget. And for small agencies such as Johnstown it can impact how many people from their own communities they can house.
“It's a little bit of an extra burden on us because it costs more for rent, a higher cost of living in somewhere like Philadelphia than in Johnstown,” Alberts said. “We can house two to three families in Johnstown for what it would cost us to pay one family that ported out to a larger income area.”
It’s not all port-ins for Philly.
More than 400 families have transferred their Philadelphia-issued vouchers to other places throughout the country, including Hawaii.
Timekia Palmer was given a housing voucher after being displaced from her home for the last decade in the West Park Apartments in West Philly.
The public housing complex is being redeveloped and so the housing authority offered to move residents into other PHA homes or get a housing voucher.
“They said that there was no limit within the United States and that voucher was accessible to use in Puerto Rico,” Palmer said. “I raised my hand [and asked] ‘What about Hawaii?’ And they said, ‘Yes.’”
In June, she landed in Honolulu.
“Very quiet, subtle and full of wildlife, full of birds that are just foreign that I've never heard,” she said from her two-bedroom apartment in Hawaii.
Honolulu’s housing choice voucher administrators absorbed her voucher. The waitlist there at the time was about 900 people.
Back in Philly, Leticia Riley says she too heard that moving out of the city is her best bet for getting a voucher.
“Somebody told me to go to Upper Darby to see if they'd give it to me a little faster than here,” she said.
But once she heard about Johnstown, she said she may just apply there.
“I kind of don't want to travel that far, but it seems like I have to because I can't wait 8 to 15 years to get a place,” Riley said.
NBC10 is one of more than 20 news organizations collaboratively reporting on solutions to poverty and Philadelphia’s push towards economic mobility. You can find other stories in the series here.
