Pioneer Homes is pictured. Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central Current

Section 8 is the latest federal program to find itself in the Trump administration’s crosshairs. 

The president will soon submit his budget proposal to Congress. The New York Times has reported that his budget is likely to include substantial proposed cuts to the country’s housing voucher program, widely known as Section 8. 

National advocates, local advocates and elected leaders believe any cuts to the Section 8 program could be disastrous for Syracuse. About 3,500 low-income households in Syracuse have a portion of their rent subsidized through the program. Syracuse Housing Authority Executive Director Bill Simmons said such cuts could even damage the redevelopment of Syracuse’s public housing stock. 

The proposal to slash Section 8 would come at a time when public housing authorities across the country, including Syracuse Housing Authority, are in dire need of more funding to provide housing, said SHA Executive Director Bill Simmons. 

The program helps house around 2.3 million low-income households across the country by subsidizing a portion of their rent.

“We’d like to see more dollars, because we know the need is out there for more families,” SHA Executive Director Bill Simmons said. 

Cuts to Section 8 would be the latest in a series of strategies from the presidential administration to scale back spending on social safety net programs. Any cuts to Section 8, a program helping house millions of low-income renters, would leave thousands of Syracuse residents who rely on it without a home, housing experts and elected leaders say.

If the program is gutted, the cuts will “absolutely” kill SHA’s redevelopment of its public housing stock on the South Side, Simmons said. Under the current plan, tenants would receive project-based vouchers, a type of Section 8 voucher. 

Full details on any proposed cuts remain scant — the proposed cuts have only been reported in the New York Times — which Simmons said complicates projecting the effects of proposed reductions.

But Simmons, alongside national and local housing advocates, are worried. They say scaling back Section 8 in any way would be disastrous for tenants and landlords. The cuts could also cripple landlords who depend on the reliable government income that the program guarantees.

“It is really what everyone hopes to get to be able to get back on their feet,” said Megan Stuart, the director of the Housing and Homeless Coalition of Central New York. Stuart said the need for Section 8 funding is exacerbated by high rents and low wages. A full-time job that pays minimum wage is not enough to afford an apartment in Syracuse, Stuart said.

“So without those tools, I think we’d see a lot more people fall into housing insecurity or homelessness, without question,” she added.

‘A golden ticket to the housing world’

SHA received about $26 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the last funding year, according to Simmons. 

Those funds went toward, among other things, housing 3,500 families in SHA-owned properties and paying rent at homes owned by private landlords who participate in the Section 8 program. 

The need for vouchers, however, is much greater. Thousands of tenants sit on the housing authority’s waitlist, waiting for SHA to have new openings for vouchers. The last time the waitlist was open was in March last year, according to SHA’s website. 

Pictured is McKinney Manor, a portion of Syracuse Housing Authority's property slated to be demolished.
McKinney Manor was built in 1990 on the site of the Mulberry Square Apartments. It is slated to be demolished as the first step in the redevelopment of public housing. Credit: Maddi Jane Brown | Central Current

Overall, the total number of vouchers available nationally increased only slightly after the pandemic — from 2.53 million in 2020 to 2.65 million in 2023, the Times reported.

An analysis of HUD and U.S. Census Bureau from 2023 conducted by Zillow, featured in a recent New York Times article, shows that there were almost 17 million more qualifying households. 

“So already it is a critical resource that doesn’t even come close to the need in any given community,” said Deborah Thorpe, deputy director of the National Housing Law Project. “And so any cuts to the program would, frankly, be devastating.”

The federal government, through HUD, enacts the Section 8 program every year with funds allocated by Congress. 

That funding is then passed to public housing authorities like SHA to create vouchers that subsidize a portion of rent for qualifying households at an eligible property. These properties can be owned by private landlords who are vetted by SHA using strict HUD housing quality standards.

Tenants can also qualify to live at a property owned and operated by SHA, which are part of the project-based Section 8 vouchers program.

To qualify for Section 8 vouchers, applicants have to earn 80% of the Syracuse metro area’s median income or less. This would be $82,000 or less for a family of four, according to HUD guidelines.

With these vouchers, tenants pay at most 30% of their total income on rent, and the housing authority covers the rest. Landlords charge fair market rent, a number calculated by HUD every year. The fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment this year is $1,321. 

The vouchers are a vital part of an increasingly important array of assistance programs, advocates say. Rent in Syracuse has increased 17% each of the last two years. 

“Section 8 vouchers are considered a golden ticket in the housing world,” Stuart said. “It is what will stabilize a family more than anything, because you’re guaranteed your rent is paid based on your income. As our housing market gets tighter and tighter, it gives people that opportunity.”

While the program is vital, it has shortcomings, advocates say. Funding and government capacity to make vouchers available lags far behind the number of households who qualify for Section 8 assistance. Stuart highlighted another issue: finding suitable and habitable apartments in the city that work under the fair market rent requirements. 

Syracuse Housing Authority residents moving out contemplate their future — and their landlord’s

The area is already facing dramatic increases in people losing their homes, Stuart said. Since 2019, homelessness is up by 150% in Central New York. About 71% of unhoused people in the three-county region are in Onondaga County. 

HHC, a coalition of organizations that apply for, receive, and distribute federal funding to help rehouse people, is already operating with no wiggle room in their budget, Stuart said. Having to assume responsibility for an influx of people losing their homes would be untenable, she added.

“If you’re increasing the number of people experiencing homelessness, we wouldn’t even scratch the surface of what is available,” Stuart said. “Our implementation is so much smaller than Section 8’s, so it’s hard to imagine what these cuts would result in.”

Section 8 is also a source of guaranteed income for landlords who operate in a city with big pockets of property disinvestment and neglect for housing conditions, advocates say. 

The program is a tool that brings revenue to landlords in struggling neighborhoods, said Alex Lawson, the housing policy manager at CNY Fair Housing.  

That money often reaches landlords who do not have access to private financing, Lawson said.

“And Section 8 is providing a lot of money that goes to keeping up the housing there at all,” he said. 

What could come next

The president is expected to deliver his budget proposal for the next funding year in mid-May. 

If Trump includes significant cuts to Section 8 in his budget, it will be up to Congress to decide the fate of the program. 

“Congress would have to make the cut, and Section 8 has durable support from across the political spectrum,” Lawson said. “It isn’t just direct assistance to households that need rental assistance, it’s direct assistance to small landlords.”

Central Current reached out to representatives U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and House Minority Leader, U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries seeking to learn their thoughts on reports of the president’s plan. None of them responded to Central Current’s requests.

U.S. Rep. John Mannion, a Democrat who represents NY’s 22nd Congressional District, was not available for an interview before the time of publication. 

Mannion’s Press Secretary David Doyle sent a statement on behalf of the congressman, noting that Syracuse’s high poverty rate is tied to housing instability. Mannion said it would be up to Congress to decide “whether it’s willing to condone such deep and damaging cuts to housing at a time when rent and grocery prices are still climbing.”

“I will oppose efforts to broadly cut federal housing assistance because it will inflict real-world harm on vulnerable communities, including children and seniors,” Mannion wrote.

Both chambers of Congress, though, are controlled by Republicans, who have greenlit Trump’s agenda in his first 100 days in office. Some of Trump’s top advisors have demonstrated an appetite for eliminating Section 8 altogether.

Lawson, the housing expert, said that scenario would be “catastrophic” for Syracuse.

“If it was just removed, those thousands of households would not be able to afford housing,” Lawson said, “and a good number of them would probably slip into homelessness.”

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Eddie Velazquez is a Syracuse journalist covering economic justice in the region. He is focused on stories about organized labor, and New York's housing and childhood lead poisoning crises. You can follow...

Patrick McCarthy is a staff reporter at Central Current covering government and politics. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, McCarthy was born and raised in Syracuse and...