Housing officials say rental assistance waits are long; department readies online waitlist and data for lawmakers

Department of Housing officials told the subcommittee the state merged its RAP (state rental‑assistance) and Section 8 waiting lists in order to reduce duplication and speed access for applicants, and that the department will open a new, consolidated wait list once new software is procured and deployed.

Why it matters: Rental-assistance vouchers and wait-list length are core components of homelessness prevention and housing stability. Lawmakers pressed the department for the number of households on the list and for the basis of varying maximum-allowable rents by region.

DOH said it currently maintains roughly 750–800 households on the unified wait list after moving some RAP applicants into Section 8 where turnover allowed faster placement; the agency said it will re-open the list to new applicants in six to 12 months after its vendor‑supplied waitlist and application software is live. Steve Law, DOH program director, said RAP eligibility generally targets households at or below 50% of area median income and that subsidy calculations vary by region (DEH uses regional fair-market rents and maximum-allowable-rent schedules).

Lawmakers asked whether vouchers can be combined to cover higher-cost units; DOH said it typically allows multiple occupants and considers combined household income when calculating subsidy shares but has not implemented a procedure to combine two separate vouchers into one unit.

Ending: The department agreed to provide the committee a current, town- or region‑level table of maximum allowable rents/fair-market rents, a list of the towns with participants in the Time to Own program and the exact counts on current RAP/Section 8 wait lists; DOH also said it will publish the new rent schedules on its website once the software is implemented.