I used to think EXACTLY the same way, until I experienced (both personally and my clients) trashed homes once they left that required $10-15K in fix-up costs. Of course this can happen with any rental situation, but I've seen higher incidence of it with Sec. 8 rentals for some reason.

I think it depends on the neighborhoods, as well as the tennant. In the neighborhood with mostly Sec. 8 tennants, you will generally have more problems than in a neighborhood where Sec 8 rentals are less common.

There is a reason why 30-60K homes in some parts of the country rent for 800/mo.

I had a sec 8 apart. building before in Miami Beach. It's quite great. The only problem I had is when a tenant knows the sec 8 rights. The lanlord is always wrong. My example:
I had this tenant that use to cook like a pig. Grease all over the kitchen. He called the sec 8 dpt and I had a control regarding the insalubrity of the unit. He said I rented to him like that. I had to repaint or no more check. I had to Home depot for the $5 'oops' paint. I had a yellow one. I painted in yellow. I had another complaint and another inspection. I had to repaint the kitchen to the tenant's choice of color...Bottom line, I had no rights really...

What a load of bull!

I guess you failed to take the before pictures. Always, Always, Always take a set of digital pictures with the time and date stamp showing the complete condition of the apartment on the day they are given the keys.
If you do this you will have NO problems! If the tenant complains then you just show the inspector the pictures. Then tell the inspectors that you want their section 8 voucher status reevaluated and plan to evict them since they are causing a health hazard!

Good afternoon Paul,
I used to work rentals, managed 30 units the majority of which were Section 8 for five years. There is a blatant abuse of the system and despite following guidelines, the most I could do in two similar situations was have the BEFORE and AFTER pictures put in a file. The young lady had been a full pay Section 8 tenant for 15 yrs and had two children 9 and 7. Guess who is paying for her to have those children?

I inherited the property to manage and it became apparent that she was nothing but a disaster. Yet evicting her was next to impossible since the owner recieved full pay from LMHA every month. The health inspector gave a warning and did not follow up. Neighbors even complained. In the end, the property sustained about $10,000 worth of damages. Everything from walls, destroyed carpet, boarded windows (they broke them and Section 8 asked us to replace them on our dollar), and a large water bill. The water bill, like the trash bill in Lorain follows the property, not the occupant and it's law here that the landlord must pay it.

After we refused to do anything she eventually succumbed and moved. Collection efforts were obviously futile being as the income she recieved was "unearned" income and the pursuit was lengthy at best for nada. The farthest I got with the case workers and the head of LMHA was, "we will put it in their file". 36 pictures of destroyed house along with another 15 of what it it was like prior to. There were two of these incidents I was asked to manage that were like this. Granted, I've had a few good ones as well but by in large more than not we've run into this situation on Section 8.

Local laws and federal regulations have swung the pendulum far in favor of the tenant to the point that owners I've seen in the business for over a decade and longer are throwing their hands up and quitting (voluntarily or involuntarily). My city is over 50% rental property occupied and you're seeing a large percentage go under.

That is tax dollars funding this debaucho in which the government has no real interest in getting these people off the program. The case workers at our local LMHA are also on the program recieving assistance in several cases and if they truly wanted to solve the issue, they would be working themselves out of a job. If the federal government's real motivation was to create independent people, it would certainly take action in that direction. The idea, however, is to create as many helpless dependents as possible and in the inner cities of urban America they are doing a damn good job.

Hi Joey. There are pros and cons to offering your property to section 8. There are many resources out there but here is a post we did on Section 8 that might help.

Great information guys, appreciate it all.