WASHINGTON - Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo today awarded $132.9 million in rental assistance vouchers to provide housing for about 17,800 low-income individuals and families throughout the nation.

About 10,800 of the vouchers will go to people with disabilities. The remaining 7,000 will prevent the breakup of families currently unable to provide adequate housing for their children.

The vouchers will enable recipients to get apartments by paying generally no more than 30 percent of their income as rent, with HUD paying the remainder of the rent.

"These vouchers will provide desperately needed housing for poor people with disabilities and for children growing up in poverty," Cuomo said.

Cuomo announced:

• $68.6 million for the Mainstream Program to provide rental assistance vouchers to enable about 7,000 low-income people with disabilities to rent apartments on the private market.

• $45.1 million for the Family Unification Program. This will provide rental assistance vouchers to keep 7,000 low income families from breaking up due to a lack of housing. Children in these families have been taken or are about to be taken from their parents and put into foster care by local social service agencies because the families lack adequate housing. Families benefiting from the Family Unification Program are primarily single mothers and their children who are homeless, battered women who have fled their homes with their children to escape violent husbands and boyfriends, and families living in slum housing unfit for children to occupy.

• $14.3 million for the Designated Housing Program. This will provide rental assistance vouchers to 2,530 non-elderly disabled people who live in housing that is designated to house only elderly people and elderly disabled people. The vouchers enable the non-elderly people to rent apartments elsewhere.

• $4.9 million for 1,289 Project-Based rental assistance vouchers to non-elderly disabled people who have great difficulty gaining admission to certain types of Section 8 developments and HUD-insured developments due to preferences and restrictions favoring the admission of elderly people and elderly disabled people.

Content Archived: January 20, 2009