Shutdown, future cuts to Section 8 housing vouchers worry those counting on them to afford Long Island housing

These are uncertain times for Tiffany Gilliam, a 45-year-old mother of three adult children and a grandmother of a toddler, who all live in her three-bedroom, one-bathroom house in Riverhead.

Her injured fiance lives there temporarily as well after a car accident and is not currently working.

Thanks to a federal Section 8 housing assistance voucher, two-thirds of the rent is covered for Gilliam, who said she earns $20.35 an hour working full time at a nursing home. Yet, she worries about the future.

So far, the federal government shutdown hasn't affected the payments to landlords of renters who receive Section 8 housing vouchers, according to one local housing official.

"Payments are still going out," Gwen O'Shea, president and CEO of Community Development Long Island, a nonprofit and small public housing authority that administers Section 8 vouchers in Nassau and Suffolk counties, as well as Brooklyn, she said last week in a text message. As for the impact of the shutdown on the voucher payments, O'Shea wrote, "There are reserves built in for situations like this, but at some point those reserves dry up." 

The National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, a membership organization of more than 26,000 housing and community development providers and professionals throughout the United States, said on its website that the Department of Housing and Urban Development  had confirmed the voucher program "will be obligated for both November and December ... meaning it should be available to housing agencies — as it usually is — at the beginning of the upcoming months."

But Gilliam is looking further ahead, specifically at a proposal by the Trump administration, contained in the recently passed budget for 2026, that would restrict housing assistance for adults who are able-bodied and of working age to no more than two years, Newsday has reported. In addition, according to a Newsday analysis previously reported, 5,700 Long Islanders could be impacted if there were cuts to the housing assistance program that includes Section 8.

Scott Turner, the HUD secretary, defended the voucher cuts in a House Appropriations subcommittee meeting in June, saying it would encourage able-bodied residents to "move up and get out of assisted housing," Newsday has reported. 

A statement from a spokeswoman for Gov. Kathy Hochul to Newsday, said: "By playing politics and refusing to end the government shutdown by working with Democrats, Republicans in control of Congress have callously showed they are willing to put families' housing at risk."

The Trump administration proposal "to cut off rental assistance after two years even if participants still can't afford rent on their own would put over 3 million people, more than half of them children, at risk of eviction and homelessness," the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote in an article on its website July 18. That number includes 343,600 people in New York, including 246,500 working households, according to the center's article.

"Most of these people are in households that include someone who works but doesn't earn enough to afford the rent," said the center, a nonpartisan research institute based in Washington, D.C.

Gilliam said she can't afford the $3,200 monthly rent on her salary alone.

"I work at a nursing home in Southampton," Gilliam said in the living room of her home one day last week. "I'm in housekeeping. I work 35 hours a week. That is our full-time. We cannot go over that." Section 8, she said, covers $2,200 of her rent and she pays the remaining $1,000.

"I pay all utilities," Gilliam added. "The light bill is like, maybe, $200 a month. I'm on a budget plan. Heating is about $100 a month, it just went up. I have to call them and get back on their budget plan. And the water bill is like, I'll say $150 every three months. ... And then cable — that's like $150, people don't count that [but] you need Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi's not free."

Gilliam has relied on Section 8 since her youngest child was born 18 years ago. If she were to lose it, she said, "I have no clue" as to what she would do. She suspects that her family might have to split up, live in different places, or she would have to downsize, or be forced to leave Long Island and New York, which she doesn't want to do because her mother and grandmother are still in Bridgehampton, where she was born and raised.

"I can imagine if I didn't have the program, me and my kids would be spread out staying in other people's houses until I could find something for all of us, if they choose to live with me and then help me out with the bills." Her children, she said, are working or going to school to gain certifications for various occupations, or doing both. 

The budgetary constraints she faces are stark.

"If my check is $700 to $800 gross [weekly], I'm bringing home $500. That's only $2,000 a month. My rent is $3,200. I can't even eat, I can't do the utilities, nothing" if she didn't have rent assistance. Groceries are high and she earns too much to qualify for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly called food stamps.

O'Shea, of Community Development Long Island, which administers 9,275 housing choice vouchers on Long Island and Brooklyn, 275 of them directly through HUD, said in an interview the Section 8 housing assistance program is "one of the most effective homeless prevention programs that's ever been created."   She said the proposal to end assistance after two years to people who are of working age and able-bodied is shortsighted.

O'Shea said the cuts would mean landlords "wouldn't get the monthly payment" leading them to evict people, "which in New York is lengthy. You're talking about people becoming potentially homeless, and lost income to landlords, who can't invest in property, affecting the quality of the property, then you're talking about delays in the court. It's a very short-sighted proposal change."

"We know many families are working one and two jobs," O'Shea continued. She said the wages of many Section 8 voucher clients receive "do not cover the fair market rent or average rental cost in our region." She added, "We're hoping that will not actually move forward," she said of the Trump administration proposal.

Gilliam had this to say to some policymakers who may feel people like her are undeserving of benefits: "But I’m a taxpayer, so I put back into what I’m getting. I’m not sitting home and not working. I go to work every day."

Gilliam laments there is not a program that could help people like her develop what she calls "the tools to help them be able to afford to pay that rent on their own, or at least get them into a program to help them save money to buy a house." She added, "How are we going to be able to afford it? It's not easy. ... How do you save if you're just paying bills, bills, bills?"

By Olivia Winslow

olivia.winslow@newsday.com@newsollie