“It’s sort of gotten the connotation of poor people of color moving into my neighborhood,” Popkin said. “But the research we’ve done and other people have done is that there’s no evidence they bring crime to a community. There’s no evidence they hurt property values.”

Population Growth

Over the long-term, affordable housing is going to be harder to find as government subsidies fail to keep pace with demand, rents continue to rise and new construction falls behind population growth, according to Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

“Relying on the rental market going forward to house working families, this is going to be a challenge,” she said in a telephone interview. “Rents have increased through the recession and vacancies have declined. So it’s unlikely to be a market where rents stabilize or decline long-term.”

One firm that’s welcoming Section 8 tenants is Oakland, California-based Waypoint. About 5 percent of the almost 4,000 houses the firm owns were leased to Section 8 tenants, according to a July regulatory filing. Waypoint has asked the Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles how it can get approval for “hundreds” of homes in the district, said Emilio Salas, deputy executive director for the agency, which has almost 23,000 vouchers.

Financially Stable

Voucher holders are a financially stable base of renters, said Jeff Brock, CEO of Key Property Realty, a real estate investment and management company that he founded in 2001.

Once leases are in place, overseeing the homes can be more labor intensive. Brock has a separate department within his company dedicated to managing the 25 percent of homes with Section 8 renters. The voucher program is administered on the county level, so operators spread across wide areas may have to work with several housing authorities. Georgia has 159 counties, second only to Texas.

“From a purely cash flow circumstance, Section 8 is better than having a market-rate tenant,” Brock said. “Our tenancy is longer, our collections are lower and our delinquencies are fewer. We get paid on time.”

Higher Rents

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