Low Income Housing in Mississippi

Low Income Housing Information

Low income housing can be a godsend, but if you don't know how to apply, or who to get your information to, how can you ever expect to be approved?

Since laws and procedure vary from state to state, you'll need to learn a few specifics before applying. We can help!

How to Find Low Income Housing in Mississippi

As one of the poorest states in the United States, and one that neglected much of its population for a very long time, Mississippi has had a constant - and ever increasing - lack of affordable housing. The current coordinating body that governs affordable housing issues in the state is the Mississippi Home Corporation (MHC, www.mshomecorp.com), which was established in 1989 and now oversees a broad range of federal, state, and local low income housing programs and projects designed to meet the state's requirements.

Like many more conservative states, the emphasis is on home ownership as opposed to subsidized housing. The MHC oversees and/or operates six different programs specifically designed to help low income people purchase their own homes. Three of the six single-family programs - the Mortgage Revenue Bond Program, the Mortgage Credit Certificate Program and the Down Payment Assistance Program - are all designed to help new, low income home buyers with their down payments, either through direct assistance or through tax credits. Two of the programs - the Mississippi Home of Your Own (HOYO) Project and the Housing Assistance for Teachers (HAT) - are designed to assist target groups of low income home buyers, specifically people with disabilities and teachers respectively. The final program - the Habitat Loan Purchase Program - operates in conjunction with the Habitat for Humanity program and represents the best option for people that qualify for assistance from Habitat for Humanity.

As for rental assistance, for the most part all subsidy programs in operation in Mississippi are federal government programs, such as Section 8 housing and the like. There are independent local agencies in some localities, specifically Biloxi, Canton, Jackson, Meridian, and Natchez. Other than the federal programs, the Salvation Army also plays an active role in Mississippi, though this frequently comes down to emergency rental assistance covering short periods. The only rental assistance program operated by the state government is one by the Mississippi State Department of Health, designed to assist people infected with HIV or suffering from full-blown AIDS.

Among public housing agencies (PHAs) that operate in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the overwhelming majority support low rent housing in the state as opposed to basic Section 8 programs. This emphasis is directly tied to the state's emphasis on home ownership, in that it supports the homeowners that opt to permit their properties to be used for subsidized housing purposes.

Mississippi has also been one of the slowest states to get their various entities online, so to find low income housing; one really has to go to the locality in question as very little information can be found online. In April 2010, the HUD website only listed two Mississippi PHAs - in Biloxi and Tupelo - that had websites online. Further, since so many apartment rental referral websites list every municipality in the state, online searching for specifically affordable housing is virtually impossible for Mississippi. People considering moving there that qualify for subsidized housing will probably have to actually visit their destination directly to find out what options are available.