North Dakota Section 8 Housing

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!

Where to Find Section 8 Housing Offered in North Dakota?

North Dakota has not been overly active in developing its affordable housing options simply because few developers in the state are interested in the federal tax credits for building dedicated Section 8 housing there. Instead, the developers stand to make more money by developing for commercial properties, so Section 8 housing is limited in North Dakota. More successful has been the Moderate Rehabilitation program, in which older properties are rehabilitated and converted into low income housing for residents in need. Further, since many of the state's low income people are Native Americans - which receive a whole separate series of assistance programs - the options for low income non-Native people are lacking.

Beyond the Moderate Rehabilitation program, the only other options for non-natives in North Dakota is basic, project-based Section 8 housing, which is focused in the urban areas. Being a largely rural state, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Rural Development program (which provides low income housing in rural areas) is active, but again limited simply because most of the land is in private ownership and there has been a significant lack of housing development in the state.

A general sense of what is available can be obtained by contacting the local public housing authority (PHA) in the area in question. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provides a comprehensive list of PHAs in North Dakota on their website: www.hud.gov. These PHAs also administrate the USDA Rural Development properties, so this is still a valid resource even for people that are not relocating to an urban area per se. These federal subsidized housing programs are all based on the local area's median income, as determined by HUD, and this information can also be found of the HUD website. Remember that in order to qualify for Section 8 housing, you have to make at least fifty percent less per year than the HUD determined median income. Since the income levels in North Dakota are much lower than in many other places, it is entirely possible that a person moving from elsewhere may not qualify for Section 8 housing, even if they did in their old location.

What few additional resources are available can be found on the website of the North Dakota Housing Finance Agency (NDHFA, www.ndhfa.state.nd.us). As already noted, the options for non-Native Americans are limited, so people looking to move to North Dakota should not expect to find a lot of assistance available. In a couple of the major cities there are also non-profit housing advocacy organizations that may be able to provide some additional information. However, one should certainly not expect too much. In general, North Dakota is probably not the best state in the union to relocate to if you require housing assistance.

Outside of the urban areas - which are rare enough in North Dakota - Section 8 housing is quite rare. However, with the economic downturn, it may be possible to persuade a landlord to accept a Section 8 voucher program in order to rent out their property. Nevertheless, there is still a general aversion to bureaucracy and government intervention in much of the state, so even this is something of a long shot.