™L.A.'s Housing Voucher Waiting List Is Closed Right Now
The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles isn't taking new names for Section 8 vouchers and hasn't posted a reopening date.
You can't get on the Section 8 waiting list in the city of Los Angeles right now. The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, known as HACLA, says on its Section 8 page that the list is closed.
The page doesn't say when it'll open again. So if you've been searching for an application, you haven't missed one. There isn't one to fill out.
Here's what the list leads to. Section 8 is rent help paid for by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HACLA sends the money straight to private landlords, and the family pays whatever the subsidy doesn't cover. In 2025, the agency paid landlords more than $870 million on behalf of more than 45,700 families.
It's meant for people with extremely low or very low incomes, for seniors and for people with disabilities. HACLA also limits the help by immigration status: you have to be a U.S. citizen or a noncitizen here legally, or be part of what the agency calls a "mixed family." The agency keeps its income cutoffs on a separate income limit page.
Getting a voucher isn't the same as getting an apartment. Once a family has one, the order goes like this:
- Find a place you want whose owner is willing to rent through the program. That search is the family's job, not HACLA's.
- Get HACLA to sign off on both the unit and the lease. The home has to pass the program's housing quality inspection, and the owner has to keep it at that standard for as long as the payments keep coming.
- Sign the lease with the owner. It has to run a year or longer.
HACLA's program already works with more than 14,000 private landlords. Families already in it can search open units on the agency's property listings page.
A voucher can also move with you. HACLA's portability rules let voucher holders take their help to housing anywhere in the United States, which is one reason it's worth getting on the list once it opens.
Until then, HACLA points people looking for help to its other community resources page, linked right below the closed-list notice. That's where to go today.
Source: hacla.org, retrieved October 21, 2026.
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