Rising rents in Greater Cleveland were behind the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority’s decision to ask landlords not to raise the rents of tenants with Section 8 vouchers, CMHA officials said.
Rents have risen so much here that the public housing authority is running out of the funding that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development allocated for the program in 2025, said Dorivette Nolan, CMHA’s chief of policy, planning and voucher administration. Also known as the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, it helps low-income tenants pay rent.
HUD budgeted about $63 million for the HCV program as of May, but CMHA’s expenditures have been nearly $68 million, according to data on the HUD website. CMHA applied for funding in June to address the shortfall but has not yet heard if the request will be granted, Nolan said. As part of the request, CMHA had to show it was implementing cost-cutting measures such as asking landlords not to raise rents, she said.
The price of rent in our market has outpaced inflation in many respects.”
Jeffrey Wade, CMHA’s chief of staff, on why the public housing authority’s federal housing voucher funding is on track to run out.
HUD has allocated about $151 million to CMHA for the housing voucher program for all of 2025, according to the HUD website. Based on spending trends to date, CMHA officials believe the funding will run out. Signal Cleveland has asked CMHA how much additional federal funding it has requested and will update this article when we receive the number.
Jeffrey Wade, CMHA’s chief of staff, said the voucher program cost overruns have been unavoidable. He and Nolan said that while CMHA’s federal funding has increased to reflect inflation, it hasn’t increased enough to realistically reflect Greater Cleveland’s changing housing rental market.
“The price of rent in our market has outpaced inflation in many respects,” he said.
Signal Cleveland contacted HUD about CMHA’s request for shortfall funding as well as whether the sharp increase in local rents is causing other public housing authorities to seek additional funding. We’ll add in any response we receive.
Rents have steadily increased in Greater Cleveland
Since the pandemic, the percentage increase in rents in Greater Cleveland has often outstripped rent hikes nationally. The housing voucher program operates on a per unit cost on which rental subsidies are based. In 2022, it was $649.67, according to HUD data. By 2025, the per unit cost had jumped to $900.15.
Nolan sent a letter, dated Aug. 6, to about 3,500 landlords requesting that they not raise the rents on tenants who use vouchers. Landlords must submit paperwork to CMHA to get a rent hike in line with federal guidelines. She wrote that holding off on rent hikes would preserve subsidy payments to landlords, prevent the termination of the program and lessen the risk of families being displaced.
Nolan said she has gotten a few calls from landlords.
“They wanted to fully understand what the request was,” she said. “And then they did express to me their need for rent increases because of their own rising costs of expenses and operations of the rental units.
“They said, ‘While we get it, we still need to request this rent increase,’” Nolan said.
She hasn’t heard from any tenants. CMHA was administering about 15,100 Section 8 vouchers as of May, according to the HUD website.
This is the fourth time since 2015 that CMHA spent more than HUD had budgeted, according to the website. Nolan wasn’t in the job for most of those years, but she is familiar with last year, when she said CMHA received more than $10 million in additional funding after requesting it. Nolan is hoping the same will be true this year.
President Donald Trump has proposed changes that housing advocates say could gut some programs. Trump’s proposals include limiting how long a renter could use a voucher and replacing HUD rental assistance programs, including Section 8 vouchers, with federal block grants that would be administered by the states.
Both Nolan and Wade declined to comment on the Trump administration proposals.
