One part of a years-long waiting game for more affordable housing has ended: Maryville Housing Authority has reopened all of its waiting lists for housing.
Applicants for affordable housing in Blount County over the past few years have watched while the waiting lists for programs like federal Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers closed to new applicants. MHA, Blount County’s only public housing agency, closed the waiting list for the voucher program in May 2022; Executive Director Julie Sharpe said that the list had grown unmanageably long amid a tight market for homes.
Other MHA lists, for public housing at places like the authority’s Broadway Towers property, closed in 2023 as the authority prepared for and underwent a software conversion.
The expected time that prospective tenants would spend on those waiting lists at times hit or exceeded the two-year mark. But though the wait to wait is over, applicants could still spend months, if not years, on the lists before they can move into new homes.
Reopening
Demand for housing in Blount County remains high. Home sales themselves have sunk. According to a 2024 report from the Tennessee Housing Development Agency, home sales in the county declined by 32% from 2021 to 2022.
Fewer sales and a stable population of housing seekers means that interest in MHA programs hasn’t abated.
Since the lists reopened, Sharpe said there have been 130 new applicants for the housing voucher program, 220 for the public housing program and 30 for MHA’s Maryville Towers property. Maryville Towers, like Broadway Towers, specifically houses elderly and disabled people.
The decision to reopen the waiting lists, Sharpe told The Daily Times in a phone interview Monday, July 22, came about partially because of the agency’s software conversion. The conversion, cited as a reason to close some lists last year, is now about 96% complete. As part of the software change, she said, MHA staff contacted every person named on any of the waitlists — over 5,000 people — and updated their information.
The people who didn’t respond were removed, which helped whittle down the number of would-be applicants.
“We’ve got a decent handle on the wait lists now,” she noted. As such, she said, it was time to start letting new people sign up.
Sharpe said she would not close the waiting lists again unless they grew too long. She acknowledged that the wait could be lengthy, “but at least now they can get on the lists,” she said.
Applying
The waiting list for Maryville Towers is between six to nine months, Sharpe said Monday. Waits are expected to last a little longer at Broadway Towers, at between nine months and a year, while people aiming for one-bedroom apartments and for the voucher program could wait up to, or more than, two years.
Prospective applicants can add their names to the waiting lists at MHA’s website, mhatn.com. They’ll need to complete a criminal background check and gather references and information about their household, income and assets. The process is now online-only.
MHA currently has about about 20 people searching for houses through the voucher program; the process of issuing vouchers has to be staggered, Sharpe explained. If 50 people with vouchers are looking for housing at once, they’ll be competing against each other for a small number of available rentals. People holding MHA vouchers have up to 120 days to find housing before the vouchers expire.
Locals get first priority with the voucher program.
The biggest issue with the vouchers in Blount County, she said, remains a shortage of landlords participating in the program.
Funding at the federal level can also present an issue for the program, though MHA’s status as a Moving to Work agency gives it additional flexibility when it comes to funding sources.
Most Popular
Comments / 0