Programs help homeless families find housing

Thanks to $6 million in federal Section 8 funding, the Boston Housing Authority and the Department of Housing and Community Development are in position to reduce almost by half the approximately 1,100 homeless families in the city.

The Boston Housing Authority will channel vouchers to an estimated 500 families to subsidize the cost of market-rate apartments. The families will pay approximately 30 percent of their income as rent. Priority will be given to families that have been living in shelters the longest.

The Department of Housing and Community Development will provide case management services, including providing money for security deposits and other moving-related expenses.

“This allows us to have a targeted response that we otherwise couldn’t have done,” said Marilyn O’Sullivan, the Boston Housing Authority’s chief officer of occupancy and leased housing.

O’Sullivan praised the work of the Department of Housing and Community Development, which advocated for the money being included in a 2011 supplemental budget bill that Gov. Deval Patrick signed in late October.

“The beautiful thing about this program,” O’Sullivan said, “is that it costs the state about $25,000 to house a family in a shelter. With the vouchers, we’re going to cut that in half.”

Jim Greene, who directs Boston’s Emergency Shelter Commission, noted that 80 percent of homeless families in Boston earn no more than $750 a month, more than $600 below the average cost of a two-bedroom apartment in the city.

A separate program, made possible by a partnership with the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership, will provide public-housing apartments to an additional 200 families. A third initiative, involving the Boston Public Health Commission and the nonprofit Health Care for the Homeless, will provide 75 units of public housing to pregnant homeless women who are deemed at-risk.