Our housing search tool can give you an estimate of your eligibility for all of KCHA's programs — including subsidized housing — based on your family size, income, and housing preferences.
Waiting List Preferences
KCHA will give you waiting list preference if you are:
- Homeless, or at risk of losing your housing. You are considered homeless if you are:
- Living outside (e.g., no fixed roof, in a park, in a tent) or in a car or recreational vehicle
- Living in a temporary publicly or privately owned shelter
- Living on other unstable temporary housing (e.g., couch surfing, doubled up)
- Living in substandard-condition housing. Housing is substandard if it:
- Is dangerous to your health, safety, and wellbeing
- Doesn’t have working plumbing, toilet, or tub/shower
- Doesn’t have a kitchen, when it should have one
- Doesn’t have heat
- Doesn’t have electricity
- Displaced because of
- Natural disaster, government action, or domestic violence
- A forced move due to hate crimes, owner actions, or unit inaccessibility
- At or below 30 percent of Area Median Income (see table above).
- Paying more than 50 percent of your household pre-tax income on rent and utilities, not counting phone, internet or cable.
General Requirements
To qualify for subsidized housing, you must be one of the following:
- A family with children under age 18.
- Age 55 or older.
- Disabled.
In addition, your household must:
- Have a head of household age 18 or older.
- Have no more than 10 people.
- Submit all required consent forms.
- Have U.S. citizenship, or documents that show eligible non-citizen status.
- Provide a documented social security number (SSN) for each person. Otherwise, you must provide a signed certificate showing that no SSN has been assigned.
Suitability Requirements
You must also show that your household can follow all lease requirements. KCHA may require of all people age 18 and older:
- Criminal background checks. (This includes live-in aides.) We will not accept comprehensive reusable tenant screening reports.
- Credit checks.
- Rental history checks.
- Lifetime sex offender registration checks. (This includes live-in aides.) No person registered as a sex offender may live in subsidized housing.
KCHA rejects applications when it believes a household member will have a negative effect on others. We may also reject applicants that have not shown they can manage their household or follow lease terms.
Pet & Smoking Policies
The following policies are available in PDF format: