Section 8 Housing in Miami, FL

This metro has no single Section 8 office. Applications go through separate housing authorities by city and county, and each runs its own waitlist. As of mid-2026, most tenant-based Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) lists are closed. Miami-Dade County's HCV list last opened in early 2024, when the county held a lottery on March 18, 2024 and picked only 5,000 confirmation numbers. Broward County's HCV list was open just five days in May 2024 and used a lottery to place 3,000 names. West Palm Beach's HCV list has been closed since November 2022. Because these openings are short and lottery-based, the practical strategy is to apply to every PHA in the metro the moment any list opens, watch the PHA websites, and never pay a fee to apply. When Miami-Dade does open a list, applications are online only at miamidadevoucher.myhousing.com, in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole. Expect a long wait even after selection: Miami voucher holders average about 38 months on the list, and West Palm Beach holders averaged 41 months.

Voucher holders here deal with a patchwork of authorities. In Miami-Dade County the main agency is Miami-Dade Public Housing and Community Development (PHCD), but the cities of Miami, Miami Beach, Hialeah, and Homestead run their own separate voucher programs. Hialeah Housing Authority administers over 5,750 vouchers and its list is closed. The Housing Authority of the City of Miami Beach runs about 3,642 vouchers plus HUD-VASH for veterans. The City of Miami's HCV and Project-Based programs are both closed. In Broward County, the Broward County Housing Authority is the county-level agency, and several cities (Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Pompano Beach and others) operate their own authorities. In Palm Beach County, the West Palm Beach Housing Authority manages roughly 4,106 vouchers, and the separate Palm Beach County Housing Authority serves the rest of the county. Which authority you apply to matters, because each has its own list, preferences, and portal.

This is the hardest question in Florida, and the answer is contested. Florida has no statewide source-of-income protection, and the federal Fair Housing Act does not stop a landlord from refusing Section 8. Miami-Dade and Broward Counties had passed local ordinances banning source-of-income discrimination, which would make refusing a voucher illegal. But in 2023 the state passed HB 1417, a preemption law that overrides local tenant-protection ordinances; advocates estimated it would knock out roughly 46 local ordinances across 35 Florida jurisdictions, including source-of-income rules. Reporting confirms HB 1417 wiped out Hillsborough County's source-of-income provisions. At the same time, Miami-Dade's own voucher program still tells tenants that throughout Miami-Dade County an owner may not use voucher status to deny tenancy, because the county's protection sits in its anti-discrimination human-rights code rather than its landlord-tenant code. Bottom line: if a landlord refuses your voucher in Miami-Dade or Broward, do not assume it is legal or illegal, get free legal advice from one of the orgs below before you walk away.

Voucher-accepting units in Miami-Dade cluster in lower-cost, historically Black and immigrant areas: the City of Miami, Homestead, Opa-locka, Florida City, Cutler Bay, and Leisure City show the most affordable and subsidized listings. Liberty City, Overtown, Allapattah, and Miami Gardens also have long-standing concentrations of subsidized housing. High-rent coastal and newer areas, such as Miami Beach, Aventura, Doral, and much of Boca Raton, have far fewer participating landlords and a documented history of discrimination. Fair-housing testing by HOPE found Black applicants turned away from units in Allapattah and at Nile Gardens Apartments in Opa-locka while Hispanic testers were shown the same units. Use your PHA's payment-standard/ZIP map before you sign, because rent must fall within the standard. For Palm Beach County, published Fair Market Rents run about $1,851 for a one-bedroom and $2,226 for a two-bedroom, which gives a sense of what the voucher can cover.

Once you get a voucher in Miami-Dade, the clock matters. PHCD issues the initial voucher for 120 days and allows one 60-day extension, for a maximum of 180 days to find a unit and submit a Request for Tenancy Approval (RTA). If someone in your household has a disability, you can request a reasonable accommodation to extend the term further. Start searching immediately, keep a written log of every landlord you contact, and submit the RTA before the voucher expires. If you are moving into Miami-Dade under portability, your voucher term follows the rules of the authority that first issued it, plus a short automatic extension. Because participating landlords are scattered and lists rarely open, hold onto a voucher once you have it, an expired voucher can send you back to square one.

You have free help. In Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties, Legal Services of Greater Miami handles Section 8 and subsidized-housing problems at no cost. In Broward County, Legal Aid Service of Broward County (954-765-8950) and Coast to Coast Legal Aid of South Florida (954-736-2400) cover evictions, fair housing, and low-income tenant rights. HOPE Fair Housing Center investigates discrimination across Miami-Dade and Broward for free, using testers, and has recovered over $12 million in settlements. To file a formal complaint, call HUD at 1-800-669-9777 or file with the Florida Commission on Human Relations within 365 days of the incident; in Broward you can also contact the Broward County Human Rights Section at 954-357-7800. Document everything: save texts, emails, listings that say 'No Section 8,' and dated notes of phone calls. That paper trail is what makes a complaint or lawsuit succeed.