Function

• Housing assistance typically targets renters and prospective homeowners who cannot afford market rate prices due to limited income. To provide adequate housing and opportunity to those earning less than their area's median income, most states and cities use several types of subsidized housing programs. One of the key goals of most programs is to limit the amount of money a family spends on housing to 30 percent of their household income. This threshold represents the nationally accepted standard for housing affordability, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
  
  

Need

• The rental market offers a good peek into the general affordability of housing in Georgia. Based on calculations by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, it takes a full-time hourly wage of $15.18 for a household to be able to afford the 2010 fair market rate of $789 for a two-bedroom in the state. The state's minimum wage is $7.25 as of 2010, and the average renter household in Georgia earns $13.60 an hour, enough to afford $707 in rent. At the minimum wage, a family can only afford rent of $377, using the 30 percent standard. Housing assistance schemes in Georgia look to address this disparity.
  
  

Programs

• In line with most states, Georgia's two main rental assistance programs are the Department of Housing and Urban Development's public housing and Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher programs. Public housing authorities consist of locally or regionally run dwellings with rents set at affordable rates. The Section 8 program allows low-income renters access to private market housing. The federal government subsidizes the portion of a Section 8 family's rent that exceeds 30 percent to 40 percent of their income, notes HUD's Housing Choice Voucher fact sheet.
  
  Georgia's Department of Community Affairs provides several homeownership assistance programs under the umbrella of the "Georgia Dream Homeownership Program." Through the Department of Community Affairs, prospective home buyers, particularly first-time buyers, can receive down payment assistance, attend homeownership education classes or use their Section 8 voucher to pay a mortgage instead of rent.
  
  

Administration

• In most states, local public housing agencies run HUD programs, particularly Section 8, for a set area, usually an entire city, county or a series of cities or counties in relatively close proximity to one another. In Georgia, however, the Department of Community Affairs administers the Section 8 program throughout most of the state. Locally based public housing agencies run the program in just a handful of counties, most notably throughout the Atlanta metropolitan area.
  
  

Eligibility

• All HUD programs as well most programs outside of HUD's control defer to annually published HUD income limits to determine eligibility. HUD bases its income caps on household size and location. To qualify for public housing, a family's household income must be at or below 80 percent of their area's median income. For Section 8, that limit drops to 50 percent. Other programs, such as those that are part of the Georgia Dream program, use similar eligibility criteria based on median income. In the Atlanta metropolitan area, $57,450 and $35,900 represent 80 percent and 50 percent of the area's median income for a family of four, as of 2010. Qualifying criteria outside of income vary from program to program.