Frequently Asked Questions about Housing for Persons with Special Needs

There are many types of affordable housing for persons with special needs and disabilities in King County. Affordable housing units have income eligibility requirements that vary from project to project, but generally require that a person have an income level at or below 60% of median income. Click here to see an income table. If a housing project is specifically targeted to persons with disabilities or special needs, or for persons who are homeless or formerly homeless, then individuals may also need to meet additional requirements set by the project.

To start a search for affordable housing, go to our list of Housing Resources. This page provides sites with information on nearly all of the multifamily affordable housing in King County. Except for Housing Authority properties, most properties require that you contact the building manager or owner directly to find out about unit availability.

The majority of the housing programs that specifically serve special needs populations in King County, such as housing programs for persons with mental illness, developmental disabilities, chemical dependency, and HIV/AID’s, as well as veterans and victims of domestic violence, are accessed through the service systems that serve these special populations.

Many of the sites on our Housing Resources page include affordable housing projects that set aside units for persons with disabilities. This is how set-aside units are created:

• owners agree to provide a certain percentage of their units in a building for persons with disabilities when the housing is funded
• whenever the housing does not contain the required percentage of persons with disabilities, the owner must make an effort to rent the next unit that becomes available to a person with disabilities
• the owner is required to hold the unit for 30 days before renting to a non-disabled household.

While the set aside units usually have rents that are lower than most market rate units, the set-aside units do not have to have a rent level that is affordable to a very low-income renter.

There are a limited number of Section 8 vouchers for adults with disabilities that are available through the King County Housing Authority’s YWCA administered Housing Access and Services Program (HASP). This program is a collaborative effort in which many service systems participate. Some of the vouchers are distributed through service systems to their clients and some are distributed through the YWCA. To find out more information about this program, please contact Mona Tschurwald with the YWCA of Seattle/King/Snohomish County at 206-461-3694.

In addition, there are housing units in King County that were funded with project-based section 8. Rents in these buildings are set at 30 percent of the household’s income, similar to a Section 8 voucher, but the subsidy does not travel with the tenant if they move. To find out where these buildings are located, see the HUD housing listing on the Housing Resources page.