The Long Wait for Section 8

Marylene Marrero is a 37-year-old hairstylist who lives in Yonkers, New York. She has spent the past couple of years bouncing from apartment to apartment. In that time, there’s something she has held onto very tightly: a letter from the Municipal Housing Authority of Yonkers, informing her that she is one of 11,000 people who applied for a Housing Choice or Section 8 voucher in a single week in January of 2012.

Marrero, like all applicants, has no idea where she sits on the list, but from what she has heard, her three and a half year wait isn’t especially long.