Surviving Sons Can Take Over Section 8 Subsidy Despite Not Being Listed as Household Members

What Happened: In 2018, the owner of a New York City public housing property converted the premises and its residents to a Section 8 project-based voucher program via the PACT/RAD (Permanent Affordability Commitment Together/Rental Assistance Demonstration) program. When the last tenant of record listed on the Section 8 lease died in 2020, the owner terminated his subsidy. The sons still living in the unit, ages 35 and 40, applied to have the subsidy reinstated and be recognized as successors. The problem is that their dad hadn’t listed them on the Household Composition Form for the unit because they weren’t living there at the time he submitted it. Nor did he list them on his annual income recertification forms. So, the owner denied the sons’ succession request and sued to evict them as licensees.

Ruling: The New York court ruled that the sons could take over the voucher as successors to the father.

Reasoning: The underlying purpose of Section 8 is to encourage family cohesion by recognizing the entire family as the tenant, the court reasoned. The resident’s failure to include the sons in annual income recertification statements wasn’t fatal to the sons’ succession claim, the court continued, citing other cases allowing family members not listed in family composition statements to claim succession rights to vouchers. The “undisputed, credible evidence at trial established unequivocally that” the would-be evictees were the sons of the last tenant of record and that they lived with him in the unit from 2011 until his death in 2020 and thereafter up to the present. This, rather than what the paperwork did or didn’t say, established that the sons were “entitled to continuation of the ‘project-based’ Section 8 subsidy.”

• Twin Parks Owner LLC v. McKenley, 2025 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 5936, 2025 NY Slip Op 51078(U), 86 Misc. 3d 1231(A), 234 N.Y.S.3d 926, 2025 LX 258319