Henrico County resident Deborah Ragsdale looks out from a window in her new home on Aug. 11, 2025. (Photo by Charlotte Rene Woods/Virginia Mercury)
Chesterfield native Deborah Ragsdale spent the summer stressed out by trying to find a new place to live. Her previous residence failed health and safety inspections, which are mandatory for landlords who rent to housing voucher recipients like Ragsdale, who is also disabled.
Then, Housing Opportunities Made Equal, or HOME of Virginia, stepped in. The organization helped Ragsdale navigate her journey to a new home in Henrico County, a service they and similar housing organizations perform for thousands of Virginians each year.
“If I didn’t have her, if I didn’t have her voice, I don’t know where I would be today,” Ragsdale said of Teneika Jones, a housing specialist with HOME.
Vouchers help Ragsdale live independently and keep close to her grandchildren; she’s envisioning them playing at a park near her new home. The stress of finding a place to liveis finally melting away for her, but for nonprofit workers and others who aid in building housing safety nets, troubling new challenges are on the horizon as the federal funding landscape experiences seismic shifts.
White House budget proposals earlier this summer sugget deep cuts for housing programs that Virginia has long relied on to help struggling renters, first-time homebuyers and those who are unhoused and in need of shelter. The federal funds at risk also support organizations that fight housing discrimination and generally assist people with locking down a place to live.
President Donald Trump’s budget requests would eliminate or reduce funding streams from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), including Community Development Block Grants, the Fair Housing Initiative Program and the vouchers that people like Ragsdale depend on.
Nearly 200,000 homes in Virginia receive some form of support from HUD, according to an analysis from the Virginia Housing Alliance. About 50,000 of those residents use vouchers.
While recent movement in Congress shows the changes may not come to fruition in the next year, some funding changes are already unfolding for localities. For instance, Richmond’s public housing authority has stopped issuing new housing vouchers amid federal funding reductions. Those particular reductions stem from Richmond’s inability to utilize all of the vouchers it was funded for, essentially due to landlords not accepting them.
“We are putting vouchers on the street,” Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority CEO Steven Nesmith told The Richmonder earlier this summer. “But “landlords are saying — I’m just being real with you — ‘I’m not accepting those people.’”
That’s where organizations like HOME come in to help. Spokesman Lance Warren said the “obstacles are all too familiar.”
Though state law makes it illegal to refuse an applicant based on the source of funds used to pay rent, like vouchers, he said it’s not uncommon for his organization or the local housing authority to encounter landlords that refuse to comply.
For now, voucher access and other federal housing funding aren’t “further hurt by Congress,” but they also aren’t “further helped,” Warren said.
Existing voucher users are still facing their own hurdles, despite the assistance on paper.
Kimyade Richardson-Keys said he and his wife were rejected multiple times in the process of searching for apartments and homes this spring and summer before landing a place in Southside Richmond. He works at Chippenham Hospital and his wife is a caretaker. While they hope to eventually move to Chester, for now they are grateful for their place in Richmond.
“We finally found the place we’re at now with a landlord who was extremely nice and pleasant and helpful getting us in there,” he said.
It wasn’t easy though, Richardson-Keys said. He believes their status as housing voucher recipients made some places turn them away or string them along until they would walk away.
“A couple of them were discriminating against us,” he said. “I think that was the basis of it because we have a good credit score, good rental history, so everything down the board was checked off.”
At above 650, his credit score is considered fair. Eligibility for housing voucher assistance is typically determined by income levels, not credit scores. Richardson-Keys’ credit score, which indicates he prioritizes paying bills on time and avoiding incurring too much debt, is part of why landlords review would-be tenants’ credit when approving or rejecting applications.
He attributed his family’s ultimate success to the “magic that Mrs. Jones was working.”
Jones, who used to work for RRHA, said she’s seen a variety of renters over the years that rely on organizations like HOME of Virginia and the housing authority to afford a place to live. Her experience helps her understand the concerns some landlords might possess around housing voucher clients, but she noted that the stigma is mostly inaccurate.
“Do you have families that definitely don’t pay their portion or have damages to the house? Absolutely, but it is a very small drop in the pond,” Jones said. “Most people work, they pay their bills — they just need a little help.”
More often than not, she said, housing voucher recipients are misunderstood and judged. It’s a personal lived experience for her as well, having been a recipient at one point in her life.
“I remember how people used to treat me,” she said, reflecting on the tough time she had as a single mother after her children’s father died. She brings that perspective to the table when helping her clients complete housing applications or relocate.
Jones said she feels like there are incidents where Virginia landlords have been able to discriminate against would-be renters without technically violating any laws.
“We have great landlords that we work with, and property managers, but some of them have found ways to exclude people legally,”she said.
For instance, landlords can choose to not renew leases, or sometimes there are abatement issues like Ragsdale experienced when her property failed safety inspections and she had to move. Warren warns that it’s these cracks in the system that organizations like HOME watch out for and help people overcome.
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