Portability

Dane County Housing Authority (DCHA) is BILLING incoming portability requests until further notice.

If you have a portable voucher and would like to move to the Dane County area (not including the City of Madison), have your current Public Housing Authority (PHA) send your portability paperwork BEFORE your arrival in Dane County to:

MAIL:

Dane County Housing Authority
ATTN: HCV Portability
2917 International Lane #201

Madison, WI 53704

FAX:

(608) 224-3632

EMAIL:
portability@dcha.net

Please note that for Section 8 voucher holders, DCHA's jurisdiction consists of all of Dane County except for the City of Madison. If you are specifically looking to move to the City of Madison, you should contact the Community Development Authority of the City of Madison (CDA).

For a general idea of the City of Madison's boundaries, you can reference this map (also linked below). To check what municipality a potential rental you are looking at falls within, you can enter the address on AccessDane (also linked below). Any address with a municipality of "City of Madison" is in the CDA's jurisdiction.

Jurisdiction Map

AccessDane

It is important to note that DCHA cannot begin to process your port-in until your portability paperwork has been received from your current housing authority. Once we have received your portability paperwork from your current housing authority, DCHA's Portability Specialist will reach out to you to let you know the next steps, typically within three to five business days, and send you a moving packet with the necessary paperwork and information about leasing up in our jurisdiction. There is no precise, standardized timeframe for how long the portability process will take, but in general please plan for a turnaround time at least two to three weeks.

Current Payment Standards (effective 01/01/2026)

SRO - $951
0 Bedroom - $1,268
1 Bedroom - $1,482
2 Bedroom - $1,694

3 Bedroom - $2,236
4 Bedroom - $2,509
5 Bedroom - $2,885
6 Bedroom - $3,262

Please keep in mind that these amounts include both the rent and the utility allowance. 2026's utility allowances can be downloaded by going to our Payment Standards page.

DCHA maintains a vacancy listing, updated on a quarterly basis (click here to download), to aid voucher-holders who are looking for housing in the Dane County area. Landlords with vacancies they wish to advertise to our voucher-holders submit their units to be posted on our vacancy listing - even if the specific unit you are interested in is no longer available, a landlord may have other units vacant.

Other useful resources include newspapers, rental magazines, the Tenant Resource Center's Finding Housing page here, and the Homeless Services Consortium's housing resource vacancy listings here.

Occupancy Standards & Voucher Size Determination

Voucher Size

1 Bedroom

2 Bedrooms

3 Bedrooms

4 Bedrooms

5 Bedrooms

Household Size

1-2

2-4

3-6

4-8

6-10

(Minimum - Maximum)

DCHA will typically assign one bedroom for each two people within the household. The head of household & their spouse or co-head (if any) will be allocated one bedroom. Persons of the opposite sex (other than spouses/co-heads & children under the age of 6) and persons of different generations (including children of the same sex with an age difference of 20 years or more) will be allocated separate bedrooms. Live-in aides will be allocated a separate bedroom - no additional bedrooms are provided for the live-in aide's family. Single-person families are allocated one bedroom.

Once a Request for Tenancy Approval (RFTA) form has been submitted to and received by DCHA, if the unit is approved, the paperwork will be finalized and an initial inspection of the unit will be ordered. Your unit must successfully pass inspection before you can sign the lease and move in. Do not sign a lease at a potential unit before DCHA has approved the unit and it has passed inspection.

If you have any questions regarding portability, you can send an email to info@dcha.net or to portability@dcha.net.