The Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) is warning residents about a fake Facebook page and flyer that is promoting a Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program.
"It is 100% a scam," said CHFA's director of research, marketing and outreach Marcus Smith. "CHFA does not accept Section 8 voucher applications and we never have."
On Wednesday afternoon, CHFA was alerted about a Facebook page that it says posted a flyer announcing a waitlist for Section 8 housing and provided a link for people to input their personal information.
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"We work alongside the state agencies like the Department of Housing to alleviate the shortage of low and moderate income housing across the state," said Smith. "We're not collecting Social Security information or credit card info or anything like that. We're not accepting payment."
CHFA says it contacted Facebook immediately, but in just a day, 20 people showed up to its office looking to signup.
"In really quick order, the flyer went up and people started turning up at our offices within a matter of hours," said Smith. "The word was spreading quickly."
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The Facebook page appears to have been taken down, but CHFA says scams like this are not unique to Connecticut.
"This is actually happening to a number of states across the country," said Smart. "Each state has a housing finance agency similar to CHFA and we had checked in with them. They were all experiencing this scam over the last week or so."
The Housing Finance Authority says to avoid scams go to its website CHFA.org to get direct links to its social media pages.
