The Alaska Housing Finance Corporation (AHFC) Public Housing Division has announced it will no longer offer preferences on rental housing application. The largest driver affecting the change is a statewide economy that has more families in need of public housing for longer periods of time. Today, the average time that Alaska families receive housing assistance through the Voucher program is 8.5 years compared to 10 years ago when the average turnover was just 3.5 years. Every family who seeks assistance is living in poverty. AHFC will honor preferences for all those current applicants on waiting lists, any applications submitted on or after July 1, 2012 will not be eligible for a preference and will be placed on a waiting list according to the date and time of receipt of application by AHFC. AHFC will permanently exhaust its preference-based waiting lists before moving to the new date and time waiting list.