Section 8 and management are 2 different issues

Section 8 and management are 2 different issues.

How are you going to manage the rental from out of state without local property manager? A million things could go wrong, ranging from broken toilet, water leak, to fire in house, or tenant not paying rent. What would you do under any of these circumstance? Hiring a local management compay/realtor would at least give you some sort of eye-and-ear for your house.

There are good and bad tenants in any neighborhood. So section 8 tenants are not all bad. But I would think hard about renting a nice house to section 8. Also, it'll take quite some time to do a section 8 rental, since Sec 8 office has to do an inspection. And they probably will find some issues, which you have to fix. Then you need to go to the office to sign the lease, after it's already signed with the tenant. It's a 2-4 week job.

You started your post with "have a townhouse to rent out", which seems you've thought about this a lot. Have you? Would outright selling be an option? On the other hand, I know people who do this successfully, though the house is close to a university and the tenant is Chinese postdoc.

Hope this helps.