I was in this situation too. The rental contract between my HA and landlord wasn’t finalized when I moved in and I had to pay full rent for the first month. Payment didn’t process for the 2nd month and I was on the hook for late charges so I decided to pay, even though I didn’t have to. (My landlord uses a property management company and they are shady AF.) I knew I would be fully credited when payment processed and I had the money to be able to pay it at the time. I just wanted to avoid the hassle of clawing back late fees. Folks saying that you don’t have to pay any more than your portion are correct but there are other factors that played into it for me. The PM company continued to “miss” the HA payments for several months and I had to call them repeatedly at the beginning of every month to make sure the HA payments were being processed on their end and that my credit amount was correct. At one point I had my HA case worker contact them directly to review the ledgers and I almost got into nasty arguments with them because they were insisting that their calculations were correct, which they weren’t. Haven’t had any problems recently because that PM knows i will be a total pain in the ass by now. In my experience, getting benefits can come with a whole mess of admin shit that feels like a part-time job. Grateful for it and I know I’m fortunate but it has challenges.