By Stephanie Ebbert, Boston Globe Staff

More than 50,000 families are expected to apply for a new statewide waiting list for Section 8 housing vouchers next week, state officials said.

However, because the new list will consolidate current waiting lists and not lead to additional vouchers, the new list is not expected to ease the demand for housing.

The state, which distributes more than 16,000 of the federal housing vouchers through eight nonprofit agencies, is merely streamlining the process by combining those agencies' waiting lists.

Many applicants will continue to apply at numerous housing authorities, which distribute the bulk of the 55,000 federal vouchers that Massachusetts' low-income tenants use as discounts on rent to private landlords.

''This will give us a much clearer sense of how many people need housing assistance,'' said Eric Gedstad, spokesman for the state Department of Housing and Community Development. ''It will allow us to be much more thorough in purging the list. We will track it more diligently than the current practice allows.''

Given steep housing costs, officials expect a crush of applicants. As a result, they are trying to contain crowds by randomly assigning to the list applicants who apply from March 27 through April 7, rather than eliciting crowds with a first-come, first-served system.

The list will be topped by the estimated 4,000 people who are on waiting lists from individual agencies; some applied as long ago as 1995.

The number of people on those holdover lists may be whittled down, however, because officials are only accepting applications from families meeting federal preferences. They include: homelessness or substandard housing, having been forced out for reasons including being victims of hate crimes or domestic violence, and a burden of rent that consumes more than half a family's gross income.

The waiting list will not be capped or closed, but will be extended indefinitely as applications arrive after April 7.

That was not the case in the past, said Stephanie Berkowitz, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership, which last opened its list in 1997.

''At that time, we were only open for two days and we received about 10,000 applications,'' she said. ''We were only allowed to put 2,000 of them on the waiting list.''

The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development is expected to release additional Section 8 vouchers within the year.

Applicants can contact the DHCD Web site at: http://www.state.ma.us/dhcd for more information.

This story ran on page B06 of the Boston Globe on 3/23/2000.