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When
you work in government, or any kind of bureaucracy, numbers are
important—in meeting your budgets, or helping finance a certain number
of affordable homes, for example. But just like the work we do at the
Commission, the current cutbacks in the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher
program aren’t truly a numbers story: they’re a people story. Hearing
Diane Quast speak at a recent meeting of nonprofit and housing authority
representatives from Eastern Washington brought this home. As a result,
I decided to focus this edition of My View on recent
changes in the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program and what is
really happening to Section 8 tenants across the state.
Spokane Housing Authority:
Forced to cut
programs, payments—waitlisted families
Diane Quast, Executive Director
Spokane Housing Authority
Diane Quast is Executive Director of the Spokane Housing Authority (SHA).
Her topic was an update on ongoing legislative efforts to “reform”
HUD, including changes to the Housing Choice Voucher program.
Diane
also spoke at some length about how the current shift to
budget-capped allocations was impacting her agency’s ability to
adequately serve the families they’ve served historically. During her talk, Diane described the following steps that SHA has
had to take to meet its reduced Section 8 voucher budget:
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Reduce payment standards
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Tighten occupancy standards
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Increase the minimum rent of participants
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Restrict portability to higher-cost areas
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Freeze the reissuance of vouchers
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Rescind issued vouchers
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Close/remove applicants from wait list
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Close/phase out
Family Self-Sufficiency
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Adopt termination policies
It's truly disheartening to review this list’s contents. Closing
wait lists. Shifting costs to participants who don’t have the
resources to pick up the slack. Reducing payments to landlords—and
risk losing their support for subsidized private housing. Every
single measure has created hardships for many individuals, families
and communities in the five Washington counties—Stevens, Spokane,
Whitman, Lincoln and Pend Oreille—served by SHA. All you have to do
is look at these bullet points and think about their potential
impact in terms of people.
After the meeting, Diane described at greater length how,
post-cutbacks, SHA has worked to meet its budget. “The hard thing is
that we are basically reducing the number of households served to
make sure that we get our total program costs within budget. We’re
authorized to serve a certain number of families by HUD but we
simply don’t have enough money to cover that,” she pointedly
describes.
Tough decisions
Utilities change, rents get adjusted when there’s a lowering of
family income, a family grows and moves to a home with an additional
bedroom—these and many other factors increase the cost of vouchers,
which makes Diane’s job even harder. The Spokane Housing Authority
is authorized to help 4,585 families; in June, that was reduced to
4,409. As of the 1st of July, that number was reduced still further,
to 4,361. “We were overspending our monthly allotment for the first
three months of this year. We had taken every step we could to try
to reduce the cost of the vouchers,” she says.
The steps listed above are all measures that SHA has taken to date
to meet its fiscal responsibilities. One of the toughest steps for
Diane and SHA’s Board of Commissioners was disbanding the Family
Self-Sufficiency Program (FSS), effective October 1, 2005. This is a
program that helps to incent people to save for their futures.
Through FSS, individuals learn to set goals and find employment. As
their situations improve and their earnings increase, the higher
rent differential they’re expected to pay is placed into a savings
account. After completing the program, these funds are used for
higher education, a down payment on a home—whatever they need most
to get ahead.
“We looked at that and realized we’d have to allow people, through
attrition, to fall out of this program. This was some 14 to 20
thousand dollars a month that could go towards rental
assistance—another way we can try to serve as many families as
possible.” Diane continues, “Other communities are saying that FSS
is a better way to go, and are keeping their emphasis on this
program, because it seems to reduce the amount of time that people
have to stay on the voucher program. We did not see that in this
community.” She points to the relatively low wages available in the
area as a factor.
Diane’s perspective, from ongoing conversations with other agencies,
is that each community is coming up with strategies to contain costs
most effectively. “People have had to do different steps at
different times, to try to get their payments under control.”
Turning the Titanic
Probably the hardest decision Diane and her team had to make
occurred in the spring. “We had called in families off the waiting
list,” she relates. These were people who had been on the waitlist
for about two years. They had received an ‘issued voucher,’ which
meant they could begin the process of searching for a landlord, and
a home, that participated in the Section 8 program. “In that
interim, we realized we didn’t have the money to fund those
vouchers. So we had to rescind those issues—for 125 households. Here
were people, they’re excited, they see relief coming very soon. And
we had to snatch it away.”
There’s a happier epilogue for 75 of those households, who were
either elderly or disabled voucher recipients. “Luckily, we were
able to work with the city, to get priority emergency funding for
those households. But the other 50 families have still not gotten
relief.” One of those frustrated still-waiting individuals is Fanesa
Santos; she’s interviewed in the sidebar that accompanies
this series of articles.
Diane’s goal is to balance outlays and HUD funds by year end. If SHA
spends more than its 12-month allotment, any shortfall would have to
come from reserves. “That’s scary,” she affirms. “It’s a bit like
turning the Titanic: the larger your program, the harder it is to
get it turned. Other programs are smaller, more nimble. I’ve also
heard there’ve been some housing authorities that weren’t able to
get their costs under control: they weren’t able to pay landlords
participating in the program. I don’t want to have to go there. Our
landlords are vital. They are our partners in this.”
Housing Uncertainty in Rural Walla Walla
 Renee
Rooker, Director
Walla Walla Housing Authority
The town of Walla Walla faces unique housing challenges. Out of a
population of 30,000, the local housing authority administers 719
vouchers through the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program, with
a waiting list of more than 1500 people. According to Renee Rooker,
Director of the Walla Walla Housing Authority, the need for
subsidized housing in Walla Walla is related to the unusual nature
of economic growth in the region.
Until a decade ago, Walla Walla’s economy was dominated by its three
colleges and the federal government, in the form of the Army Corps
of Engineers and a VA hospital. Then came the wine boom.
In recent years, Washington has gained a reputation as a world-class
winemaking region; Walla Walla is one of the prime wine centers. Now
with dozens of wineries, along with hotels and restaurants, the
region has seen an influx of new residents and visitors. As a
result, the median price of a home in Walla Walla has increased from
$110,000 in 2000 to $194,000 today. During this five-year period in
which home prices nearly doubled, median income remained flat.
HUD changes funding
Rooker reports that HUD-mandated changes in the funding formula for
Housing Choice have resulted in 30 fewer vouchers available in Walla
Walla in 2005. Also, vouchers will not be available for people on
the waiting list of 1500. “We won’t ever be able to serve them,”
says Rooker, “given the current environment.”
Particularly distressing is the fact that many of those on the
waiting list have significant needs. Says Rooker, “52% of our
voucher participants are either elderly or disabled; these are the
most vulnerable populations.” Veterans are another group that feels
the impact. Walla Walla has a large number of veterans because of
the VA facility. And Rooker notes that Housing Choice vouchers are
an important tool for assisting homeless veterans.
Fear and uncertainty have characterized the atmosphere for local
housing authorities since they got word of the funding changes. As
Rooker explains, “We are a calendar year housing authority. In 2004
we were operating under the rules in place at the time, planning and
optimizing our resources to serve as many families as we could. Then
we got the notice [from HUD] in May 2004 that totally turned the
environment around, and made it retroactive to January 1. But we
were nearly half way through our year. We had to terminate families.
That was not what we wanted to do. But we didn’t have the resources
available, so we had to notify families that we did not have enough
funding to continue assisting them. That was a very hard decision
for the board to make. It was a heart-wrenching time.”
Public testifies on impact
In response, a public meeting was held at the City Hall inviting the
community as a whole, including all of the Walla Walla area Housing
Choice program participants and people on the waiting list. The
congressional delegations all sent staff. Rooker recalls that the
meeting was packed. The board listened to testimony from voucher
recipients who described their personal situations. Several of these
are described below:
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A woman described having to move repeatedly due to domestic
abuse and said she needed assistance so she could have access to
safe housing.
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A veteran who moved to Walla Walla to be closer to VA services
described needing the assistance so he could afford to live near
his source of medical care.
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A man caring for his disabled wife said that if cut from the
program, he’d be forced to put his wife in a nursing home and go
live on the street.
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One woman said she would be happy to forego her voucher if it
would help others.
A theme that came up repeatedly from participants was the fact that
they’d be willing to pay a higher percentage of the rent—more than
the program-mandated maximum of 30%—in order to continue receiving
some assistance.
Confusion continues in ‘05
The Walla Walla Housing Authority didn’t receive notification until
the end of January of the funding level that would be available for
2005. At that time, they also found out that the funds would be
disbursed quarterly, rather than in a single lump sum for the entire
year as before. Rooker says that the funds distribution for the
third quarter is significantly less than expected, and this occurred
without explanation, creating even more uncertainty and frustration.
Rooker understands that the federal government is concerned with
rising costs and possible inefficiencies in the program. “We want to
make sure we continue to optimize our resources. Now we monitor the
program weekly to make sure that we get the dollars out on the
street. We have responsible policies; but it takes a lot more
administrative time to monitor the program weekly vs. doing it
monthly. We don’t get enough administrative dollars to do all that,
because that budget has been cut.”
She concludes, “I agree that this is the appropriate time to examine
the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program. We should look at the
accomplishments it has made and talk about changes. But then we also
need to plan for the future to make the program even stronger and
more responsive to the long-term housing needs in this country.”
For Rooker, that would be a more responsible way to address the
problem, because it’s fairer to the families who need housing
assistance.
The long-term costs of Section 8 Housing
Choice Voucher cuts: King County Housing Authority’s Stephen Norman
speaks out
Stephen Norman,
Director
King County Housing Authority
The current impact of budget cuts to the elderly, disabled, and
low-wage families served by the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher
rental assistance program is a bleak picture of people of limited
means having to make do with less.
According to Stephen Norman,
Director of King County Housing Authority, there has been an
enormous push-back as the human toll of these cuts has become clear.
But, Stephen emphasizes, “The reality is that there hasn’t been a
backing off from the essential reduction in long-term priorities for
housing as part of the administration’s budget plan.”
The King County Housing Authority (KCHA) serves more than 17,000
households in King County; 8200 of these live in homes subsidized
through Section 8’s Housing Choice Voucher program. Like other
housing authorities across Washington State, KCHA has been forced to
make major changes to the voucher program to respond to the federal
cutbacks in funding. Just like its housing authority counterparts in
Walla Walla and Spokane described in the accompanying articles,
KCHA’s changes to its Section 8 program have included rent increases
for households, waiting list cuts and families being squeezed into
smaller living spaces.
As a result of these changes, the costs per unit have been reduced
to a level that Stephen believes will enable KCHA to meet its
obligations for the year. “Unfortunately,” he says, “the reason
these are dropping is because we have passed on the costs to our
program participants. What you see are people on very limited fixed
incomes making very hard choices between competing necessities. And
that’s just wrong.”
Grim long-term prognosis
According to Stephen, the good news is that even the
administration’s proposal restored over $1 billion in funding for
the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program that had been cut last
year. Although this won’t get us back to the status quo, it would
restore about half of what was cut.
The bad news? “At the same time,” he says, “the multi-year forecast
that the administration is putting out projects draconian cuts in
domestic discretionary spending over the next five years, along with
very significant cuts in the housing programs. This amounts to
something like a $3.7 billion reduction in annual appropriations for
housing by 2010.”
For Stephen, what’s equally troubling is that the federal government
is looking to devolve responsibility for the Section 8 program down
to the local level. Block grants have been historically accompanied
by long-term reductions in program support. The way the Section 8
program was previously structured, the amount of funding was
elastic, to reflect changes in housing costs. Under the block grant
scenario, funding is set in stone. When a given rental market rises,
as Stephen expects will happen in King County over the next few
years, local housing authorities will be left holding the bag—forced
to choose between having people pay still more of their share of the
rent, or reducing the number of households that get help.
Significant costs to our communities
From Stephen’s perspective, there are several significant
big-picture impacts of this funding attrition that have broad
implications for our communities:
One: “The reductions in the Section 8 program really cut the
legs out from any local efforts to end homelessness,” affirms
Stephen. “This is the primary engine for serving individuals who are
between zero and 30% of the area’s median income—in a rental market
where there is no housing that’s affordable to them. There
are some 65,000 households in King County that earn less than that
30% of AMI. These programs are absolutely essential.”
Two: Housing authorities have become increasingly
sophisticated in their abilities to coordinate services among local
governments, health care and social systems, and non-profits to
create special-needs housing. A critical ingredient in furthering
these efforts is Section 8 funding. A good example is Washington
State’s Section 8 support of the network of transitional housing for
homeless families currently being developed under the Gates
Foundation’s Sound Families initiative in King, Pierce and Snohomish
counties.
The primary partner with the Gates Foundation in this initiative are
the region’s seven housing authorities—and the Section 8 subsidies
they provide to support operations and individual rental subsidies.
Since its launch in 2000, Sound Families has funded 1081 homes for
homeless families in the three-county region. “These kinds of
initiatives will go away as Section 8 starts to get cut more,”
Stephen says.
Three: A weakened, budget-cap allocated Section 8 program
will also, over time, force voucher holders to concentrate in
pockets of the region that have the cheapest housing. “The creation
of these kinds of pockets of poverty is terrible long-term social
planning for the region,” Stephen emphasizes. “It carries an array
of costs—from the social costs, to the fact that frequently,
individuals have to commute to jobs in other parts of the county.”
Additionally, he points out, people need to reside where their
support systems and community ties are, whether it’s a mother-in-law
who can baby-sit the kids, a trusted healthcare provider, or a
school. Laura MacKenzie, a disabled Kenmore resident who receives
Section 8 rental assistance through KCHA, eloquently elaborates on
Stephen’s concern about creating isolated areas of poverty and
skewing community support systems in the accompanying sidebar below.
“From an environmental, sustainability and infrastructure costs
perspective, the cuts to Section 8 are truly dumb as well,” Stephen
sums up. “Homelessness, regional growth and poverty concentration
issues, sustainability and the impact on individual households—I
think these are the real costs of this.”
“The hits are hard”:
What recent
changes to Section 8 have meant to Laura MacKenzie and Fenesa Santos
What have the mandated cuts to the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher
program meant to people in Washington State? I asked Laura MacKenzie
of Kenmore and Fanesa Santos of Spokane to share with us how these
changes are impacting their lives.
Laura MacKenzie
lives in the town of Kenmore, in northern
King County. Her story is one of a series of blows to her health,
her finances, and her ability to continue to live in safe,
affordable housing among a support system of people who care about
her. Handicapped by an experimental chemotherapy treatment protocol
that destroyed her immune system in 2000, she was homeless for some
time before securing a Housing Choice Voucher. She’s lived in the
same privately owned apartment building since February 2004 with the
help of the Voucher program through King County Housing Authority.
Laura was already having trouble making ends meet when she received
word that KCHA would be raising her share of the rent from 20% to
34% of her income to meet its budget constraints. That same week,
she was also notified that, since she’d recently qualified for
Social Security disability income, her prescriptions would be
covered by Medicare, not Medicaid—which entailed a “small” co-pay
that she can’t afford. She’s since worked with her doctor to
discontinue her medications, all except one, which she literally
can’t live without.
“The hits are hard,” Laura affirms. With the additional burden of
rent and medical costs, “I don’t have anything left.” Last month,
she ran out of money for food. Residents in her building fed her:
“What’s happening is my care is falling on other people.”
What might potentially ease Laura’s financial troubles is a move to
southern King County, where the rents are cheaper—but she doesn’t
know a soul. “I have a wonderful community here in Kenmore—people
that look out for me.” It’s also important to her to be close to her
doctors.
“When people look at a rent increase of $55 or $100, that may not
seem like much,” says Laura. “But for seniors or the disabled,
that’s going to cut a whole lot of something out: their quality of
life.”
Fanesa Santos is a single mother trying to keep herself and
her five-year-old daughter from losing their home in Spokane. Fanesa
and her family had previously gotten rent relief through a different
two-year housing program. That program expired earlier this year.
Fenesa has been unable to secure work; she’s separated from her
husband, and not getting any child support. “I was panicking a
little bit. I had to start paying about $500 a month for rent,” she
describes.
She’d been on a waiting list with Spokane Housing Authority for
about two years to receive assistance through the Housing Choice
Voucher program. About three months ago, she got the call she’d been
waiting for: her voucher had come through.
“I couldn’t believe it. I went through the whole process,” she
describes. “I went through the orientation, and my landlord had
agreed to a Section 8 contract. Then I got a letter in the mail,
they were holding my voucher back. I would be put back on top
on the waiting list.” What happened to Fenesa’s voucher is described
in the accompanying article on Spokane Housing Authority; there were
simply no funds to cover the vouchers issued to her and about 125
other wait-listed individuals and families.
Fenesa has been calling SHA frequently since this happened, to
assure her place on the wait list, but right now, the funding isn’t
there. When she was interviewed in mid-July, Fenesa still hadn’t
managed to pay the rent for that month. “Programs like this one
help—a lot,” she says. “I just got out of a really bad marriage. I
really don’t know what’s going to happen to us.”
John Meyers, HUD Regional Director, Defends
Rationale
John Meyers, Regional Director
Region X
(Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington)
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
We decided to focus this issue of My View on Section 8 to try and
get a real sense of what is happening as a result of all the
cutbacks and changes to the program. In the previous three articles,
we’ve heard from representative housing authorities in King County,
Spokane and Walla Walla. In brief, people at the housing authorities
are feeling forced to make extremely difficult decisions about whom
they should, and should not, serve.
Of course, HUD is an important partner for the housing
authorities and the Commission and Section 8 is a key program. These
changes are controversial. That’s why I wanted to give John Meyers,
Regional Director, the opportunity to talk about HUD’s viewpoint.
KH: John, how would you characterize the administration’s
cut-backs and changes in Section 8?
JM: First, it’s not accurate to talk about these changes as
“cuts.” In fact, we asked for $1.1 billion more for the Section 8
program than we received last year. The Senate just passed
approximately that amount out of committee.
KH: But that’s coming off of cuts last year.
JM: Let’s look at this in historical perspective. There’s
never enough money to entirely address our housing problems. In 1998
Section 8 took 38% of HUD’s budget. In 2005 it took 62%. In 2006
it’s going to take around 70%. The cost of section 8 is
unsustainable: Congress won’t give us enough money to cover it. Like
everybody, we’ve been trying to find ways to do more with less.
In 1998 the housing authorities communicated to HUD that there were
too many regulations and hoops they had to jump through. With less
red tape, the housing authorities felt they could do more with their
dollars. We created a pilot program along those lines, which was
called “Moving to Work.” We tested it with premier agencies, the
Seattle Housing Authority among others. The changes in Section 8 are
based on the success we experienced in pilot programs like “Moving
to Work.”
Specifically, we’ve tried to give more flexibility to the housing
authorities. We know that housing authorities have to make hard
decisions. But we think it is better that the housing authorities
make the decisions themselves—rather than bureaucrats in Washington
DC. Our philosophy is to try to get the control down to the local
level as much as possible and give them the flexibility and
authority to do things. We’re trying to get as much money as we can,
but remember, Congress determines the budgets.
KH: But why limit the number of vouchers? They are a good
tool and housing authorities in this region use them very
effectively.
JM: Everybody, including the housing authorities, recognizes
the fact we can’t sustain growth at the level it has been. We
replaced the old vouchers system with a straightforward dollar
budget because we observed that the cost of individual vouchers kept
rising. Quite frankly, there were no incentives to reduce costs. Now
there are incentives built in, because we keep the program in dollar
terms.
For public housing authorities, one benefit of the new system is
that they now have greater discretion to determine their own
clientele. Formerly, 100% had to be spent on the lowest income tier;
but we noticed that was eliminating people from the program who were
getting jobs and earning a bit more. Now if the local authority
thinks it’s a priority to continue to help people in this second
tier, they can keep them in the program.
Change is difficult, no matter what the change is. I think the
housing authorities will like the new system more when they get used
to it.
KH: Can you comment on the perception that a lot of the
problems in Section 8 were located in other parts of the country and
not in the Northwest?
JM: There are clearly problems with Section 8 administration
in other parts of the country. I was recently detailed back to the
Atlanta office of HUD, where there are some 200 housing authorities,
some of which were administering 25 vouchers. Here in Washington we
don’t have the problem of small housing authorities.
When I took over as Regional Director, we didn’t have a single
troubled agency here in Region 10. I told my staff, “Whatever you’ve
been doing, keep it up.” Whenever groups come on tour from
out-of-state, I take them to New Holly and tell them, “This is how
HOPE VI is supposed to work.” We are an exemplary region. We have
the best housing authorities. We have the best executive directors
of housing authorities. And we have the most passionate sponsors for
our programs. I think we’re all on the same page on that.
Here in Washington, it looks like most housing authorities are
taking funding hits. I haven’t figured out why, but I’m working on
it. If there are glitches in the formula maybe we can do something.
KH: I’ve been hearing that the current changes will force
mergers and other significant changes because housing authorities
can’t afford to operate on the small amount of administrative monies
they’re getting.
JM: Exactly. We want to base our model on agencies that are
efficient. For example, in Idaho, there’s only one provider. They
have had a model where they’ve had offices scattered throughout the
state. They’ve come to us every year and asked for special
exemptions for extra operating funds, so they can continue financing
those outlying offices. Now we are asking them to tighten up. They
had a Cadillac system, and we were only allowed to pay for a Ford.
HUD simply could not justify continuing to finance that model.
KH: Two years ago we were serving about 43,000 people
through Section 8. The Center for Budget Policy and Priorities
estimates that by 2009 we’ll be serving 11,000 fewer people in
Washington. What will that do to programs to end homelessness?
JM: It depends on where they go, of course. Everybody agrees
that we need to provide long-term support for the old and disabled.
But we have other groups that stay in programs like Section 8 for
more than 5 years. Studies show there’s a great likelihood that if
they’re in the program for more than 5 years, they’ll remain on
assistance for more than 10 years. In public housing, we have three
generations of people living in one house. We have to break that
cycle somehow.
Another key issue is finding ways to build roofs cheaper or more
affordably. There are two sides to that equation: you can raise the
pay or lower the cost. Last year at the Commission’s Housing
Washington conference, I sat in on a seminar by Avi
Friedman, who describes his “Grow Homes,” and “Next Homes”
innovations. Those are exciting new ideas and exactly the kind of
thinking that we need.
It’s not just about Section 8. There has to be a sensible balance.
But I don’t think we can allow one program to cannibalize all of our
programs. I don’t think Congress will fund it at a much higher
level. I’m tickled that the numbers reported from the Senate
Committee came out as high as they did.
Personally, I remain very troubled by the widespread dislocations
that have resulted from the changes in Section 8 in our state. As
noted by the articles above, we are talking about people and
families who need a place to call home but won’t be able to get
rental assistance in the future. Talking about ending homelessness
while we put 11,000 Washington households at risk doesn’t make sense
to me. Let’s hope Congress recognizes the real cost of cutting back
the Section 8 program before extending tax cuts for the wealthy.
Thanks, Kim
NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE
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