Section 8 housing feeling strained
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By STEPHANIE M. PETERS Staff writer - Published: July 19, 2009
In Vermont, applicants for the federal Section 8 voucher program have long faced a wait for housing assistance.
Now more than ever, however, local housing authorities are finding themselves caught in a balancing act as they try to accommodate the demand for the program – as the economy has faltered, more and more applications are being received. The portion of the rent costs the housing authority pays for its voucher holders has also increased as voucher holders join the unemployment rolls.
The only portion of the equation not growing at an equitable rate is the budget local housing authorities receive from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to pay for the program.
In both Rutland and Barre, the executive directors of the housing authorities say their programs are currently oversubscribed – in other words, the cost of the vouchers they have in circulation are greater than their monthly budgets.
At Rutland Housing Authority, the disparity has staff implementing "interventions" in the way it has traditionally administered the program to help bring their costs into check.
In Barre, the situation isn't quite so precarious.
Thanks to recent news that it will receive a small increase in its monthly budget, the Barre Housing Authority will even issue a few new vouchers this week, but will still likely rely on its reserve funds to help make up its budget gap, according to Executive Director Chip Castle.
"Our funding situation has improved a little bit," Castle said in an interview Thursday. "We were hoping it would work out that way, but it still wouldn't be a surprise if we ended up finishing the year in a slight deficit."
To be eligible for the Housing Choice Voucher program, or Section 8 as it was once called and still commonly known, a household's annual gross income can't exceed 30 percent of the county's median income.
According to HUD, in 2008 that meant that, nationally, a family of four living on about $19,450 would be at 30 percent of the median income. The median family income was $64,800, according to the department.
With a voucher, participants pay a percentage of their adjusted monthly income, usually between 30 and 40 percent, toward their rent and the rest is covered by the housing authority.
In an economy where unemployment continues to rise monthly, housing authorities have seen these unfixed financial responsibilities fluctuate as participants once employed full-time pick up part-time jobs to get by, and others remain unemployed.
"I've had folks who've lost their jobs," said Patty Alberti, the Section 8 administrator in Rutland. "Thirty percent of nothing is nothing. So we've had to pay entire rents."
According to Kevin Loso, executive director of the Rutland Housing Authority, larger housing authorities have so many vouchers they can absorb such a change in the economy, but at a smaller agency like Rutland, which only has 70 vouchers, it can wreak havoc with the finances.
"When you only have 70 (vouchers) its much more of a balancing act," he said earlier this month. "It doesn't take too many changes in the voucher holders to end up in a situation where we have nowhere near enough money to pay for the vouchers that are out there."
To help rein in costs, Rutland began implanting two interventions in its program about six to nine months ago, Loso said.
First, it has become more stringent about its eligibility for applicants claiming a need for larger apartments. For example, a family consisting of a mother, father and two kids would qualify for a two-bedroom – not a three-bedroom apartment, according to Loso.
And though Rutland has put a freeze on its voucher issuance, when it does begin handing them out again, it will "pick and choose" applicants seeking efficiency or one-bedroom apartments off its waiting list rather than go in order of application. According to Alberti, this is because the housing authority can't currently afford the more expensive two- and three-bedroom apartments.
"This will be the first time in the program's history we've had to do that, but it's happened in other parts of the country as well," Loso said. "I have colleagues around the state who are in the same situation. The end result is that in Section 8, you're not funded to the level needed."
Of the 70 vouchers the Rutland Housing Authority owns, 68 are currently in use. Forty-one of those are one-bedroom apartments, 14 are two-bedrooms, 11 are three-bedrooms and only two are efficiency apartments. Next month, the number of vouchers in use will dip to 66, helping reduce costs slightly, Alberti said.
The waiting list in Rutland, meanwhile, has jumped from about a year to a year-and-a-half's wait that it used to be before the economy collapsed to more than two years.
An even longer wait exists in Barre, where 220 families have been approved for the program – a process that involves background, criminal and bank account checks, and is good for only six months before the application must be updated, according to Castle.
Applicants are told they can expect a two to three year wait, but still Castle encourages them to apply for both public housing and Section 8, as well as to other housing authorities throughout the state, he said.
Despite owning 135 vouchers, up until last week Castle only had the funding to cover having only 117 in use.
"It's frustrating because you're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place," Castle said. "You don't want to give false hope, but at the same time you don't want to say 'there is no hope for you.' Right now it's just a matter of hurry up and wait."
stephanie.peters@rutlandherald.com
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