Section 8: a day in the life
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well I just had to laugh”
– The Beatles, A Day in the Life
With Section 8 under continuing severe pressure, the system is springing leaks in such heartland
Akron, Ohio, where the Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority is:
· Cutting allowable rents to landlords by an average of $50 a unit; some rents have been trimmed by as much as $200.
· Establishing a minimum monthly cost to tenants of $50 (beginning in July). Currently, 800 of the agency’s approximately 4,000 voucher holders pay less than $50 a month toward their rent.
· Closing the waiting list, which has about 4,000 names, to new applicants. Usually, AMHA has moved an average of 50 families from the list each month, even as it was adding about 300 families a month.
· Lowering the [maximum rent ceiling] by about 10 percent.
· Further lowering allowable rents by excluding from the rent calculation amenities for which landlords typically charge extra, such as a garage, a basement, recent remodeling work or repairs.
Typical recipients earn less than $8,000 a year, 15-18% of
In Charleston, South Carolina, the housing authority’s actions include raising resident contributions by $25 per month, and:
[Approving] a moratorium on rent increases by landlords participating in the Section 8 program. Some commissioners and authority staff members expressed fears that if the measure stays in effect too long, some landlords may withdraw from the program.
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The Philadelphia Housing Authority is combining its strategies:
· Frozen the number of Section 8 vouchers available
· Limited to seven years the total time people can stay on Section 8 (it was for life before).
· Instituted a more rigorous inspection system for properties that landlords offer for Section 8 use.
Originally, Section 8 was designed to prevent ghettoization by allowing residents to move at all, but with unintended consequences (at least in northeast
In Frankford, the free market has responded by creating what committee member Lou Iatarola Jr. called “horizontal projects.”
As Dorn of PHA put it: “One of the real social reasons for Section 8 is that you had all poor people concentrated in projects. What you have in Frankford is a reconcentration.”
Where the decisions are made and who bears the brunt?
“The people in Washington aren’t the ones sitting here making these decisions, and they won’t get the phone calls,” Charleston Housing Authority Director Don Cameron told the authority’s Board of Commissioners Monday after it unanimously, though tentatively, approved an assistance reduction.
As the New York Times (subscription likely required) reports,
these results are not isolated:
Around the country, 492 out of an estimated 2,500 housing agencies that issue vouchers had asked HUD for more money. Late yesterday, Donna White, a spokeswoman for HUD, said that she did not have a specific breakdown of how many of those requests were successful and for how much money.
But in a letter on Friday to housing agencies, David A. Vargas, HUD’s director of housing voucher programs, explained that the agency had determined that the total amount of money needed for voucher renewals, based on costs through July 2004, was $13.9 billion. But because Congress appropriated only $13.4 billion, and is requiring housing agencies to stay within their allocations for the entire year, he said, HUD had to pare the financing to all housing agencies by 4 percent.
In the past, the federal housing department financed agencies for all the vouchers they were allowed to issue, based on actual costs. But last year, the Bush administration, concerned about the rising costs of Section 8, began to limit the program’s flexibility and move toward fixed costs [a block-grant approach].
