Error processing SSI file
People line up for housing help in Boston, which has 31,000 people on a waiting list for assistance. In many cities, the waiting time for rental assistance is measured in years, even as rents across the country continue to climb.Subsidized Apartments
Thousands wait for years to get help with rent
More cuts loom as families, disabled, seniors struggle
Johnny Matthews comforts his son Johnathan, 4. The New Bedford, Mass., man and his fiancee, Melissa Manning, have been trying to get housing assistance for 16 months.
Comment on this story
NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — It is the arithmetic that works against Melissa Manning.
Manning takes home $1,000 a month and pays $800 in rent for a three-bedroom apartment in one of the more dangerous corners of New Bedford.
For 16 months, the mother of three has tried to get help from Section 8, a federal program that subsidizes rent for the poor in privately owned housing.
But with 31,000 people in greater Boston on a waiting list for assistance, housing officials had only bad news for Manning.
“They told me it won’t be open for several years,” said the 22-year-old nurse’s aide, who worries about being homeless. “I’m behind in rent right now. That’s the roof over my head.”
Subsidized housing for Manning could save her about $560 a month in rent. That’s nine times more than the $60 a month she gets this year under the Bush tax cuts.
Like Manning, hundreds of thousands of very low-income Americans are on waiting lists for rental subsidies around the country. In New York City alone, there are more than 149,000 people waiting for subsidies.
Few will get help anytime soon. That means thousands will be forced to make unsavory housing choices, endure dank living conditions and battle homelessness.
In many cities, the waiting time for rental assistance is measured in years. And although Section 8 currently serves just one in four who qualify for assistance, there has been no attempt by Congress or the Bush administration to expand the program.
Congress hasn’t increased the number of people getting subsidies since 2002. And the Bush administration proposes cutting funding for the program by $1.1 billion next year.
While the program has grown by $5.6 billion since 2001, that increase is just enough to keep pace with the rising cost of rentals.
Section 8 will cost $19 billion this year. That’s $1 billion less than the additional interest on the national debt due to the tax cuts this year, according to estimates by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities using Congressional Budget Office data.
In Detroit, 25-year-old LaVena Boyce has been on the Section 8 waiting list since 2000. She and her 4-year-old son share a bedroom in her parents’ home.
Boyce, a parking lot attendant, said that when she first applied for the subsidy, she was told that her wait would be four to five years. Desperate for help, she looked into getting vouchers in other states.
“Every place I saw had long waiting lists, too,” Boyce said. “Some places had shut down their lists completely.”
Of the 2 million people across the country who get rental subsidies from Section 8, more than 460,000 of them have disabilities. Most are extremely poor.
Under guidelines set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which runs the program, three-quarters of those getting help can’t make more than 30 percent of the median income in the area where they live. In Detroit, that figure is $20,040.
For low-income wage earners, rent in most U.S. cities is simply beyond reach. The majority pay far more for rent than the recommended maximum of 30 percent of their salary.
Each year, rents continue to climb.
In 1999, renters had to make $11.08 an hour — more than double minimum wage — to afford an average two-bedroom apartment and not spend more than 30 percent of their salary, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. By last year, they needed to earn $15.21.
Waiting and hoping
The concept behind Section 8 was simple: give the poorest, least-able Americans help with rent payments in neighborhoods they couldn’t otherwise afford.
Chicago resident Marilyn Hamer has been trying to get better housing for two decades. She and her 23-year-old daughter live with a friend on Chicago’s east side.
When Hamer first applied for Section 8, she and her then-1-year-old daughter lived in a dank, musty basement. She believes the conditions contributed to the severe asthma attacks her daughter still suffers.
Hamer said after she didn’t get assistance in the early 1980s, she applied again eight years ago. She is still on a waiting list.
“When I called the Section 8 people several months ago to find out what was happening, the woman said that based on my number I could get a place in about two more years,” said the 42-year-old Hamer, a disabled former Home Depot employee. “I can only wait and hope.”
Precious commodity
For the poor, Section 8 subsidies are a precious commodity.
Invariably, small mobs turn out whenever housing officials begin accepting applications for Section 8. It is not unusual for applicants to camp out all night or travel across states.
So great is the demand that some housing authorities hold lotteries when slots for subsidies open up.
In a three-week span in 2001, the Houston Housing Authority received 20,000 applicants for subsidies.
In September of the same year, the Housing Authority of New Orleans received 19,000 applications shortly after it allowed people to put their names on a waiting list.
The outlook for additional help for the poor is so bleak that many housing authorities have simply stopped taking applications.
From Ann Arbor to Wichita, Kan., to Baltimore and New York City, officials see no value in adding to impossibly long lists of applicants.
Newark, N.J., has 21,000 on its waiting list — four times more people waiting than the number of subsidies it can offer.
The problem is not an epidemic of sudden need. Subsidized housing has never kept up with demand.
California, for example, had 465,000 people on the waiting list for public housing and Section 8 assistance in 2000, according to a report by the Corporation for Supportive Housing. That was more than triple the number of units of low-income housing in the state at the time.
HUD overhauls formula
Renting is likely to become even less affordable for the poor.
This year, a HUD overhaul of the formula it uses to determine how much landlords should get for their rentals will likely lead to a cut in the amount of the subsidies it gives.
Housing advocates warn that the new formula will cost the nation’s poorest extra money.
HUD adjusts rental compensation rates every year to account for changes in the cost of living. This year, however, HUD redefined metropolitan areas so they include more counties.
Because outlying counties tend to have cheaper housing costs than cities, HUD effectively lowered the amount of subsidy it will pay landlords.
In the past, metropolitan Atlanta had consisted of 20 counties for HUD’s purposes. Under the new formula, it includes 28 counties.
This change, slated to go into effect Oct. 1, is expected to lower the price HUD will pay for a three-bedroom apartment by 10 percent this year, according to an analysis of the changes by the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities.
The same is true in Detroit.
The amount HUD will pay for a three-bedroom apartment in Detroit will drop from $1,002 to $860, a 14 percent decline. HUD also changed its rules in New England, which means HUD will drop its Boston rental prices 19 percent.
Factoring in outlying counties reduces rental prices on paper but not in practice.
The nation’s rental market is finally heating up again after years in which the weak economy and low interest rates created low demand for apartments, according to M/PF, a Texas-based apartment real estate consulting firm. But even during the years of sluggish growth, rent in places like the northeast and along the California coast continued to climb.
Elderly, disabled suffer
Section 8 has been especially important for the elderly and the disabled, who often live on fixed incomes and typically can’t afford rent in the private market.
That was the case with Philip Askew.
Askew, a tenant representative on the Boston Housing Authority’s governing board, is a strong supporter of public housing. When a physical disability ended Askew’s career as a construction worker, he found himself trying to survive on $750 a month in Social Security benefits.
Unable to afford the rent in Boston’s high-priced housing market, the 61-year-old Vietnam-era veteran was briefly homeless before moving in with a friend. But when his friend repeatedly raised the rent, Askew found himself making a decision between paying for housing and eating.
In 1999, he got a Section 8 subsidy, which lowers his rent to $220 a month. After paying his basic bills, he is left with $20 a week.
But he is not complaining.
“I never expected to be living in public housing,” Askew said. “But living in public housing doesn’t mean I am crazy or on drugs. I have a new appreciation every time I see someone on the streets in a sleeping bag.”
Copyright © 2004
The Detroit News.
Use of this site indicates your agreement to the Terms of Service (updated 12/19/2002).