Senate Bill Keeps Stable HUD Housing Assistance Outlays

The Senate wants to be much kinder to low-income families than does the House. The Senate Appropriations committee has approved a slight increase for HUD funding in 2013. Under the committee’s proposal, housing-choice vouchers will be expanded slightly, project-based rental projects will be fully funded, and the minimum rent charged to our society’s must vulnerable will not rise.

Center on Budget and policy Priorities has full coverage here: http://bit.ly/JmhGMC. The bill authorizes $19.4 billion for Housing Choice Vouchers, an increase of more than $250 million over last year. A couple changes to HUD policy contained in the bill should help low-income tenants:

  • Inspections will be once every two years. To save HAs money, the bill reduces inspection requirements to biennial. “To protect tenants, the Senate bill also requires housing agencies to perform interim inspections if requested by the tenant or a government official,” Center on Budget says.
  • Loosen the definition of “extremely low incomes.” The bill classifies “extremely low incomes” as those with incomes no greater than 30% of area medium income, or the federal poverty line, whichever is higher. “This change would enable housing agencies to issue more vouchers to working-poor families in areas where medium incomes are low,” Center on Budget says.

Unfortunately, the Senate can’t find money in the budget to spruce up the country’s aging stock of public housing. The bill offers nearly $2 billion for the public-housing capital fund, from which repair moneys are drawn. That’s $110 million more than last year. But recent studies indicate that yearly repairs cost at least $3.4 billion, while the backlog of repairs stands at an estimated $26 billion.

“Finally, if repairs continue to be deferred, housing agencies will eventually be compelled to demolish or sell developments — displacing families from their homes, eliminating needed affordable housing, and squandering decades of federal and local investment,” says the Center.

Two Major Programs Help 3.4 Million Low-Income Families Rent Affordable Housing

More good stuff from the Center on Budget:

“The Housing Choice (“Section 8″) Voucher program will assist nearly 2.2 million low-income families in 2012, almost twice as many as the next-largest federal rental assistance program. Roughly half of these households are headed by seniors or people with disabilities, and more than 40 percent are headed by non-elderly, non-disabled adults with children. Both rigorous research and surveys of local practitioners have confirmed that vouchers are highly effective at reducing homelessness.

 The Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance (PBRA) program provides rental assistance payments to private owners of 1.2 million units of affordable housing. Two-thirds of the residents of PBRA housing are low-income seniors or people with disabilities. Public housing provides affordable homes to 1.1 million of the nation’s poorest residents. More than half of these households are headed by seniors or people with disabilities.”

One more interesting tidbit. A proposal circulating the House, The Affordable Housing and Self-Sufficiency Improvement Act, “would reduce the frequency of income re-certifications for fixed-income households,” according to Center on Budget. Let’s see what happens.

Landlords: Spotlight Ads Now Appear on Housing Authority Printed Lists

GoSection8 landlords looking for extra exposure can now turn to our printed lists of rental homes. We’ve added Spotlight Ads to each page of our printed lists, which are distributed free by participating housing authorities.

It works like this. Buy a Spotlight Ad, and your rental-home listing will be featured on our printed list as well as on our website.  Printed-list Spotlight Ads allow landlords to reach a different segment of the housing-choice voucher population, those who don’t use computers. Another advantage: Spotlight properties are the only listings on the printed list that contain photos.

For Spotlight Ad purchasers, there’s no extra charge for inclusion on the printed list. Here’s how your Spotlight ad will appear, on the  bottom of the printed list:

Spotlight Ads: Improve Visibility By Increasing Frequency of Impressions  

Landlords can gain exclusive placement on listing pages by adding Spotlight Ads to their marketing. Every time a potential tenant searches for listings in your Spotlight city, your rental listing will appear prominently on the right side of the page. With Spotlight Ads, your units become the comparison pieces for all other units in the area.

Click this link to learn more about the placement, visibility and lead-management enhancements customers get from their Spotlight-ad campaigns: http://www.gosection8.com/LL/Local-Ads.aspx.

Spotlight Ads are available to both Premium and Basic members. Space is limited: Only six Spotlight ads per location. Once your city fills up, we’ll put you on a waiting list.  (Ask your Section-8 tenants what it’s like to be on a waiting list.)

Your Spotlight-Ad price is determined by the size of the city in which you’ll be advertising. Spotlight Ads begin at $59. For more pricing information, feel free to call our Support Team at 866-466-7328.

House Passes Budget That Cuts Services To the Needy

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a 2013 budget bill yesterday that significantly reduces services to the poor and the elderly. In addition to cutting federal retirement benefits and slashing Medicaid spending, the GOP-backed plan would reduce outlays for the food-stamp program by more than $36 billion.

“One-quarter of the House GOP spending cuts come from programs directly benefitting the poor, such as Medicaid, food stamps, the Social Services Block Grant, and a child tax credit claimed by working immigrants,” says an editorial in the Huffington Post (http://huff.to/M40TlI).

Luckily, the Senate has no intention of duplicating the House bill. President Obama has said he would veto the bill if it ever made it to his desk. The goal of the House bill was to prevent automatic reductions in defense spending that are slated to begin next year.

One week before the House vote, HUD unveiled a 2013 budget that essentially keeps spending levels constant. “Overall, 83 percent of HUD’s total budget for 2013 will go towards providing rental assistance to over 5.4 million residents of HUD-subsidized housing, including public housing and HUD grants to homeless assistance programs,” according to DS News (http://bit.ly/Keqbrq).

Senate Budget Proposals Show More Respect for Families in Need

On the Senate side, things look more favorable for low-income families. “While bowing to the funding pressures, fiscal realities, and the discretionary budget authority caps imposed by last year’s Budget Control Act, Senate appropriators crafted a bill that is remarkably less painful than anticipated for public-housing related programs,” says the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (http://bit.ly/KNQk6V).

The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee approved in April a resolution that reduces overall HUD spending in 2013 by about 7%. The subcommittee pointed out that the 2012 HUD spending bill was about 21% less than the 2011 bill. The Housing Choice Voucher program will get about 1% more in 2013 than in 2012. Administrative fees for housing authorities are slated to be funded with a 17% increase. HUD’s Housing Counseling Program will experience a 22% rise in funding if the subcommittee’s recommendations become law.

The full Senate Appropriations Committee also has approved nearly $15 million for the Jobs Plus Initiative pilot program. The “welfare-to-work” program will “provide intensive employment services for residents of public housing in order to eliminate persistent poverty. Programs were designed to provide work incentives, to implement employment training, placement and retention strategies, and to promote community support for work opportunities among public housing residents,” according to the National Low Income Housing Council (http://bit.ly/IFaqg1).

Landlords: QuikMatch Alerts Now Contain Names and Numbers!

Property owners, rejoice! Now you can see exactly who has searched for your property on our website.  We’ve opened up our QuikMatch program to deliver prospective-tenant names and contact info daily to your GoSection8 account.

Our QuikMatch service is available only to our Premium clients. Premium clients are pro-active property managers who want to get full use from our rental-listing platform. To learn more about our Premium service, please call our Support Team at (866) 466-7328.

Tenants join QuikMatch for free to have landlords communicate directly with them about rental units.  Once a tenant clicks on your property, we’ll deliver that tidbit of info to your activity summary. It’s up to you to get in contact, via phone or email, with that new prospective tenant.

Here’s how it works. On your Active Listings page, move to the left side and click Hot Leads. Up pops a page labeled “Tenants who have viewed your listing(s).” These tenants have recently viewed one or more of your properties. From this page, you can view the tenant’s profile, call the tenant, or email the tenant.

Manage All Your Hot Leads from One Central Location

To see your contacts, first log-in as a landlord. We classify your Premium tenant contacts in three ways, on the left side of your Active Listings page.

My Contacts offers connections to all GoSection8 tenants who have registered for QuikMatch. Prospective Tenants shows you all the QuikMatch-registered tenants in your area. And My Hot Leads provides direct access to QuikMatch-registered tenants who have viewed your listing(s).

My Hot Leads are what we’re talking about. Click that tab. The default at the top of  the page is to list all tenants who have viewed any of your properties, with the most recent activity listed first. You can check who’s viewed each individual property by selecting an address at the Show me bar, right near the top of the page.

Want to send an email to all prospective tenants who have viewed your properties? Click All tenants who have viewed my properties in the Show me bar. Just below, click Select All Tenants. Then move next door to Compose Bulk Email to produce your communication. You can send a test email to yourself before sending out to your potential tenants.

You can send an email to any portion of your Hot Leads list. Just select a tenant – or multiple tenants – by clicking the box next to the tenant’s name. Then hit Compose Bulk Email, create your communique and send it out. There’s also an area for landlords to add a note, which remains private, to the profile of each prospective tenant who contacts you.

Tenants and Landlords Must Be Careful When Using Craigslist

Scammers target all rental-listing services, but they particularly target Craigslist. GoSection8 also gets tagged by these fraud artists on occasion. As a tenant searching for a new rental home, you need to protect yourself.

First of all, if you ever suspect fraud in a GoSection8 listing call our Support Team (866-466-7328) and we’ll jump right on it. Before you even search for a rental on GoSection8, you should read our Scam Alert! Section on our front page: http://bit.ly/IM6CJT. Craigslist also has a nice section on keeping yourselves free from scammers:  http://bit.ly/hKiy2.

Sometimes the scammers:

The more you know about how these scammers operate, the less likely you are to get tricked. This article emphasizes that you must be wary when answering rental ads: http://bit.ly/JXkTFT. Always seek confirmation, through a phone number off a sign or a question asked of a local realtor. Here’s another good tip article on avoiding rental scams: http://bit.ly/IgSt5E.

Landlords Have More to Worry About Besides Scams

While landlords can be the unwitting victims of “cloning” scams where non-owners copy rental ads and attempt to grab deposits, Craigslist also presents them with another challenge: Fair Housing Laws.

One tenant advocacy group recently filed 78 complaints against Craigslist rental advertisers in Michigan (http://bit.ly/JGWh57). The lawsuits resulted in Craigslist creating a warning to rental-unit advertisers telling them not to use phrases such as “Hispanic area,” “perfect for a family” or “Christian home.

Previous court decisions have found that Craigslist is not responsible for ads on its site that violate Fair Housing Laws. The legal responsibility falls on those who create the posts, which usually means landlords. Here’s the disclaimer/warning Craigslist added in the wake of the case: http://bit.ly/Izjple.

More: In New Jersey and Oregon, you can’t discriminate against the unemployed in your ads. California might soon follow suit: http://bit.ly/I9ATBh. ““What we always tell people is to describe the property, not the people who can rent it,” says Nancy Haynes, executive director of the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan.

Everything You Need To Know About Bed Bugs, And More

HUD has issued new guidelines for dealing with bed-bug infestations. For tenants of housing owned by public housing agencies, bedbug control services will be available for free. Tenants who live in homes that are part of the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program must check their own contract to determine whether the landlord or the tenant is responsible for paying for bed bug treatments.

HUD plans to keep bed bugs away by:

  • Raising awareness through education on prevention of bed bugs;
  • Inspecting infested areas, plus surrounding living spaces;
  • Checking for infestations on luggage and clothes when returning from a trip;
  • Reducing the number of secondhand items brought into units and looking for bed bugs or signs of infestation on secondhand items before bringing the items home;
  • Correctly identifying the pest;
  • Keeping records – including dates when and locations where pests are found;
  • Cleaning all items within a bed-bug infested living area;
  • Reducing clutter where bed bugs can hide;
  • Eliminating bed bug habitats;
  • Physically removing bed bugs through cleaning;
  • Using pesticides carefully according to label directions; and
  • Following up on inspections and possible treatments.

HUD issued its guidelines in two separate publications from two different sections, Office of Public and Indian Housing (http://bit.ly/IT4qB7) and Assistant Secretary for Housing (http://bit.ly/Ivk6e3). The process for removing bed bugs from HUD-owned multifamily units is expansive. According to the Office of Public and Indian Housing, “within 24 hours of the tenant report, the PHA should make contact with the tenant, provide the tenant with information about control and prevention of bed bugs and discuss measures the tenant may be able to take in the unit before the inspection is performed.” If a unit is found to be infested, then the units to the left, right, below and above must also be tested “within three business days of the complaint if possible.”

“If bed bug infestation is found in the unit, the tenant may expect treatment to begin within five days of inspection, though depending on the form of treatment, this may not be possible.” And the key statement from the Public and Indian Housing publication, which was released in February: “A PHA may not charge a tenant to cover the cost of bed bug treatment; such costs should be covered by the PHA.”

Section 8 Voucher Holders Must Comply With Their Leases

The Assistant Secretary’s publication, released last month, is less restrictive. “Residents should fully cooperate with the O/A’s efforts to identify and address infestations…Cooperation includes allowing the O/A to enter the unit to perform inspections and treatments, allowing pest treatments to occur, following the pest treatment protocol.”

The publication says that assisted-project owner/operators “requests for tenants to pay the costs of infestation treatment must be in accordance with the provision for tenant payment of damages or non-compliance as required in the Family Model Lease.”

Here’s a link to that model lease: http://1.usa.gov/JTLeEO. There’s very little that refers to pest control in the model lease. However, there is a provision for an addendum to the lease that covers “House Rules.” Responsibility for pest control can often be located in that attachment, according to HUD.

Interestingly, bed bugs are not part of the standard HUD inspection. It’s important for both tenant and landlord to determine at the outset of the lease that bed bugs are not present in the home. That way, if bed bugs do arrive on the scene it will be apparent that the tenant is responsible for the infestation.

Not In My Back Yard – NIMBY – Is a Nationwide Game

“Contrary to popular beliefs, studies indicate conclusively that affordable housing has little or no effect on neighboring property values,” says Habitat For Humanity (http://bit.ly/IPoNPC ). You wouldn’t know it by the protests against affordable housing that continually spring up around the country.

Each week we see stories about community groups protesting against low-income housing in their neighborhoods. Almost always, decreasing property values are cited. The people protesting always say they’re for public-housing measures, just not in their own neighborhood.

Most of the time, the protestors complaints don’t hold water. Check these cities where fights against low-income developments have made the press:

  • Boulder, CO (http://bit.ly/x4wFRG): The protestors say they’re looking out for the homeless (http://bit.ly/Ikw1fR). Sure. Of course, they also say that the location is “unfair to North Boulder neighborhoods.”
  • Louisville, KY (http://bit.ly/If2oHJ): Local politician says, ““Everyone here accepts the fact that poor people need a place to live, and we have our share. My area needs less along the lines of the affordable side of things and more along the lines of the high end.” Fact: Less than 2% of the district qualifies as affordable housing.
  • Richmond, VA (http://bit.ly/yKmOEJ): Neighborhood activists say that adding a dozen cars to the area would impact traffic and parking patterns. Bottom line from the group: “Though we understand the church’s need to live out its mission in this community, we have to believe it does not mean to live it out at the expense of the very community it purports to serve.” The church’s response: http://bit.ly/zDdxMo.
  • Somerville, MA (http://bit.ly/JN24VS): More of the same – traffic, parking, density. Yet this is a refurbishment of an existing building. According to protestors, “This project will contribute little or nothing to the Square’s economic development. The need for affordable housing is a regional issue. Somerville doesn’t have to take on more than its fair share.” Rebuttal opinion: (http://bit.ly/GCPTGz).
  • St. George, UT (http://bit.ly/JKL1DO): Only eight of many dozens of homes were built in this neighborhood before the developer went bankrupt. Another developer bought the rights, and is offering four of the homes to low-income families. ““The program itself is wonderful and I believe every American should be given the chance to own their own home,” said Phil Hansen, a retired firefighter who moved into Quail Cove with his wife, Carolyn, a year ago. “But programs funded by people like us, who have worked and paid taxes their entire lives, should not allow a developer to come into an existing subdivision and buy lots, build new homes and devalue the property. The federal money needs to be monitored.” Qestion: How does completing a bankrupt subdivision “devalue” the neighbors’ property?

None of the articles raised the prospect of discrimination or racism. As we’ve learned, the protestors are all staunch supporters of low-income housing. Just not in their backyards.

New Tool Displays Opportunity Areas for Low-Income Households

Housing Choice Voucher holders looking to relocate should check out this new opportunity map from PolicyMaps (http://www.policymap.com). You click on an area of the map to determine the level of opportunity available to low-income residents. It’s free, so bring the link with you when you go to speak with your case worker about porting to a new location.

The Housing Opportunity Index sprang from a 2011 research paper that attempts to quantify low-income housing opportunities by examining data from the 2010 census. The research couples lifestyle variables — such as work availability, commute time and voucher-holder density – with population and housing statistics to determine which areas offer the most opportunity to low-income assisted housing dwellers.

“The index will be designed for use by Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) to help voucher-holders identify neighborhoods (defined as Census Tracts) that have relatively low poverty rates, an available stock of at-or-below Fair Market Rent housing, economic opportunities for HCV holders, and a relatively low density of subsidized households,” according to Housing Choice Voucher Marketing Opportunity Index: Analysis of Data at the Tract and Block Group Level from HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research (http://bit.ly/HTys3F).

Here’s how you get to the opportunity map. After logging onto the site, click go to Policy Map in the upper right corner of the page. A map of the United States appears. Choose Federal Guidelines from the menu list that runs across the upper portion of the map page. Now that the Opportunity Index data has loaded, you can select your area of the country by placing the cursor there and clicking.

Each time you click the area, a pop-up displays specific mapped areas to zoom-in on. Once you’ve narrowed down your mapped area, you can use the +/- function the upper left of the map to move in closer or fade out further. The darker the shaded area on the map, the more opportunity the area contains. Areas of the map that are white contain no opportunities for low-income assisted-housing recipients.

High Opportunity Means Low Poverty, Plenty of Housing, Lots of Work, Few Vouchers

What makes a high-opportunity area? The report led to the recognition of these characteristics of a high-opportunity neighborhood:

  • Poverty below 10% of the population.
  • Poverty that is stable or falling over time.
  • Assisted housing is less than 5% of tract, and less than 15% of block.
  • HCV households consume 4% or less of housing stock.
  • Minority concentration at 20% or less.
  • Adult unemployment at less than 5%.
  • Work commute under 30 minutes for 75% of population.
  •  High school drop-out rate less than 15%.

Back in March 2011, less than 4% of the 56,000 housing tracts in the study would have qualified as a high-quality neighborhood. On the map, these areas would show as deep purple. But only 260,000 units fitting the high-opportunity description are available in the country, while the housing-choice voucher population is around 2.2 million families.

Just trying to find communities with less than 10% of the population living in poverty is difficult. “If the HCV program were to be restricted such that participating households could rent units only in neighborhoods with poverty below 10 percent, only 5.2 million rental units would be available with rents below the applicable Fair Market Rents,” the report points out. Based on average usage, the report predicts that only 300,000 units would be available in all the low-poverty areas of the country combined.

The best neighborhoods with the most opportunity consist of less than 10% poverty; less than 20% of families headed by a single woman; less than 15% are high-school dropouts; and area unemployment was less than 5%. If you locate any of these neighborhoods, you should jump on the opportunity. Only one in twenty Census tracks contain such opportunity filled neighborhoods.

Seattle Re-Development Effort: Successful, But Expensive

We discussed on Monday Chicago’s effort to improve the lives of its low-income inhabitants by tearing down the projects and distributing government-assistance tenants throughout the city. In Seattle, WA, they chose to tackle the problem of high-crime, low-productivity housing projects in a different fashion.

The High Point Garden project in west Seattle was razed in 2004, and a 120-acre “mixed-income” development was built. Total cost: $550 million, with the public footing the bill for nearly half. HUD calls the new development “a model for innovative and inclusive sustainable community development.”

“The redevelopment project highlights the importance of a community-driven planning process, the synergy between the principles of low-impact development and New Urbanism, and the benefits of innovative resource- and energy-efficient building design and construction,” according to a recent report, “Best Practices in Affordable Housing: Seattle’s High Point Redevelopment Project” (http://bit.ly/Ij4TK4).

High Point Garden was built in the ‘40’s to house workers in the country’s defense industry. “The 1950s marked a period of change for the sprawling 120-acre High Point site, as the 1,300 housing units in approximately 400 buildings were transitioned from defense housing to accommodate Seattle’s low-income population,” according to the report. “In the years after the transfer, High Point experienced a period of decline and by the 1990s, 140 of the original buildings were demolished and only 716 housing units remained.”

Fast forward to 2012. The project now contains 685 housing units for low-income residents, including 75 units reserved for the elderly. Total number of units in the “mixed-income” development now: 1,600. Low-income units represent only 42% of the total number of housing units. There are fewer public housing units at the complex now than there was when it was torn down.

What Did They Spend All The Money On?

The community was re-constructed in two phases. According to the report, the low-income housing portion of the project received $35 million from HUD’s Hope VI; $56 million in Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Equity; $68 million in Tax-Exempt Borrowing; and $106 million in Additional Public Funding. That’s $265 million.

In Phase 1, “344 units were developed for very low-income residents, with primary financing coming from $27 million in tax credit equity, $14 million from the sale of land to private developers, and $8.5 from the HOPE VI grant.” That’s a little under $50 million.

For Phase 2 units, “266 serve low-income renters, and an additional 75 units accommodate very low-income seniors. The low-income housing units were financed with approximately $29 million in low-income housing tax credit equity, and the senior housing project received a HUD Section 202 grant.” That’s another $29 million. Total spent on low-income housing, according to the report: Less than $80 million.

So where did the remaining $185 million in public funds go? The complex also includes a public library, neighborhood medical and dental clinics and a neighborhood service center. The community’s road plan had to be re-done completely, and drainage issues had to be considered. In short, it appears that the builders spent more than twice as much on developing the surrounding community as they did on establishing low-income housing units.

Nearly 700 miserable units, most of them unfit for inhabitation, have been replaced with nearly the same amount of energy-efficient, top-of-the-line dwellings. Cost per unit: $386,861. So it can be done, housing projects can be rehabilitated, but it’s going to cost you.

Are Mixed-Use Projects The Best Alternative To Housing Projects?

One of the largest studies of the switch from project-based public housing to mixed-income public housing shows, well, mixed results (http://bit.ly/wbOiFW). Ten years after the Chicago projects were dismantled and their residents distributed throughout the city, this University of Chicago study questions whether anyone is better off.

The only significant improvements found by the authors relates to residents of scattered-site housing. But the authors speculate the outperformance occurred because many scattered-site residents were already in place when the Transformation began in 1999. “Scattered-site households were now significantly more likely to be employed (59 percent) than households in any other housing type. HCV households were the only group to not experience a significant increase in employment rate,” the report says.

Surprisingly, for those who remained in public-housing projects, employment figures practically doubled. Not so for voucher holders. “In several ways, households that relocated with vouchers appear more vulnerable than other households and may have a harder time benefiting fully from relocation,” the authors conclude.

“Most have moved to neighborhoods that are high-poverty and predominantly African American. They had family characteristics which likely presented more barriers to economic and residential mobility in 1999 and were worse off than other households on several indicators of well-being in 2008.”

Once the projects were torn down, and mixed-income developments replaced them, few previous residents returned. “Only a small percentage of residents, about 11 percent, have so far returned to the mixed-income developments. As a result, relatively few relocated public housing residents are directly benefiting from the major investment being made in mixed-income housing,” the study says.

Study: People Who Accepted Vouchers Fared The Worst

Most households chose to relocate, using housing-choice vouchers, to areas in Chicago’s west and south. “In 2008, HCV households were living in areas with the greatest average percentage of African American residents, leaving them in more racially segregated neighborhoods than those in traditional public housing developments,” according to the study.

Vouchers went to the lowest on the totem pole. “Households taking vouchers were relatively more disadvantaged at the start of the Transformation compared to those relocated to other housing types and have even more troubling indicators of well-being now,” the study says.

For those who moved into integrated neighborhoods using vouchers, isolation became the norm. Community-focused interactions “have been limited in number and have not been particularly successful thus far in forging connections across groups,” the study says.

The housing authority even tried to get residents involved in the community by hosting events. “So far, however, these events have attracted many more former public housing residents, and have not often provided a forum for interactions across groups,” the report says.

The report’s final conclusion: “While the households living in scattered-site housing seem to be faring quite well, those in mixed-income developments are surprisingly indistinguishable across most well-being indicators from the households living in traditional public housing developments.”

So, back to the drawing board?