King County Journal: Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Thousands dropped from low-income housing list

By Dean A. Radford
Journal Reporter

About 4,100 low-income families and individuals in King County are being dropped from a waiting list for federal rent assistance because of deep cuts in the Section 8 housing program.

They will receive notifications in letters amiled out Monday by the King County Housing Authority, which administers the federal program in unincorporated areas and in those cities without their own housing authority.

Under the program, families or individuals pay 30 percent of their income toward their rent. The housing authority then pays the rest using federal dollars, up to a cap based on local rents and the number of bedrooms in the unit.

For example, the cap is higher on the Eastside than in south King County because apartment rents there are higher. If the renter's contribution and subsidy don't pay the entire rent, the renter can pay the difference in order to live there.

"This is a sad day in King County for low-income seniors, people with disabilities and poor working families," said Stephen Norman, the authority's executive director.

For Aimee Robinson's family, the news means she'll still have to sleep on the couch in the living room and her two children, 7-year-old Emilee and 14-year-old Andrew will have to share a room in their two-bedroom apartment in Kent.

Her mother, Jeanne, who is disabled, has her own bedroom.

Robinson was No. 4,658 on the lottery list. Anyone with a number of about 3,000 or higher will get a letter.

"I kept telling my kids, 'Soon you'll have your own room,'" she said. "Now they know."

The family lives on $900 from the state she's paid as a care-giver for her mother and her mother's $550 Social Security benefit. The rent is $575 a month.

Robinson said she would need to find another job in order to pay for a three-bedroom apartment.

The federal cuts created a $2.7 million hole in the housing authority's budget. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will now pay for a set number of vouchers, rather than reimburse an agency for the subsidy it paid.

The county authority is trying to close the gab by eliminating rent increases, reducing the rent subsidy to each household and retiring vouchers when they're turned in.

But retiring vouchers creates an ever deeper budget hole because federal funding is based on the number of active vouchers, according to Rhonda Rosenberg, an authority spokeswoman.

It's a "death spiral," she said. The vouchers have been touted as one of the key elements in the county's drive to wipe out homelessness in the next 10 years.

The federal cutbacks also will affect the Renton Housing Authority, which has about 860 families or individuals on its waiting list.

Tom Tasa, the authority's executive director, said his agency stopped adding to its waiting list two years ago. It's not taking anyone off the list, he said.

So far this year, the agency has issued just three or four new vouchers, and retires those that are turned in when a renter leaves the program, he said.

Federal cutbacks could have cost the agency about $350,000, but the agency will whittle that to about $250,000. It's considering lowering the subsidy it pays, Tasa said.

Renton and Seattle are the only two cities in the county with their own housing authorities. About 1,000 families and individuals will remain on the county's waiting list, but any help with their rent is likely years away.

Because roughly 5,100 qualify for vouchers, "it means their housing situation is already pretty severe," Rosenberg said. They may pay more than half their income toward rent, they're homeless or they're housing is substandard, she said.

In the last two years, the housing authority has issued about 2,000 new vouchers. About 8,100 households in the county use the voucher program.

The waiting list is longest in south King County, where apartment rents are relatively affordable. In Kent, there are 629 families or individuals on the waiting list.

"Kent is one of the most affordable places to live," Rosenberg said. "People find it easier to find housing there."

What will happen is that the working poor will get overconcentrated in poorer areas, in direct contradiction to the federal program's goal of providing housing options to them, Rosenberg said.

Among the goals behind the Section 8 vouchers are to help the poor pick better schools or move closer to work or families, she said.

"It seems like poor people are being vilified," she said.