Go Ahead - Raise Those Public Housing Rents!

“HUD plan would exact its price on poor” … That’s the headline in the South Bend Tribune’s Opinion page this morning. The article contains quotes from a Housing Authority Executive Director and the Indiana Institute for Working Families and Ben Carson, Trump appointee as the Secretary of HUD – none of whom see from the trenches how those living in the project based Section 8 really utilize those dollars. Why don’t they talk to the Managers on the front line in the Affordable Housing Crisis?

Working in the housing industry for many years affords one a special insight into what residents go through during the process and I think it also lends a unique lens into what really happens in public housing, whether it is project based Section 8 or the Housing Choice voucher program (which has impacted Fair Housing by becoming a new “protection” as a source of income for many low income families in many cities across the United States.)

Having managed HUD housing communities in Mishawaka and Elkhart in Indiana, and in Detroit, Michigan, what I noticed first thing is there is a significant number of very young single parents, all female, in my experience who live in public housing, all of whom have at least one child. While living in these communities, many report little to zero income, which is absurd. There cannot be anyone living in publicly subsidized housing who have zero income. It’s not possible. News flash. There is no such thing as an immaculate conception. With single mothers come the boyfriend(s), otherwise known as the Baby Daddy. In my experience, the Mama Drama closely follows for a majority of this phenomenon.

The other large component of public housing are those living on fixed incomes, our senior citizens. These folks are the ones who truly need our support. Those who are 55+, disabled, and living on fixed monthly incomes have no recourse except to enter into the circus known as Waiting List Hell, Annual Recertification Interrogation Time, and Monthly, Annual, Insurance, and HUD Reac Inspection Inconveniences just to secure their spot in the bureaucracy known as HUD residency.   

Of course, this is a severely truncated version of subsidized housing, and unfortunately, it may roll along with all the versions we see on television and movies where the housing seems rundown, not well kept and full of those unsavory, rough guys with nothing better to do than sit around on steps in front of those rundown buildings in the middle of the day – something akin to those scenes in The Blind Side movie, which are eerily accurate. But I digress. My whole point is that I agree – raise the rents for those in Public Housing! Please! Do it today with exemptions for those 55+ and disable residents.

The way I see it, Public housing was instituted to solve a social “problem”: where do we place families whose jobs have withered away as a factories closed, etc. I applaud the public assistance programs in America; however, there should be limitations and goals for those receiving this assistance because I do not believe the programs we have in place were created to perpetuate dependency.

I think those who are applying and getting approved and moving into apartments because they are single mothers who have nowhere else to go is an even bigger problem than what the rent charged is. When I first entered this housing arena, there was a stipulation that these residents attend school or work training programs so they could get a job and get out of public housing. Once they have been working for three months (more or less) they report their earnings and a recertification is completed and the rent would increase. I can tell you that in 99% of those cases, as soon as the new rent would start, they would suddenly lose the job and would go back to free rent. How does that help anyone become self-sufficient? Administratively, it is a nightmare for those onsite employees who make less than $25,000 per year to process all the paperwork involved. Complete computer software programs were created to solve this paperwork and calculation nightmare.

For those who bellyache about the high cost of childcare, back then there were child care vouchers to cover that cost. I was the Executive Director of childcare facility funded in part from the United Way and my Center accepted those vouchers. Fifty percent of those vouchers were lost because those parents using them lost jobs because they failed to show up for work, or dropped out of the training programs, or struggled completing their GEDs, necessary for getting a better job, or any job for that matter.

I’ve strayed a bit. Raising rents is not a bad thing. Finally, someone is saying what those who see it every day onsite already know. It’s easy to be poor in America. We practically make that a requirement for those able-bodied individuals who live in Public Housing.