More renters needing financial help strain Housing Authority program

KIE RELYEA

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The Housing Authority has temporarily cut back on rent subsidies for some Whatcom County residents and is putting others on hold as it grapples with a higher than expected number of people needing Section 8 housing.

Without those changes, which went into effect at the beginning of August, the agency would have incurred costs of $210,000 that it would have had to repay to the federal government, said John Harmon, executive director and CEO of Bellingham-Whatcom County Housing Authorities.

"We can't afford to take that kind of loss," Harmon said. "We have to stay within the limits that the federal government gives us."

The agency is commonly referred to as the Housing Authority. Its Section 8 program provides rental assistance to qualified candidates who make 30 percent of the median income for the county. For example, a typical family of three in the program makes $12,000 a year, while elderly clients make about $9,000.

The authority can issue 1,693 vouchers a year, one per household to go out and find a place to rent with monetary assistance from the agency.

But the agency always issues more vouchers than allotted in an attempt to help more people while expecting a certain number of clients to leave the program, partly because they no longer need help.

Last year, the agency used 99.9 percent of those slots, compared to the national average of 96 percent, Harmon said.

But the agency ran into problems this year because the rate of people leaving was much lower than in the past 10 years, according to Harmon.

In fact, 30 percent fewer households have left the program this year compared to last year, Harmon said.

"Why fewer people are dropping off is not clear to us," he said.

To keep its budget in line, the authority has taken temporary steps that include:

Stopping issuing new vouchers.
Telling some who had been approved but had yet to receive vouchers that they will have to wait for help.
Freezing its waiting list, which has 2,200 families on it.
Cutting rent subsidies for those clients who receive $150 or less per month. That means families with the highest incomes in the program will be affected the most, Harmon said.

These measures will continue until Dec. 2, when the authority's fiscal year ends.

"We've heard from people who are concerned," he said. "The reason we run into this problem is we try to help as many people as possible and we push it right to the edge."

Those people include Bill Henkel, director of the new Homeless Service Center in Bellingham, which started taking referrals this summer and works to get people into permanent housing.

"We have seen people who are faced with eviction because of that," Henkel said of the cutback for clients who received $150 or less.

But he also praised the Housing Authority for trying to minimize the impact, noting that the number of people not leaving the program is a big one.

"I can't help but suspect that a big part of that is how hard it is to make ends meet this year," Henkel said.

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Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008

More renters needing financial help strain Housing Authority program

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