In an effort to control costs, Washington has changed the funding formula for Section 8 vouchers.
Section 8 is a federal subsidy that helps people afford low-income housing.
Because of the change, local housing officials are facing budget shortfalls that could force up rents as soon as July.
And those who have spent years on a waiting list for a Section 8 voucher are being told they'll have to wait even longer.
New Hampshire Public Radio's Dan Gorenstein has this report.
Many New Hampshire low-income housing advocates are using the word 'crisis.'
The reason... the federal government has changed its largest housing assistance program known as Section 8.
Dean Christon heads the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority.
T. 28
1:34 ...If you are a person at risk of becoming homeless, b/c you can't get access to assistance you otherwise would have gotten, yeah, that's a crisis.
This April HUD announced what amounted to a radical shift in its funding formula.
The key difference is under the old system, HUD guaranteed it would pay a percentage of market rate rents.
Now, in an effort to control costs, the Department has capped the rents it will pay.
Congress authorized those changes as part of an overarching appropriations bill.
HUD says Congress wanted to stem annual 10-15% increases in section 8 costs.
But while complaints about the change continue to come in, HUD spokesperson Donna White says the situation is not dire.
8:41 I am not going to say that this change that Congress mandated is at a crisis level. We expected when we made the announcement that less than half of the housing authorities will experience any change.
That's true in New Hampshire.
Only about 25% of the state's housing authorities will feel the affect.
But the New Hampshire Housing Authority, the largest, distributes 30% of the state's vouchers.
And it's staring at a $90 thousand dollar a month shortfall beginning this July.
According to the new formula, HUD will cap rents at $555.56 cents per unit.
But that's 30 dollars less than the Housing Authority's is actually paying for rent.
Multiply that $30 dollars by 3200 vouchers, and Christon says his office may have to make some drastic changes.
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:34 so what we have to figure out is how do we make that 90 thousand dollar deficit go away. Is it feasible to do it, by not putting people on the program,...or do you do it by reducing the individual cost per client. Which means you have to look at tenant contributions. So those are the things that are being struggled with.
In addition, some 30 families had already effectively received vouchers, but had them revoked once HUD announced its changes this spring.
They're able to pay rent thanks to temporary assistance, but those subsidies are due to run out.
And with no new vouchers, the 30 could face eviction as early as the end of the month
21 year old Champaign Gillis is in a social workers office, sitting with her two children.
She just found her apartment in Concord at the end of April.
Now sitting with her two children she says she's got a handful of options, all of them bad.
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11:45 me calling up local churches to see if they are willing to donate money to pay next month's rent, and tell them my story...get a roommate, I've only got one bedroom, so a roommate is out. And moving out, I really don't want to do. So my options are getting a job.
The biggest problem with getting a job right now, says Gillis, is that it would likely interfere with the classes she's taking to develop a career.
Gillis says she wants to either work with kids, or go into the medical profession.
But if she's working, she can't get that training.
T.5
6:44 I want to be able to go to school to get what I need to get to get a good paying job. I don't want to make no minimum wage. And that's what I am going to have to do to make next month's rent. And cause my family can't help me...and I just have no one I could help me, so it's me and myself, plus my two kids. And if I can't make next month's rent, I am going to have to end up moving back into the shelter. I do not want to. I don't want to lose my apartment.
Patsy and Ken Chenette are also concerned about losing their apartment.
Unlike Champaign Gillis, they neither have a section 8 voucher nor are they one of the families that were promised one.
They are just one of the thousands of New Hampshire families waiting for a voucher.
Before the changes, the New Hampshire Housing Authority had a 2-4 year waiting list with 6400 people on it.
The Chenette's have been on the list for over a year now.
And even though they live in an apartment owned by a non-profit that keeps rents artificially low, they are concerned that their rent keeps creeping up.
Patsy Chenette.
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9:10 it can't go much higher for us to live comfortably. That's not buying the food we should buy. We don't buy a lot of food. We buy what we have to have to survive. But I'm supposed to eat the same time of day, and a bunch of this and that, you can't do all that when you are supposed to spend so much on groceries. You just eat what you can eat. I'm not saying we are poor yet, but it's going to get that way.
Housing advocate Elliot Berry with New Hampshire Legal Assistance isn't surprised to hear stories of people cutting back on food, or medicine to keep their housing.
And he argues that Congress and HUD shouldn't be surprised at the rising housing costs.
He points out one of the reasons behind Section 8 vouchers was to get rid of public housing.
Eliminating public housing meant losing cost controls.
Basing housing assistance on market prices, says Barry, was bound to drive up costs.
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9:12 ... naturally what happens if you are going to allow people to take housing vouchers and use them in better neighborhoods, it shouldn't be a big surprise that the cost to subsidize that apartment...is going to be higher. But that was supposed to be the conscious choice that Congress and HUD made in making a housing choice voucher...now they come back and say 'oh my god! This is too expensive.'
Berry suggests lawmakers may want to consider other forms of public housing assistance, if they want to control costs.
8:20 I think we need to take a good hard look at a broader range of housing subsidy options that includes a bigger sector that is public or nonprofit.
In addition to HUD's recent changes to the Section 8 program, the Bush Administration has submitted its next budget.
It calls for a 1.1 billion dollar cut to the program in 2005.
For NHPR News, I'm DG.
