Human Right to Housing

No housing program can be adequate or complete if it fails to provide for any substantial segment of our population. We can maintain neither a prosperous industry nor a prosperous nation if we do not bring better housing to more people.
- Pres. Harry S. Truman

There Is No Place Like Home:
Revisiting Our Commitment to Housing the Poor
Full Report

DISCRIMINATION LAWSUIT AGAINST SAN FRANCISCO FOR HOMELESS SHELTER PROGRAM THAT EXCLUDES DISABLED PEOPLE

NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 27, 2008

Contacts:
Disability Rights Advocates:
Sid Wolinsky (510) 665-8644
Julia Pinover (510) 665-8644
Western Regional Advocacy Project:
Paul Boden (415) 621-2533
Zelle, Hofmann, Voelbel, Mason & Gette LLP:
Daniel Mason (415) 693-0700

DISCRIMINATION LAWSUIT AGAINST SAN FRANCISCO FOR HOMELESS SHELTER PROGRAM THAT EXCLUDES DISABLED PEOPLE

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — A landmark suit filed in federal court in San Francisco today charges that San Francisco’s homeless shelter program “blatantly discriminates” against disabled homeless people. Although the majority of all homeless people are men, women, and children with disabilities, the suit is the first in the country to broadly challenge the homeless shelter program of a city as a violation of civil rights statutes that protect people with disabilities.

The suit alleges that the cornerstone of San Francisco’s approach to homelessness — the embattled “Care Not Cash” program that is the brain child of Mayor Gavin Newsom systematically excludes homeless men and women with disabilities.

Care Not Cash gives participants priority shelter reservations and case management services. Homeless disabled persons who receive social security or veterans benefits cannot participate in the program, even if they desperately need shelter. People with disabilities are thus denied any opportunity to use a major portion of the resources in the shelter system and are denied access to the hundreds of reserved Care Not Cash beds.

Disabled persons are also denied any opportunity to make a 45-day shelter bed reservation, a privilege that Care Not Cash gives to eligible participants. In addition, these disabled men and women must compete with thousands of others each night for a chance to occupy one of the scarce shelter beds available. As a result, homeless people who need shelter the most are the ones who are least able to gain access to the services they so desperately need.

The class action suit, seeking relief on behalf of disabled homeless persons in San Francisco, was filed by Disability Rights Advocates (DRA), a Berkeley-based nonprofit law center, and Zelle, Hofmann, Voelbel, Mason & Gette LLP, a major national litigation law firm. The suit seeks to end discrimination against disabled people and does not request money damages.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP), a non profit coalition protecting the interests of homeless people, and an individual with disabilities who is homeless in San Francisco.

Sid Wolinsky, Litigation Director for Disability Rights Advocates, commented:
“San Francisco’s homeless ‘program’ is a bureaucratic mess. Under Mayor Newsom’s system, disabled people are more likely to be forced onto the streets and alleys of San Francisco. No amount of smooth talking can hide the fact that there are only 1,300 shelter beds for some 3,800 single adult homeless people. No wonder the last report of the National Coalition for the Homeless named San Francisco the ‘eleventh meanest city in the United States.’ The City has created a cruel shell game in which everyone is a loser.”

San Francisco has a very serious shortage of shelter beds. The City guarantees to anyone enrolled in Care Not Cash that they can obtain one of over three hundred beds specifically set aside for them. Because disabled men and women cannot participate in Care Not Cash, however, men and women in wheelchairs or with mental disabilities must attempt on their own to locate some other available bed, travel to that location carrying everything they have, endure lengthy waits until late at night, and often be told that no bed is available. Even if they find a bed, they cannot keep it. They are forced to repeat the process each day. Because homeless persons with disabilities often lack the mental and physical fortitude to overcome the obstacles which San Francisco imposes, they are often left unsheltered.

Dan Mason, an attorney with Zelle Hofmann commented: “It is shameful for a city with the civil rights history of San Francisco to treat people with disabilities so unfairly. People denied shelter beds are the most fragile shelter seekers — those with disabilities.”

People with disabilities, both mental and physical, make up a very high percentage of the homeless population in San Francisco. In a 2007 survey conducted by the Coalition on Homelessness, 50% of individuals in the shelter system self-identified as having a disability. Homeless advocates estimate that a far larger percentage of homeless people are disabled.


Paul Boden, Director of WRAP added, “Homelessness is an emergency. It is a crisis. For San Francisco to programmatically discriminate and to make this vital life sustaining service unavailable to people with mental health disabilities is unconscionable.”

The full text of the complaint is posted at the Disability Rights Advocates website: www.dralegal.org.

Beyond the New Deal

Published on Friday, March 21, 2008 by The Nation
by Howard Zinn
“Our nation is in crisis, just as it was when Roosevelt took office. At that time, people desperately needed help, they needed jobs, decent housing, protection in old age."
Beyond the New Deal

The de-construction of public housing in S.F.

The plan from their view is to replace old units (they don't say how many!) with 2200 Hope IV type units. (Full Article)

Daly's proposal for 50% more affordable housing in Bayview (Full Article)

Windy City gets $49 Million

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson today presented Chicago Mayor Richard Daley with $49 million in grants to support more than 150 homeless programs in the Windy City.(Full Article)

VA. 10 yr. plan shows flaws

6 years after 10 yr. plans, only 48 of 800 units built.
(Full Article)
Page 1
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Mass. Governor Spends $10 Mil. to end homelessness

Government to use "Band-Aide" method throughout state. (Full Article)

N.Y.C.'s matching fund program may be flawed

Gotham program lays out carpet for homeless, but may just pull it out from under their feet!
(Full Article)

CT. to receive $2 Mil. for new projects

State to get $24 mil. for current programs and $2 mil. for new projects. (Full Article)
And S.C. city receives $2 mil. (Full Article)

Fla. Section 8 vs. Public housing

Freeze on vouchers in state capitol. (Full Article)

Doubled and Tripled-Up On The Reservation

From the Minn. Public Radio.
Homelessness has always been a enduring problem on reservations around the nations. Minn. has released some tough numbers a recent report.
MPR Article

Obama stands-up for down and out vets

Obama has a new committee that will be looking into the way veterans are being treated in the United States. Article

The American "Nightmare"
Veterans pursue the dream, but don't have a place to live. Article

Serving your country may get you served. Article

Bush set to veto veterans funding? Article

New generation faces homelessness Article

Lying liars and the lies they tell

A fact check on HUD’s “News Release” Wednesday 11/7/07

Today Alfonso Jackson, Secretary of HUD, borrowed a few pages from Interagency Council on Homelessness Executive Director Phil Mangano as he released a HUD report claiming an 11.5% decrease in the numbers of chronically homeless people from 175,914 in 2005 to 155,623 in 2006. He claimed 20,000 people moved into transitional and permanent housing between 2005 and 2006. This is directly attributed to HUD and local continuums of care creating more supportive housing units and, “breaking the vicious cycle of homelessness for those who have lived on the streets as a way of life,” as well as better data collection. He further claims HUD awarded “$286 million to 1,100 programs that house and serve individuals experiencing chronic homelessness… creating 4,000 new units of permanent supportive housing.” (You might be tempted to ask how 20,000 people fit into 4,000 units but wait we’ll get to that.) He also claimed that since 2001 the Bushies, “have awarded $9 billion to support thousands of local housing and service programs throughout the nation and is seeking a record $1.6 billion… for FY 2008.” He says this is a 41% increase compared to 2001. He then refers to the, “comprehensive shelter and street point in time snapshots,” as a, “powerful tool to gauge the progress in meeting the homeless challenge and creating innovative housing solutions in response.” He then repeated the mantra of, “754,000 persons homeless on any given night.” Note that the last two sentences are the only ones that say “homeless” with the chronic label in front of it.

So, now a little fact checking:
HUD’s mission statement says they are, “the nation’s housing agency”..”… creating affordable housing opportunities for low-income Americans.” So let’s start there.
We’ll use the 2001 timeline that is referenced in the press release since that is when Bush took office:

1. Since 2001 HUD has spent $0 dollars on the development of new public housing units while 100,000 units of public housing were lost to demolition, sale or other removal between 1996 and 2006.
2. While many readers will think that this report means that homelessness has decreased by 12%, in reality HUD is only talking about people considered “chronically” homeless—a subpopulation the Department estimates to comprise 10% of the entire homeless population—meaning that we’re really talking about a 1.2-2.7% change.
3. While HUD maintains that 754,000 people total are homeless on any given day the Department of Education documents that 904,000 children alone attend public school everyday that do not have housing. While HUD’s number is based on a point-in-time count, wherein volunteers scramble to count all the people they see and think might be homeless, the DOE’s number comes from actual documentation of names and Social Security numbers. When HUD’s numbers are so far off, an apparent decrease of 1-3% means more or less jack.
4. 22 of the continua of care that applied for funding from HUD this year got no assistance whatsoever, meaning that all new chronic homelessness programs came at the expense of these communities.
5. No amount of data shuffling and reprioritizing of the homeless populations will ever change the fact that we need to restore the $52 billion a year we were spending on affordable housing before HUD become so damn proud of how great it was doing in ending chronic homelessness. We didn’t have any such thing as chronic homelessness…we had housing.

Legislative Update: HUD Definition of Homelessness

BACKGROUND:

The "Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act (HEARTH)," H.R. 840, reauthorizes the McKinney-Vento Act’s HUD Homeless Assistance Programs. H.R. 840 provides greater decision making at the local level and more closely aligns the HUD definition of homelessness with other federal agency definitions (including the U.S. Department of Education).

In contrast, the Senate bill, S. 1518, the Community Partnership to End Homelessness Act (CPEHA), contains a complex, restrictive definition of homelessness that requires those who are doubled-up or in motels to make multiple moves in order to gain eligibility and codifies permanent housing set-asides that deny communities the ability to meet the needs of all homeless populations that they identify.


UPDATE:

Two new documents are now available regarding the HUD McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act reauthorization. Please find attached:

1. A "Fact Check" on the HUD definition of homelessness. This document sets the record straight on the effort to update HUD definition of homelessness.

2. An organizational sign-on letter of more than 40 child and youth organizations supporting an updated HUD definition of homelessness.

NPACH Alert: Support the HEARTH Act - House Hearings Held, New Materials Available

Yesterday, the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity of the House Financial Services Committee held its second hearing on reauthorization of the HUD McKinney-Vento Act Homeless Assistance Grant Programs.

Four new documents are now available regarding the HUD McKinney-Vento Act reauthorization:

1. NPACH testimony from the October 4 McKinney-Vento reauthorization hearing.

2. A "Fact Check" on the HUD definition of homelessness. This document sets the record straight on the effort to update HUD's definition of homelessness.

3. A "Fact Check" on HUD funding and the "chronic homelessness initiative" that clarifies key points in the debate.

4. An organizational sign-on letter from 44 child and youth organizations supporting an updated HUD definition of homelessness.

These materials, along with a brief comment on the hearing, are available at the NPACH website, at: www.npach.org

ACTION NEEDED:

Please ask the House to take action on the HEARTH Act, H.R. 840. To find out if your Member of Congress has signed on to H.R. 840, visit: H.R.840


If your Representative is a co-sponsor, please call their office to thank them, and ask that they urge House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank and Housing Subcommittee Chairwoman Maxine Waters to pass the HEARTH Act and bring it to the House floor.

If your Representative is not a co-sponsor, please ask them to become one - the more co-sponsors we have, the more likely it is that HEARTH will move forward. Contact information for all House Members is available at http://www.house.gov If your Representative is interested in co-sponsoring HEARTH, they should notify Kathleen Taylor in the office of Representative Julia Carson or Lauren O’Brien in the office of Representative Geoff Davis.

For more information, visit http://www.naehcy.org/update.html

W.V. Discusses H.E.A.R.T.H. Act!!

Advocate says legislation needed to help homeless in rural areas:
This article(in full) is a start of a new line of talks between D.C. and local advocates.

Providing housing to homeless saves money

AUGUSTA, Maine --Providing housing for Maine's homeless costs money, but it results in overall savings thanks to the reduced cost of social, medical and other services, according to a study commissioned by the Maine State Housing Authority.

Full Story:
Cuts the average costs of services they receive in half.

Support the HEARTH Act

Support the HEARTH Act: Congressional Hearings Oct. 4 and Oct. 11

Background:

The "Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act (HEARTH)," H.R. 840, reauthorizes the McKinney-Vento Act’s HUD Homeless Assistance Programs. H.R. 840 provides greater decision making at the local level, more closely aligns the HUD definition of homelessness with other federal agency definitions (including the U.S. Department of Education), expands resources for emergency shelter and supportive services, provides a framework for greater homeless prevention activity, allows communities the flexibly to implement a range of housing solutions, and makes HUD policy more sensitive to the needs of children, youth, and families.

In contrast, the Senate bill, S. 1518, the Community Partnership to End Homelessness Act (CPEHA), is flawed. It contains a complex, restrictive definition of homelessness which requires those who are doubled-up or in motels to make multiple moves in order to gain eligibility; it codifies permanent housing set-asides that deny communities the ability to meet the needs of all homeless populations that they identify; and it excludes community planning provisions that would ensure participation by homeless education liaisons and also help ensure that homeless children and youth are able to exercise their educational rights.

Legislative Update:

The House Financial Services Committee, Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, will hold two hearings on reauthorization of HUD's McKinney-Vento homeless assistance grant programs. The hearings will take place on Thursday, October 4 at 10am, and Thursday, October 11 at 2pm.

Ms. Pittre Walker, NAEHCY Board Member and Homeless Liaison for Caddo Parish Schools in Shreveport, Louisiana, will testify at the October 4 hearing. Her testimony will be available from the NAEHCY web site prior to the hearing. Diane Nilan, President of HEAR US, will testify at the October 11th hearing. Other partners, including the National Policy & Advocacy Council on Homelessness, the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and the National Network for Youth, also will provide testimony. Both hearings can be viewed via webcast, by going to: http://financialservices.house.gov/hearings_all.shtml

Recommended Action:

Please ask the House to take action on the HEARTH Act, H.R. 840. A list of the current 78 co-sponsors can be found here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HR00840:@@@P

If your Representative is a co-sponsor, please call their office to thank them, and ask that they urge House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank and Housing Subcommittee Chairwoman Maxine Waters to pass the HEARTH Act and bring it to the House floor.

If your Representative is not a co-sponsor, please ask them to become one - the more co-sponsors we have, the more likely it is that HEARTH will move forward. Contact information for all House Members is available at http://www.house.gov/ If your Representative is interested in co-sponsoring HEARTH, they should notify Kathleen Taylor in the office of Representative Julia Carson.

Refining McKinney

Room for Improvement in Senate Markup

Mobilizer readers know that 2007 marks both the twentieth anniversary of the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act, the first major federal legislation directed towards ameliorating homelessness, and the time to reauthorize HUD-administered McKinney Homeless Assistance programs. Regrettably, despite the availability of McKinney resources, more people now experience homelessness than when the act first was authorized in 1987. Although McKinney alone will never end homelessness (only dramatic changes in the nation’s housing and health care policies will accomplish this goal), the legislation is important and must be strengthened. Last Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs unanimously passed S.1518 – the Community Partnership to End Homelessness Act (CPEHA) – which would reauthorize and amend McKinney Homeless Assistance programs. Several results of the Committee’s mark-up session require action from advocates.

Defining McKinney

The Senate markup would expand HUD’s definition of homelessness to include certain individuals and families living in hotels or motels along with those “doubled up” due to economic hardship. Though this expanded definition is welcome, there is still room for improvement. The new definition would only permit doubled up families to be considered “homeless” (and thus eligible for McKinney resources) if they have moved three times in the past year or twice in the past 21 days. The specificity of this language no doubt will prove difficult for communities to measure and enforce and could prevent many eligible individuals and families from accessing HUD’s homeless assistance programs. A less restrictive definition would reflect more accurately the realities of homelessness and very precarious housing.

Realigning McKinney

More than five years ago, the Administration announced the laudable goal of ending chronic homelessness by 2012 – without appropriating resources sufficient to support this noble effort. In FY2007, Congress appropriated $1.442 billion for McKinney programs – an increase over the previous year, but hardly the investment necessary to end homelessness. The current markup of S.1518 would increase the authorization level to $2.2 billion. In addition to this increase, the bill rightly requires thgat funding for permanent housing subsidies created through the McKinney Act be renewed through the Section 8 account rather than through McKinney – thus reserving a greater portion of McKinney dollars for new supportive housing and new and on-going services. Although a step in the right direction, the proposed increases are not sufficient to fund existing projects working to end and prevent homelessness let alone important new projects necessary to get people off the streets and back into the mainstream. The National Council calls upon Congress to appropriate at least $3 billion for McKinney Homeless Assistance programs.

House Reauthorization

In contrast, the House of Representatives is considering a different piece of legislation to rewrite the laws of McKinney—one that the Council and other national homeless advocacy organizations have endorsed because it is more comprehensive and better equipped to address the complicated task of ending and preventing homelessness. Introduced by Congresswoman Julia Carson (D-IN), H.R. 840, the Homeless Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act contains an expanded definition of homelessness that includes individuals and families living in hotels or motels and “doubled up” situations without the restrictive language that defines how often a person must move to be considered homeless, such as the language that exists in the Senate bill (CPEHA- S.1518). In addition, HEARTH reauthorizes McKinney Homeless Assistance programs at $2.5 billion and provides communities with flexibility in using their McKinney funds to address their community’s needs, rather than allowing HUD to dictate how the money must be used, provisions that are not include in the Senate bill. The House Committee on Financial Services subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity has schedule two hearings, beginning next week, to discuss McKinney reauthorization.

ACTION:

• Read the National Council’s policy statement on Housing (HERE)

• Call your Senators TODAY to enlist their support to strengthen McKinney and to back other measures necessary to end homelessness. Urge them to pass language more accurately reflecting the number of homeless Americans by including everyone lacking a place of their own due to financial hardship. Ask your Senators to support increasing McKinney authorization to $3 billion. Find your Senator at www.senate.gov or call the Capitol Switchboard 202-224-2131.

• McKinney alone will never end homelessness. As you encourage your Congressional representatives to pass as strong a homelessness assistance package as possible, be sure to communicate the need for broader national policies promoting access to affordable housing, comprehensive health care, and livable incomes for all. Only through these measures will we prevent and end homelessness for good.

• For more information contact the National Council’s Health Policy Organizer, Adrienne Breidenstine at abreidenstine@hchmd.org or 443-703-1337

Atlanta Housing Authority moves to demolish housing projects!!

As the Atlanta Housing Authority moves to demolish another wave of housing projects, what does that mean for the city's poor?

BY MARA SHALHOUP
Published 09.19.07

Ray and Sandra Sellers were displaced from their apartment in Capitol Homes in 2002, when the dilapidated public-housing complex was slated for demolition.
It's been five years since Sandra and Ray Sellers stepped out of their tattered apartment in an inner-city project — and into the brave new world of Atlanta public housing.

Their first stop was a house in Decatur, paid for with a federally subsidized voucher, where they watched the walls crumble and the ceiling fall in. From there, they used the voucher to move across town, to a gated community near the last stop on MARTA's western line. It's the nicest place they've lived – though they had to send their rebellious teenage son to live with a family friend, because they say their new neighborhood "is still drug-infested."

The Sellers had once been hopeful that they'd return to the site where their old apartment once stood, in Capitol Homes. They'd lived there for 15 years, until the housing project was torn down in 2002 to make way for a mixed-income community called Capitol Gateway. The Atlanta Housing Authority promised that many residents would be able to move back into the new development, on Memorial Drive between Grant Park and downtown.

But even then, the Sellers were skeptical about their odds of re-entry. "My own personal belief is that they wouldn't let us back," Sandra Sellers said at the time. "They're looking for people who can pay top dollar."

The Sellers were among six displaced public-housing families interviewed by CL in 2002, when Capitol Homes was the city's ninth housing project to have been scheduled for demolition. Two more were around the corner. At that point, the numbers of original residents trickling back to the first of the redeveloped communities were low, hovering around 10 percent.

Today, of the approximately 5,000 families who ultimately were displaced in the public-housing demolitions, only 332 live in the new mixed-income communities that went up in their place.

One of the reasons why so few residents returned was the housing authority's strict terms. The Sellers, for example, say they were turned down because they'd been late paying their utilities at the house in Decatur. Families also can be barred from re-entry due to a drug conviction (past or present), unemployment (unless you're disabled, which the Sellers are) and poor credit history – some of the most common misfortunes that plague the poor.

Now, on the eve of the city's second major wave of public-housing demolitions – a mass razing of 12 more projects that will reduce the number of public-housing units from a former high of 14,800 to an unprecedented low of 4,800 – the fate of families such as the Sellers could be a harbinger for the thousands that will follow.

Surprisingly, the Sellers' situation mirrors that of a majority of public-housing families who used a voucher in the wake of displacement: The home they've found away from the projects is superior to the one they were forced to leave.

At the Peaks at Martin Luther King, many of the Sellers' neighbors pay full rent. The grounds are well-manicured. There's a pool. The train is a five-minute walk. The Sellers even have their own washer and dryer.

"I don't look to move no time soon," Sandra Sellers says.

More than a decade ago, the Atlanta Housing Authority took a dramatic turn in philosophy: It decided to start razing its housing projects and scatter the residents throughout the city using housing vouchers to help them pay their rent.

Starting in the early '90s, the AHA began to amass more than $200 million in federal grants, mostly through the now-discontinued HOPE VI program. The grants were used to tear down blighted projects and partner with private developers to build properties where residents paying full rent live alongside government-assisted tenants. To date, Atlanta lags behind only Chicago in the amount of HOPE VI grant money received and the number of public-housing units razed.

For the AHA's new public-housing vision to work, it needs residents who share the Sellers' experience. But distrust among residents – including a formal complaint that the agency is pushing low-income blacks out of the city in violation of the Fair Housing Act – still stands in the way.

"It's an agenda to gentrify the city," says Terence Courtney, who works with low-income families through the nonprofit Atlanta Jobs with Justice. "The housing authority has done whatever it could to create a justification for mixed-income communities that aren't really mixed-income. They just keep a few token folks."

In the first decade after the housing authority announced its intention to tear down the first of what will be 23 housing projects by 2010, there was scant evidence to show what happened to the displaced residents. Did their lives get better or worse? The answer to that question would help determine whether spending millions of federal dollars in the name of breaking up concentrations of poverty and inching low-income families toward self-sufficiency actually worked.

The more obvious upshot of the demolitions has been unprecedented economic growth in the city's urban core. The Atlanta Housing Authority makes no bones about having shifted its priorities from serving the poorest of the poor – the traditional role public-housing authorities have played – to improving communities. Thus, in some ways, the housing authority now performs less like a social-services agency and more like an economic-development one.

The shift in philosophy echoes back to Washington, where federal housing policy has backed away from serving the lowest of low-income families and moved more toward leveraging federal funds with private dollars. Not everyone is a fan of that model.

"The results ... were not met with unanimous approval," according to a 2005 Brookings Institution study that looked at HOPE VI projects across the country. "In particular, questions arose over the extent to which the original public housing families had benefited. ... Evidence was limited and inconclusive [as to] whether their life situations had improved."

Or, as Courtney puts it, "Private corporate forces want to take control of the city's assets to benefit themselves, rather than the people who need them."

In the past two years, however, there have been a handful of other studies – including one focused solely on Atlanta public-housing residents – that analyzed what happened to the displaced families. The findings suggest that families in Atlanta fared surprisingly well.

When a resident was relocated to demolish public housing and rebuild a market-ready development with a reserve of low-income units, the resident was given two options: move to another public-housing community or accept a voucher for subsidized rent, called Section 8, which can be used at any eligible property in metro Atlanta.

Critics argue that the use of Section 8 vouchers is troubling. If residents who rely on vouchers can't find a willing landlord, for instance – or if they're convicted of certain crimes (including any drug conviction) or fall too far behind on rent or utilities – they will lose housing-authority assistance. And once lost, it's nearly impossible to get back.

The vouchers also offer an opportunity for slumlords to be guaranteed a steady, federally funded rent check by coaxing Section 8 voucher holders into substandard properties. Those who hold vouchers pay only 30 percent of their income for rent, which seldom covers even a third of what they owe; the government picks up the rest. And though annual property inspections by AHA are supposed to weed out the worst Section 8 rentals, that hasn't always happened.

In an attempt to figure out how displaced residents with vouchers were faring, Danny Boston, a professor of economics at Georgia Tech, set out in 2001 to track 1,235 families who had lived in three demolished housing projects: Clark Howell Homes near downtown, John Egan Homes on the Westside and East Lake Meadows just beyond East Atlanta. Boston compared the fates of those families with the fates of another 1,483 living in traditional housing projects.

And he found that the demolition of public housing actually improved the lives of residents who once lived there.

While some of the displaced families he tracked did wind up losing public-housing assistance, they lost it at the same rate – roughly 50 percent – as families who remained in housing projects. What's more, those who moved away from the projects with the help of vouchers were more likely to find a job (17 percent were employed before they moved, versus 45 percent six years after), to earn higher incomes (median salaries nearly doubled, to $14,000), and to live in at least a slightly better neighborhood (as measured by poverty and employment rates), according to the study, published two years ago in the Journal of the American Planning Association.

Boston also cites recent research showing that families who used vouchers saw improvements in other significant areas: health, happiness and safety. In Chicago, for instance, residents who left public housing with the help of a voucher experienced lower rates of obesity and depression.

"There are psychological and physiological changes taking place as a result of being relocated," Boston says. "Most of the families who had vouchers didn't want to come back."

Critics of the AHA's demolition plans say the new public-housing model isn't as promising as it might seem. To them, the use of so many vouchers puts public housing in a precarious balancing act.

Larry Keating, an emeritus professor of city planning, also at Georgia Tech, has published several studies on the early effects of HOPE VI in Atlanta. He says replacing hard public-housing units with vouchers endangers the future of government-assisted housing – at a time when rising property values, which can be attributed in part to the revitalization of old housing projects, have made it more difficult to secure housing for the poor.

By some estimates, the city is suffering a shortage of 81,000 affordable housing units (those with rents less than $600). What's more, the Atlanta Housing Authority's waiting list for a Section 8 voucher has been closed since 2001 – meaning that the newly poor, or those new to Atlanta, have almost zero chance of getting one. Over the past five years the list has only decreased from 24,000 names to 22,000. (Displaced housing residents get to bypass the list.)

And while the neighborhoods in which vouchers are being used are often a step up from the neighborhoods the families left, the improvement is not always vast. Boston's study found that the mean poverty rate in neighborhoods where vouchers were used was still 28 percent, and the employment rate was only 38 percent.

Nor are vouchers working to spread low-income families across the city. Not even close.

Nearly 8,000 of the 9,600 vouchers being used in the city are located in just 10 of the city's 100-plus ZIP codes. Those 10 ZIP codes are clustered in neighborhoods in south and west Atlanta, where there are immense pockets of poverty. Not surprisingly, there are no vouchers being used in upscale neighborhoods such as Buckhead, Druid Hills and Ansley Park.

Some housing-authority critics, including state Rep. and Clark Atlanta University professor Bob Holmes, fear Atlanta's housing crunch is pushing voucher holders into the suburbs.

"Several thousand low-income African Americans have been relocating outside the city as a result of the Atlanta Housing Authority's HOPE VI revitalization," Holmes wrote in the preface to 2005's Status of Black Atlanta.

Yet the housing authority provided CL with statistics showing that only 12 percent of the vouchers it oversees are being used outside the city of Atlanta. But those stats don't take into account that when a voucher holder moves to another jurisdiction, the voucher sometimes transfers to that jurisdiction's housing authority. AHA spokesman White couldn't say how often those transfers might occur.

In addition to Keating's belief that vouchers are taxing the city's supply of affordable housing, he also is skeptical of the decision to swap standing housing units with vouchers, which he believes are more susceptible to federal funding cuts.

"Since we got started with this [public-housing] program in the '30s, we had accumulated almost 15,000 units," Keating says. "Those are real assets that can provide housing for lots of people for a long time. It's just tragic to throw that away."

Both Boston and White say there's another way of looking at the equation.

For years, the feds have been cutting funding for traditional public-housing units, leaving crumbling and sometimes abandoned apartments in their wake. Rather than perpetuate that blight, the housing authority replaced those communities with ones that have drastically altered urban life.

Take Centennial Place, the former site of Techwood and Clark Howell Homes. Violent crime in that neighborhood – which Boston says once measured 37 times the national average – has been slashed to below-average rates. Boston points out that the revitalization cleared the way for neighboring attractions such as the Georgia Aquarium and the new World of Coke. And according to White, the first-ever public-housing child from the neighborhood is in this year's freshman class at the university a few blocks north: Georgia Tech.

"People can sit there and criticize what might happen, but they need to look at what is happening," White says. "It's not even a philosophical disagreement. Congress could just as easily stop funding the hard units, and we would be right back to where we were. So you tell me: Which is the better approach?"

Unlike the residents of the 11 public-housing projects to have been torn down since 1994, those in the 12 projects currently on the chopping block will have one fewer option for relocation: They aren't being given the opportunity to move back into the revitalized communities.

That's because neither plans nor funding for new construction at those sites exists.

Instead, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is allowing the demolitions to go forward with the confidence that the Atlanta Housing Authority will be able to shop the empty lots to developers – and eventually partner to build communities that contain some low-income housing. In the past, the new developments set aside 40 percent of units for public housing, though not exclusively for original residents.

That's one of the things that really riles Shirley Hightower. She's losing the community where she has spent the past 14 years so the land can be developed by the best bidder.

Hightower was 18 when her parents moved her and her 11 siblings to Bowen Homes, off the old Bankhead Highway on the western edge of the city. At the time, the project was only six years old – and Hightower was eager to get out. She married soon after moving in, and eventually bought a house in Decatur with her husband.

Nearly 20 years later, in the early '90s, Hightower fell on hard times, and she and her five children moved back to Bowen. Since then, she has become president of the Bowen Homes tenant association. She has worked to stave off evictions, which she says spiked after the housing authority adopted a voluntary federal initiative requiring all able-bodied residents to either hold a job or be enrolled in school or job training if they're under the age of 62. The rule applies to those with vouchers, too.

The federal Moving-to-Work program (or CATALYST, as it's called in Atlanta) has proved challenging, particularly for single mothers with young children. Hightower says it's easier to live in a housing project than to hold a voucher under the CATALYST program. That's because in the projects, there's a strong network of friends and family who can help watch each other's children. The demolition of the projects will eradicate that social network.

"Where will our people go and where will they be when all this is over and done with?" Hightower asks. "How many of our children and our parents are going to be homeless? There's not enough affordable housing in Atlanta for them."

Last month, Hightower and Diane Wright, president of the Hollywood Courts tenant association, enlisted the help of Emory University law professor Lindsay Jones. Together, they sent a complaint to HUD alleging that the AHA's practice of demolishing public housing and replacing it with mixed-income communities amounts to discrimination against black residents, in violation of the Fair Housing Act.

"The intentional elimination of useful public housing projects occupied almost exclusively by African American families would be a double insult to the civil rights of African Americans," the letter states. "The Atlanta Housing Authority has engaged in the de facto demolition of its remaining stock of public housing projects ... [while] denying the affected tenants, who are almost exclusively African American, the opportunity to meaningfully assert and protect their rights to equal opportunity in housing."


The letter asks HUD to place a moratorium on the housing authority's demolition plans.

Jones says he's not yet received a response. Nor has he received records he requested on Wright's and Hightower's behalf from the housing authority in July. He says he was trying to obtain documents that would give an indication of the health of the Section 8 program in Atlanta.

"The lack of transparency," Jones says, "is likely to cultivate an environment of fear and distrust between the residents and the AHA."

Yet AHA spokesman White says he believes public-housing residents have newfound trust for the housing authority.

He offers as proof a recent survey of residents living in all 12 projects scheduled for demolition. When asked if they would like "the opportunity to receive a Housing Choice voucher," an average 96 percent of those who responded said yes. White says that's evidence the families want to leave the projects, and that they trust the housing authority will treat them fairly.

"I think this is actually a reflection of the sea change that has occurred," he says.

Other evidence that families are faring well can be found in Boston's research. But like some of the housing authority's claims, Boston's findings also have been questioned.

In a published response to Boston's study, University of Minnesota professor Ed Goetz challenges the merits of the research. He describes the AHA's revitalization efforts, as well as the efforts of other housing authorities across the nation, as "the highly intrusive and expensive process of forcible relocation." And he calls the improvements in the lives of former residents "modest."

Revitalization has been most successful, Goetz writes, in "reclaiming particular neighborhoods, reducing criminal activity in those areas, and significantly upgrading the physical environment." He also describes the redevelopments as having "spawned or facilitated gentrification, or served other interests of local governments" – including Atlanta's desire to clean up downtown in anticipation of the 1996 Olympics.

"What has not yet been demonstrated," Goetz states, "even by Professor Boston's study, is that the original households experience their share of benefits in the process."

Boston stands by the strength of his numbers that show improvements in the lives of families displaced from public housing. But he agrees that the impact of revitalization "is a blessing and a curse."

"As the community is improved, the property values increase," Boston says, "and it becomes much more difficult for low-income residents to maintain ownership and control."

The phenomenon can be summed up in a single word: gentrification. And Boston and others believe there are ways to offset it.

To some -- including Keating at Georgia Tech -- the only solution to tearing down public housing is to replace every unit that's destroyed with another public-housing unit. Vouchers, he says, shouldn't count.

"You don't have to build it new," Keating suggests. "Go buy some properties – they're out there – and fix them up."

The housing authority actually is proposing something similar to that. While the agency doesn't intend to buy properties, it is working on obtaining long-term leases on 5,000 units of "workforce" housing throughout the city. The apartments would be available for minimum-wage earners, all the way up to families of four who earn less than $40,000.

White points out that since public-housing residents are now required to work, the new units are comparable to those lost to in the demolitions.

The addition of the 5,000 units would bring the city's total number of public-housing units, after the upcoming demolitions, to nearly 10,000. That's about 1,600 shy of the number of inhabitable units that existed before the first wave of demolitions.

Boston says the city should take this model a step further and offer all developers incentives to set aside a certain percentage of units for low-income families. The city saw a huge surge in tax revenue as a result of the gentrification that stemmed from the housing authority's new communities. "It's literally hundreds of millions of dollars," Boston says. "That, I argue, is sufficient enough to address the people who are being adversely affected by revitalization."

Earlier this year, legislation to create those kind of incentives was introduced before Atlanta City Council. But Andy Schneggenburger, executive director of the nonprofit Atlanta Housing Association of Neighborhood-based Developers, says the incentives aren't persuasive enough.

AHAND looked at hundreds of other cities and counties that passed similar legislation, and found that voluntary ordinances "typically aren't successful at all," Schneggenburger says.

"They just don't produce the kind of numbers you need," he continues. "You can't afford to have just a slight increase. You need major production."

He's now advocating that a mandatory 10 percent of new development be set aside for low-income units – with benefits to developers to help offset the cost.

One thing is for certain: Something has to happen to stave the loss of affordable housing in Atlanta, and soon.

"Obviously, everybody wants to live in a better neighborhood," Boston says. "But we've got to do that in a way that everybody can win. And I think everybody can win, if we address specifically those who are likely to lose."

For those likely to lose – particularly the residents of Atlanta's ill-fated public housing – action will have to come fast. Or it will come too late.

"What happens when the people all come together and realize the trick that was played on them?" Hightower asks. "Why aren't people concerned? Why can't they see what's going on?"

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Subject: Senate Banking Committee Passes McKinney-Vento Legislation

NPACH Statement: Senate Banking Committee Approves McKinney-Vento Legislation

Yesterday, the Senate Banking Committee approved S. 1518, legislation to reform HUD's McKinney-Vento homeless assistance programs. If enacted, the bill would make important improvements to current federal policy on homelessness. Many of these positive changes are part of the legislation thanks to the hard work of advocates and service providers from around the country who provided comments and recommendations to Senators and their staff members. Without grass roots efforts, we would not have seen these gains.

Unfortunately, S. 1518 continues to inadequately address our concerns in three fundamental areas.

• Definition of homelessness - the bill's language requiring multiple doubled up or motel episodes in order to be considered homeless would be difficult for local communities to implement, and as a matter of policy would unwisely prevent many children, youth, and families without homes from accessing HUD homeless assistance.
• Set-asides and priorities - the bill is overly prescriptive in continuing to dictate to communities how funds should be spent, rather than allowing local advocates, service, providers, and government agencies to make these decisions.
• Community participation - an amendment to the bill deleted language to ensure that traditionally underrepresented stakeholders -- such as education liaisons, domestic violence program staff, and youth service providers -- are present "at the table" when homeless assistance grant applications are prepared. In addition, language specifically requiring the needs of homeless veterans to be considered in developing these local applications was removed from the bill.

Before the Senate passes S. 1518, improvements should be made in these key areas.

Next week, we will circulate a detailed analysis of S. 1518 as amended. Timing for the bill's consideration on the Senate floor remains uncertain. We believe that opportunities to make changes will be available, and will continue to inform you of those opportunities as they arise.

We, and many of our partners, believe that the HEARTH Act - H.R. 840 - provides a significantly better framework for McKinney-Vento reauthorization. We look forward to working with all of you, and with key House Members, to ensure that HEARTH's important provisions become law.

More HUD articles below:

HUD ANNOUNCES MORE THAN $18 MILLION TO HELP DEVELOP HOUSING FOR VERY LOW-INCOME ELDERLY