For families who depend on Section 8 vouchers, the loss in aid could be unkind.
By MARCUS FRANKLIN
Published March 21, 2004
TAMPA - Janice and Earl Johnson live on combined monthly disability payments of about $1,100, and their monthly rent runs $800. Utilities total as much as $260 a month. Then there's food and a telephone.
To make ends meet, the Johnsons have relied on a federal housing program since 2000. A voucher covers $678 of the rent for their three-bedroom Progress Village home.
"When you're on a fixed income, it's a big help," Janice Johnson, 47, said of the housing assistance. "I couldn't be here if I wasn't in the program. I couldn't afford it."
But Section 8, the program the Johnsons and 1.9-million other families depend on to cover rental costs in the private market, faces a proposed $1-billion in cuts next year and structural changes that some say could hurt hundreds of thousands of families.
As many as 250,000 low-income, older and disabled families receiving Section 8 vouchers could lose assistance next year under President Bush's 2005 budget proposal, according to projections by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. About 10,545 Florida families - at least 1,700 in the Tampa Bay area - would lose help, according to the center, which analyzes the impact of proposed legislation on low- and moderate-income families. In Florida, 87,000 families have Section 8 vouchers.
Aside from eliminating families from the program if cuts and changes take effect, housing agencies may be forced to require tenants to pay higher rents, which might be impossible for some.
"It's going to have a devastating impact on us, as far as I'm concerned," said Jerome Ryans, executive director of the Tampa Housing Authority, which administers Section 8 vouchers to about 4,200 families. "If you don't have enough vouchers or enough money to pay for vouchers, then you're going to have to put people out on the street. It's going to put me in a position of serving less people."
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development officials, however, deny the overhaul and cuts would hurt families. Instead, officials say, they would reduce waiting lists by moving more Section 8 families out of the program and into self-sufficiency.
The $1-billion in cuts would be made up by greater efficiency, officials said. For example, the nation's 2,500 local and state housing authorities would set rents they would pay based on local rental markets. Rents now are set based on HUD's fair market rent data, often at rates higher than local markets, said Donna White, a HUD spokeswoman.
Under the program, housing agencies receive a federal voucher for each family. The proposals would eliminate the voucher system and replace it with more flexible block grants.
Critics say changing the 30-year-old program's structure removes tenant protections, including rent control requirements and rules ensuring the poorest families get most of the vouchers.
St. Petersburg and Pinellas serve a total of 5,100 vouchers with another 2,900 on both agencies' waiting lists. More than 3,000 are on Tampa housing's waiting list, Ryans said.
