Turning traditional public housing into mixed-income sites leaves some very vulnerable, say advocates for the lowest-income residents.
By MARCUS FRANKLIN
Published November 21, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - As Yvette McGowan recovers from skin cancer and treatment, the 35-year-old is raising four children on less than $300 in monthly welfare benefits.
McGowan, who once worked in medical billing, says she feels fortunate to live in a four-bedroom apartment in James Park, a public housing community on Third Avenue N. She paid $350 in rent when she worked. She currently pays nothing.
How much longer McGowan will remain in her imperfect though prized home has now become a question of anxious uncertainty.
Traditional bricks-and-mortar public housing for people living at or below poverty levels is slowly disappearing in the Tampa Bay area. The St. Petersburg Housing Authority, for example, is trying to sell 568 units of low-income housing - including James Park - the vast majority of which is public housing.
The potential sales come a few years after the agency saw more than 200 public housing apartments vanish when it rebuilt Jordan Park, another housing community.
Across the bay, the Tampa Housing Authority will have about 1,000 fewer public housing apartments when several projects under way are completed by 2006.
The gradual but steady dwindling of federally owned public housing reflects an ongoing shift by agencies away from owning low-income properties and toward buying mixed-income sites and moving residents into the private rental market with subsidized rent vouchers under the Section 8 program.
Housing officials say the redirection is vital to their survival in an era of significant drops in federal funding for public housing.
They insist the residents they serve, some already teetering on the edge of homelessness, aren't left more vulnerable. In fact, they say, residents in the Section 8 program - in which federal dollars make up the difference between market rate rents and what residents can afford to pay - may use the vouchers to live almost anywhere they choose.
"The Housing Authority is positioning itself for the future," Syl Farrell, an agency spokesman, said in a statement. Darrell Irions, the St. Petersburg Housing Authority's executive director, and Debbie Johnson, his deputy, declined to be interviewed for this story.
"Our portfolio is evolving to provide affordable mixed-income housing opportunities rather than providing a concentrated public housing product. In this era of federal funding cuts to the public housing program, it just makes good business sense for the authority to reposition itself," Farrell said.
"Additionally, providing residents with choice in their search for housing will benefit the residents and community as a whole."
But some low-income housing advocates offer a different, less sunny take. Public housing, they say, is a "precious resource" during a "huge" affordable housing crunch.
Moreover, they say, moving residents from public housing to Section 8, a program already under enormous pressure, puts residents at further risk. Families armed with such vouchers face a new set of challenges: looming threats of cuts by Congress; scraping up additional money for security deposits and paying utilities; and finding an affordable, available home to rent with the voucher in the first place.
"The federal government can take away a voucher just as easily as they give it," said Charles Elsesser, an attorney with Florida Legal Services, based in Miami. "But they can't take away a brick and mortar building. In selling the property they've given up an asset dedicated and targeted to the lowest income.
"Vouchers do not necessarily provide long-term housing for these people," said Elsesser, who serves on the board of the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the advisory board of the Florida Housing Coalition. "Housing authorities are not fairly calculating the benefits of public housing and the difficulty of using Section 8 vouchers."
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Public housing, largely built after World War II, started disappearing in earnest in the 1990s when the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development began awarding multimillion-dollar HOPE VI grants to local housing authorities. The goal was to "eradicate severely distressed public housing" and break up concentrated poverty, populations and, in some instances, crime.
The St. Petersburg housing agency received a grant to demolish and rebuild the 446-unit Jordan Park. By the time the new Jordan Park was completed, it had 209 fewer units. The Housing Authority gave most of the displaced families Section 8 vouchers.
The 82 families at James Park will get vouchers if the property is sold. But some James Park residents, such as McGowan, weren't even aware of the possible sale.
"This is a real big blow to me," McGowan said recently, standing in the shadow of her front doorway. "When were they planning to tell us, the day before it's time to move?"
Although housing officials are pursuing the sale of James Park to a San Antonio, Texas company, they need HUD's approval. Gloria Shanahan, a spokeswoman for HUD's regional office in Miami, said her office had not received the Housing Authority's request to sell James Park.
HUD has, however, received the agency's request to sell another property it is trying to get rid of.
In February, the agency put its Graham-Rogall property up for sale, citing expensive structural problems. The two mid-rises on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. S comprise 486 units: 336 public housing and 150 Section 8. Many elderly and disabled residents live in the buildings. The Housing Authority's application to sell the Graham building is being reviewed, Shanahan said.
The $11.4-million sale to Vector Realty in St. Petersburg also may be held up by a lawsuit filed in Pinellas in September by two Pasco developers who allege the Housing Authority mishandled sealed bids for Graham-Rogall.
Shanahan said the 150-unit Rogall Congregate must remain subsidized housing through 2007. After that, the property could be converted to market rate.
Both Graham-Rogall and James Park are in prime locations: near downtown, which has seen an explosion in the development and rehabilitation of housing. The "St. Petersburg renaissance," as City Council member Jay Lasita described it, has spread as far south and east of downtown as possible while still remaining in the area.
"The only place to go and still be in the near-downtown area is west," he said. "Guess what's in the line of sight in the westward movement? Graham-Rogall.
"I'm not saying the Housing Authority has no right to sell, but they need not lose sight of their fundamental mission: The Housing Authority is the line of last defense against the lack of inventory of affordable housing in the city."
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St. Petersburg housing officials say they plan to buy "mixed-income housing" with the money from any sales. But Elsesser, the attorney with Florida Legal Services, said such housing serves a different population.
"Mixed-income property tends to be for a different group of people, not the people living in public housing," Elsesser said. "We're losing the few units we have that are affordable for very, very low-income, disabled and unemployed families."
HUD classifies families earning no more than 50 percent of the area median income as "very low income." That's $25,600 or less for a Tampa Bay area family of four. Public housing residents and Section 8 recipients generally pay 30 percent of their adjusted gross income for rent. In some cases, such as McGowan's, they pay zero.
While public housing has seen its share of problems over the decades, Section 8 isn't perfect, housing advocates say.
Last year, the nation's more than 3,000 housing authorities, which Elsesser said are caught between shrinking federal budgets and people who desperately need affordable housing, didn't receive enough government funds to subsidize their Section 8 vouchers.
"Right now there's a battle in Congress as to whether to fully fund the vouchers that exist for next year," Elsesser said. "Whether or not the housing authorities will continue to have these vouchers in the future is totally up for grabs.
"I sympathize with the housing authorities' position. The federal government and HUD have been waging a war on housing authorities and public housing."
At the residential level, there are other problems as well, he said. For senior citizens and others who need smaller apartments, the Section 8 program tends to work well, Elsesser and others said.
But for larger families, such as McGowan and her four children, finding four- or five-bedroom units in the private market is impossible because developers no longer build them. Also, families can lose their vouchers if they don't find a place to rent within a period of time that varies by agency. And landlords aren't obligated to renew a Section 8 tenant's lease.
In Tampa, Leroy Moore, the Housing Authority's chief development officer, said the agency isn't serving fewer people.
In one redevelopment project alone, the agency estimates a loss of 900 public housing units once Ponce de Leon and College Hill complexes - originally a total of 1,300 units - are finished being rebuilt next year with a HOPE VI grant.
The new community, renamed Belmont Heights Estates, will contain 850 units, 399 of them public housing. The other apartments will be market rate, Section 8 and subsidized by state tax credits, Moore said.
"The exact same tenants who qualify for public housing qualify for Section 8," said Moore, adding that responsibility for creating affordable housing lies with private developers, local government as well as housing authorities. "We're serving the same population. We're not serving fewer people."
In Tampa, 8,400 families are on the housing agency's waiting list for Section 8 and public housing, mostly for the latter. More than 1,700 families fill the St. Petersburg Housing Authority's waiting list for Section 8 housing, and the list is closed.
St. Petersburg and Tampa housing officials say residents displaced because of a sale or redevelopment would get vouchers immediately without going on a waiting list.
McGowan joined that waiting list when she applied on her own in February. At the time, McGowan wondered whether she could find an affordable place large enough for her family in the private market. Now, with James Park's possible sale, her worries have intensified.
McGowan's neighbor shares her concerns. Franquell Johnson, a 28-year-old mother of two and $6-an-hour part-time telemarketer, also is on the Section 8 waiting list.
At James Park, Johnson paid no rent before recently starting her job.
"It's a stepping stone for you if you use it the right way," Johnson said of public housing. "It's helped us even though it's in such poor shape."
