Slamming the door on the working poor
April 3, 2006
New York Daily News
Editorial
While presiding over a $700 billion explosion in annual federal spending and engineering a half-trillion dollars in tax cuts that are disproportionately targeted to the wealthy, the Bush administration got serious about slashing a few government programs. Among them was federal housing assistance for the poor.
Cities like New York have borne the brunt, and the unfair impacts are playing out in the lives of thousands of the working poor. Losses of federal funding are a primary reason why the Housing Authority, running in the red, is grotesquely hitting tenants (average yearly income $19,000) with increased fees for everything from parking to owning a washing machine.
The money cuts have now also begun to slam formerly homeless families headed by women who had the drive to start working, usually at minimum wage, as a first step toward self-sufficiency - just as they were encouraged to by city officials. For their efforts, these women face losing their apartments and being forced back into shelters with their children. "Perverse" is the word for it.
For years, the city Department of Homeless Services used federal Section 8 housing vouchers to help families leaving shelter afford market-rent apartments. But the steady slashing of Section 8 left the city without enough vouchers to go around. To replace this crucial assistance, Mayor Bloomberg last year created Housing Stability Plus, a cutting-edge program combining welfare and rental assistance with an incentive to work.
Homeless mothers received subsidies that helped them afford apartments, but the aid is pared back 20% per year, providing an incentive for the women to find jobs to make up the difference. Nobody foresaw, however, that Albany would interpret social service rules so that a woman who has two kids and earns a mere $16,000 a year loses all housing assistance. All of a sudden she has to pay her full rent, typically more than $900 a month, or roughly $11,000 for a year. That's simply impossible, even when supplemented by food stamps and the federal Earned Income Tax Credit.
In an effort to stop evictions, city officials are trying to persuade state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance Commissioner Robert Doar to change the rules. But so far, they haven't been able to find a way to help keep these families on their feet.
The state and city had better come up with something soon, because 255 formerly homeless families recently reached their first 20% aid reduction, and a few have returned to the shelter system because they can't pay their rent. It costs far more to house a family in a shelter than it would to assist that family in staying in its own apartment. Helping families who want to help themselves is a no-brainer.