HUD chief talks housing policy at Bromley Heath

Jeremy Schwab

United States Housing Secretary Alphonse Jackson visited the Bromley Heath public housing development last week amidst uncertainty about the future direction of public housing policy in the United States.

Invited to the tenant-run development by longtime friend and Bromley Heath Tenant Management Corporation Executive Director Mildred Hailey, Jackson faced tough questions from the crowd of tenants and others following a brief speech at the development.

Public housing resident Sharon Jones questioned Jackson on his support for a bill to allow housing authorities to impose five year term limits on Section 8 voucher holders. She said if she loses her voucher she will be unable to afford a home in Boston due to the city’s expensive housing market.

“There are homebuyer classes, and I’ve been through those,” said Jones. “But because I have some things on my credit history and the way my income is, I am [only] able to make it on my subsidy.”

Jackson says he wants public housing authorities to assist residents in finding market housing. He responded to Jones with an anecdote about a Philadelphia mother with two daughters who earned her bachelor’s degree but had trouble transitioning from public housing to home ownership.

“Her credit was atrocious,” said Jackson. “We had to work with her for [months]. Today, she owns a three-bedroom house. President Bush visited her home. She’s been in it almost two years.”

In addition to the prospect of term limits for public housing residents, another change on the horizon for Boston public housing tenants is a shift in HUD’s so-called Fair Market Rent, which determines how much the Boston Housing Authority pays landlords to house tenants with HUD Section 8 mobile vouchers.

Due to a change in the way HUD calculates FMR, many Boston tenants’ voucher values will go down starting in September.

Sandra Henriquez, administrator and CEO of the BHA, said that tenants who have already tried to move into apartments with the new lower rate of subsidy have not faced much resistance from landlords.

“We are finding that even though FMRs came down a lot tenants who are using vouchers to relocate are not having trouble finding as good or better units,” she said.

Henriquez attributes landlords’ willingness to take the vouchers to a slowdown in the housing market.

But other potential changes in the Bush administration’s housing policies have public housing supporters more worried.

President George W. Bush has proposed major funding cuts to Section 8, the program that houses some of the nation’s lowest-income individuals.

Congress did not pass Bush’s proposed cut. But observers, including Henriquez and National Alliance of HUD Tenants Director Michael Kane, worry that major cuts could still strike in the future.

“We are very concerned about the growing deficit, expenditures on the war and the impact on domestic spending,” Kane told Jackson following his speech at Bromley Heath. “We are told the president asked his department heads to prepare deep cuts for fiscal year 2007.”

Jackson sought to allay Kane’s concerns.

“As of today, the president has not made one request about what the 2007 budget will be,” he replied. “So we don’t know. I remember they said in 2005 he was going to cut the budget, then in 2006, and it hasn’t happened. That’s the best I can tell you.”

Jackson, who has run multiple housing authorities and spoke of the importance of empowering tenants to run their own developments, promised that he would resign from his post if the administration enacts policies that would hurt tenants.

“I will do nothing that I am absolutely conscious of that will hurt residents,” he said. “And if I believe what is going on will hurt residents, I will resign.”

Federal funding cuts have hit the BHA in recent years, forcing the agency to shut down an anti-drug program in its community centers and to put off repairs to most of its buildings.

Henriquez said the uncertainty about funding makes it difficult to plan the BHA’s budget.

“What I worry about is we’ve seen a virtually steady decrease in funding for public housing programs and capital,” she said. “The Section 8 program is continuing to get restructured. We are not given enough lead time in order to figure out how to implement changes in the program.”