We Need Affordable Housing. Not subsidized Housing
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posted by Bob at Saturday, April 21, 2007
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Saturday, April 21, 2007
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24 Comments:
11,000 cram onto rent aid wait list
St. Paul housing agency stunned by demand as it takes first new names in 5 years
BY JENNIFER BJORHUS
Pioneer Press
Article Last Updated: 04/20/2007 11:19:06 PM CDT
They jammed the phone lines, fired off e-mails and filled the waiting room - in just two days in April, nearly 11,000 people rushed the St. Paul Public Housing Agency to claim a spot on the waiting list for Section 8 subsidized low-income housing.
Agency employees had anticipated great interest when they briefly opened the waiting list April 10-11 for the rental-voucher program. The waiting list had been closed for five years. But the size of the demand has nearly overwhelmed staffers, said Lyle Schumann, director of the housing agency's resident services.
"I don't think anybody expected we'd get 11,000 names," Schumann said. "I thought it would be somewhere in the 5, 6 or 7,000 range."
The rush underscores a serious deficit of low-income rental housing in the Twin Cities as the great U.S. housing boom caves.
Not only have Minnesota incomes been falling and rents rising, but developers during the go-go home construction period of recent years backed away from building rental housing, shifting instead to building more-profitable condominiums, said one local affordable housing expert.
Still other builders were busy converting existing apartment stock into condos. As for incentives for private builders, existing low-income tax credits aren't enough to profitably build apartments and charge rents low enough for the Section 8 market, said Howard Goldman, director of multifamily housing locally for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Chip Halbach, executive director of the St. Paul-based Minnesota Housing Partnership, said the situation is something of a double-whammy. From 2000 to 2005, the number of apartments in Minnesota that rent for $700 a month or less fell by 60,000 units - a 22 percent drop. During that same period the median income of Minnesota renters, adjusted for inflation, fell from $31,588 to $26,755 - a drop of about 15 percent, Halbach said, citing yearly U.S. census data.
You don't have to tell Bridgette Jones about the squeeze. Jones is housing coordinator at the Catholic Charities Family Service Center in Maplewood, a shelter handling about 55 people. On April 10-11, clients were lined up at the two phones in the center's lobby to get on St. Paul's Section 8 wait list.
"Everybody in the Twin Cities was trying to call," recalled Jones. "Whenever one person got through, they tried to pass the phone to everybody ... and at times they got cut off. It was very chaotic."
Two other agencies are now braced for a similar flood of applicants. The Metropolitan Council, which handles Section 8 applications for some 100 smaller communities in Ramsey and Hennepin counties as well as all of Anoka and Carver counties, opens its waiting list next month, the first time since 2001. The Minneapolis Public Housing Authority opens its Section 8 list at the end of the summer, the first time since 2003.
The timing appears to be a coincidence, officials say. The Met Council said it opens its waiting list when it falls below 1,000; St. Paul opens its list when it is around 600 to 800.
HUD's Section 8 program - now officially called the Housing Choice Voucher Program - subsidizes rents charged by private landlords who participate in the program. Families contribute 30 percent of their income to rent, with the federal government paying the rest, up to a limit.
It's separate from public housing programs, where local housing authorities own property and offer reduced rents. The two programs generally have different waiting lists.
In St. Paul, Section 8 generally is limited to people earning less than half the metro area's median income. For a family of four, that's about $39,250. For a single person it's $27,500. A significant number of people on the program are elderly and disabled.
Congress appropriated $15.9 billion for Section 8 for the current fiscal year and Section 8 spending has been steadily increasing, according to the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. In 2005, HUD changed its formula for allocating money to local housing authorities, resulting in a drop in funding at many local agencies, the association said. HUD said it's addressing the issue.
Schumann, at the St. Paul Public Housing Agency, said his group's HUD funding has been cut each year since 2004.
Meanwhile, demand for the program grows. The St. Paul agency will be collecting all the applications it mailed out until the end of the month. After all 10,700 new applicants are entered into the agency's computers, they will be randomly assigned numbers and placed on the official waiting list. In the next six to 10 weeks people who applied can expect a letter telling them their number and estimated wait time, Schumann said.
It's not pretty.
"People can expect to wait five years in the city of St. Paul," said Schumann. "How sad is that?"
Jennifer Bjorhus can be reached at jbjorhus@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-2146.
For you people who read here that have the ability to make a difference.
SAVE us taxpayers some money and open the old jail as a rooming house for the working class.
Save us tax payers some money and with the stroke of a pen bring back private sector rooming houses.
OR, open the old jail as a jail and start locking up the hopeless , discouraged poor who turn to crime to make ends meet.
Instead of spending all that money on section 8 build REAL affordable housing to sell to the poor. Give them stock in our communities and hope for their futures.
Hey Bob lets make it profitable for private landlords who have vacants.There are many rentals that sit vacant.Building more for none profit organizations will just push out more of the private landlords.
My guess is that the city will just keep adding onto the jails and prisons rather than help the not so fortunate individuals to have a productive future. I think they feel like they have more power and control the way they currently operate so I don't think we will see the city changing things to help people. I would refer to the city as being more focused on their selfishness rather than what would work and what people need.
Its a shame because there are many individuals that could become productive if given the oppertunity and the moral boost to be able to move forward in a positive manner yet those needs seem to be overlooked over and over again.
Its to bad more people didn't think like you Bob!
Nancy everybody has an opportunity to succeed or fail in life.You could have went either way but chose the right path after some bad choices.Its not the governments job to watch over people and direct them in the right direction.The only person who has responsiblity over themselves are themselves.The government doesn't put enough people in jail.I believe they should build more and keep putting people in there untill they get a clue.Remember it is a privilege to live crime free and when you break the rules you have to pay.Leaving criminals in society risk corrupting our innocent ones.
You're right, it's not the govrnement's responsibility to "watch over people and direct them in the right direction," but niether is it the purpose of government to keep watching over ones shoulder and doing everything they can to make sure you never find the "right direction" and that is exactly what St Paul does to people.
Your assertion that people are responsible for themselves is correct, but along with that responsibility is the right and expectation that they have a fair and honest governemnt, and in St Paul, that is not the case.
11:55 you are correct we all do have the right to make choices for ourselves, unfortunately some people are not strong enough as a individual to this on their own. That is where I feel in the long run it would actually serve as an investment for the government to help these individuals with becoming a productive citizen.
Yes I also agree that when a person breaks the law they should be arrested and face the consequences that fit the crime commited, not were you are set free as long as you become an informant for the officers, criminals are not trained or educated for that job which makes it very dangerous for society when it is an option that many law enforcement pressure criminals into especially when drugs and guns are the issue.
I am a strong believer that incarceration is not always the answer either, it has been noticed that in many situations a person enters a correctional facility only to become a more serious offender upon being released, there are traits that a person is acceptable to learning from other inmates, instead for the non-violent offenders I feel it would make more sense to focus on rehabilitation programs.
I consider myself very fortunate that I was able to move forward, but I did not do it alone either, I did it with the help of a very supportive program through the Substance Abuse Court.
Sorry I forgot to mention that I must also thank and give credit to many individuals here at A Democracy that were supportive of me through the ordeal also.
To 12:27 PM
A fair and honest government, BS.
Case after case of some one in city government, failed to help the people that has a true grip.
But that's fine, as long as it's not you.
St Paul government does not help anyone when it comes to business people, they make it difficult and chase business out of town. This has been the mindset of St Paul government long before this city council and it's not just the landlords they try and discourage, it's anyone who wants to make a profit.
Very interesting statistics! At the very same time poor people's incomes are falling and the available housing stock available to these folks is dropping like a rock, the City of St Paul is working overtime to condemn and destroy what's left of the available "affordable" housing. Way to go St Paul!
OK, I should of mentioned it doesn't help our city's for the entrenched bureaucrats to be doing away with affordable housing stock in the private sector.
Folks we are going to have waves of crime like never seen before. The crime strategy in both City's is destroy the nest get rid of the critter. The nest being that of poor people.
City council woman Barb Johnson was on KSTP yesterday spewing her ignorance of deconcentrating section 8 housing in North Minneapolis. The thought is, get rid of poor people and you get rid of crime. She was also blaming landlords for social ills.
She was building a RICO case against the City of Minneapolis and she was to stupid to even know it.
Deconcentrating affordable housing DOES NOT GET RID OF CRIME!
The root of all our social ills is impoverished young men with out the skills to lead a productive life. We can keep locking them up over and over and live with the damages of their careers in crime, or we can head it off with opportunities to turn the page in these young men's lives.
Tell me who's family members will be killed by one of these guys who is out of prison between crimes?
Who maybe the next burglary or robbery victim because we thought just locking someone up would help them turn their lives around.
We need to make bold changes in how we treat juvenile male offenders. The goal should be to detour a life of crime.
Garden slugs are the most slimy thing, we can thing of.
Oooops, city government is also.
We need people to stand up and do their share.
No one is helping others fight the fight, Just themselves.
We say what is going on, and the others say no way.
Nancy tried to speak-out about the wrong doing that happened to her, and then they just tore down her home.
By tarring it down, their went her evidences.
I have a movie of my home, no home but proof of the slime balls and the misuses of city power.
Nancy does have the proof she needs. Just prior to the city tearing the house down, the landlords suing the city had a photogrpaher go into that house and photograph every inch of it. I saw some of those photos. Turhktdchey even photographed inside the cabinets and under the sinks. They then had a structural engineer and a contractor do an inspection of the home. The owner Nancy also had another inspector do a report on it. I think she has more proof than she'll ever need.
7:09 PM Says
Good work, all that helped Nancy.
"Nancy", you're really generating
power.
In St Paul, "Affordable Housing" means white middle class people earning $40,000+ a year. If your earning less than $20,000. the city would rather you be homeless somewhere than have a roof over your head.
The more houses they knock down and the more people they displace, the more shootings and robberies they are going to have. When you make situations hopeless for people, they have nothing to lose, and when they have nothing to lose, you have a problem.
A child who is raised in an uneventful home with good loving parents and positive role models, will be less likely to become violent, and involved in criminal activity. This type of an individual may have less if any chance of becoming mentally ill or suffer any type of issue with their health and the way in which their lifestyle turns out.
On the other hand, however, if you have an individual who is raised in a broken home or a poor single parent home, who is surrounded by violent social influences and has been taught criminality as methods of survival, may have more of a chance of being incarcerated, experience near death situations due to the violent lifestyles and this in turn can cause some people to have some sort of mental breakdown or episode.
The brain produces much more cells than it needs compared to the amount that is paired to make cerebral connections, and stimulation from the environment—which is translated into neuron activity—is vital for the forging of normal neural development. This finding can help to explain why some children who are deprived of certain positive stimulants in their early life may suffer from irreversible damage of some kind later on in life. These mentioned, and other similar factors are just a precursor to the type of behaviors which are displayed further along in life and in development.
$40,000 a year is not middle class. If you try to raise a family on that you'll find yourself on government assistance for food at least.
If $40,000.00 is not middle class, then what class are the many people earning $15,000 to $20,000?
To go a step further, what about the people who are on welfare and get less than $12,000.00 a year? What has the city been doing for these people's housing needs lately other than demolishing the homes that were once available to them? Your idea of the people starving and on the the "Dole" would be viewed as "Luxury" to the welfare crowd!
I'm glad you asked about that. They're called working poor.
These people work full time, earn shit, and because of the cost of living has risen quite a bit over the wage rates, two adults can work full time and still be on some type of government assistance if they have two kids to take care of. The working poor are always forgotten because of the non-working poor needs and the tax concerns of the middle and upper classes.
Remember that next time people start bitching about raising the minimum wage, or the need for a living wage.
11:55 AM Said
The government doesn't put enough people in jail. I believe they should build
more and keep putting people in there until they get a clue. Remember it is a privilege to live crime free and when you break the rules you have to pay. Leaving criminals in society risk corrupting our innocent ones.
--------START HERRE-------------
Start with All branches of Government, In Elected Office, and the Government employees.
No "Get Out Of Jail Free" Cards Aloud, for these Political Officials.
Walk a mile, in my shoes. The American Indian man that is in his 60's, with one leg and in a wheel chair.
You might have see him downtown St.Paul or in Minneapolis
He has more abilities getting though life, then most people on earth.
This person has it bad, when he buys a new pair of shoes or moccasin's, he only needs one.
We could never know how he feels, because we that have two legs, two feet, and two shoes.
We don't know how he feels and most people in city government , just don't care.
Do You care about other people, besides yourself.
He has told me many times, that he is very happy.
Because he knows Jesus, as his savior.
How do people feel when they lose their homes, and become homeless.
Now, walk in their shoes.
You make a very good point...most people have a hard time relating to what's going on in the city because it hasn't happened to them or their loved ones. To make it worse, a lot of people don't care as long as it does not affect them. What a suprise they are in for! When this whole thing comes to an end it will have an effect on every single person who lives and pays taxes in St Paul, and it will continue for years to come.
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