KENT KRIEGSHAUSER/The Register-Mail

Don Tomlin, executive directior of the Knox County Housing Authority, is shown in his office.

Mobile homes of a different sort

Housing authority looks for relief from Section 8 portability

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

By RON JENSEN

The Register-Mail

Taking advantage of spring break from school, many residents had packed up the kids and gone to Chicago. Gone home.

Don Tomlin, executive director of the Knox County Housing Authority, has long known that the housing areas under his watch are refuges for people from the Windy City.

Currently, he said, 58 of the 176 occupied family housing slots are filled with Chicago-area families.

"Word of mouth is the big one," Tomlin said when asked how people end up 200 miles from home. "Family. Friends. I think we're on speed-dial at several (homeless) shelters in Chicago."

The exodus from Cook County to Knox County picked up steam in recent years when Chicago demolished much of its public housing for stated reasons ranging from its dilapidated condition to the value of the real estate on which it sat.

"It's thousands and thousands of people," Tomlin said of those displaced by the demolitions.

The wait for public housing in Chicago now is akin to that for Chicago Bears season tickets. It may take years. Many who tire of waiting find their way to Galesburg.

"I was staying at a shelter and they had us fill out forms for housing down here," said Bonita Hoskins, 29, who arrived from Chicago on Jan. 20 with six children ranging in age from 6 months to 13 years. "I came down here for a change. It's a better environment for my children."

"It's easier to get housing here than in Chicago," said Delisa Brown, 29, who moved last June with two children, a daughter, now 10, and a son, now 2. "My cousin told me about it and a friend told her."

Tomlin does not begrudge anyone their right to safe, clean and comfortable housing. He's spent nearly 30 years making sure people have that access.

But the presence of so many out-of-towners can have a cost.

The cost of Section 8 mobility

In 1974, Congress responded to an increase in the cost of low income housing by amending the U.S. Housing Act of 1937 to include what is known as the Section 8 program. In it, qualified tenants, many moving from public housing, pay up to 30 percent of their income for rent and a local housing authority using federal money picks up the rest.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development provides the money which housing authorities funnel to landlords willing to rent to low income families.

The KCHA now receives about $85,000 per month from HUD to manage about 280 vouchers.

That's fine, Tomlin said, as long as the tenants receiving the money stay in Knox County, where the average monthly rent subsidy paid by the housing authority is less than $300.

But Section 8 vouchers are portable under the law. That means, Tomlin said, a tenant who receives the voucher in Knox County and stays for one year can move anywhere in the United States where there is a housing authority, including, he pointed out, Samoa or the Virgin Islands, and Knox County is still on the hook for the rent.

That's no problem if the tenant moves from Galesburg to Ottumwa, Iowa, or French Lick, Ind., where rents may be similar to those here. But often the people who move here from Chicago will spend one year in Section 8 housing and return to Chicago, where the rents can be $1,000 per month or more.

"We send that housing authority the rent and most of the administrative fee," Tomlin said.

The KCHA now pays $5,071.21 each month for rent for six out-of-area families, four of them in the Chicago area with average rents above $1,000 and one each in Florida and Minnesota, all families who originally received their Section 8 vouchers in Knox County. That's enough, Tomlin said, to pay 15 to 20 rents in Knox County.

In the past, the KCHA has paid for as many as 18 families who had moved out of the county. Tomlin expects the current number to rise again soon.

As a result, Tomlin said, the KCHA often decides not to fill all 280 vouchers in case families "port" their vouchers to areas with higher rents. Some people waiting for Section 8 housing may not get it.

In defense of voucher portability

HUD defends the portability of the Section 8 voucher. Anne Scherrieb, a spokeswoman in HUD's regional office in Chicago, said portability allows people to move from areas of poverty to areas where jobs can be found. They can move away from crime-ridden areas to safer neighborhoods with good schools.

"The portability is one of the hallmarks of the Section 8 program," she said. "That's the overarching reason for it."

But Tomlin sees people rushing right back to the same climate of crime and poverty.

"People want to be with their friends and family," he said. "They're reluctant to pick up and move."

Scherrieb doubts many are going back to the same neighborhood.

"I'm not sure they are going back into the same poverty area they came out of," she said.

The Chicago housing authority, she said, counsels people to find affordable housing in better neighborhoods.

Also, Tomlin said, the local authority must send 80 percent of the $40 monthly administrative fee to the receiving authorities for each voucher, which leaves only $8 at home for administering the vouchers. That's a drag on the budget no matter where the voucher holders end up.

Until recently, HUD provided enough funds from a reserve account to handle any portability problems, Tomlin said.

"As the cost of the program went up and down, you asked for more money and got it. No problem," he said. "It's only been in the last couple years it is really tight."

An attractive program

Some of the families now in Galesburg's public housing hope to join the Section 8 program. The housing is often better, but the greater benefit is the ability to move after a year.

Brown hopes to get a Section 8 voucher by the fall and leave the McKnight Street area. She doubts, however, she'll return to Chicago a year later. Maybe, she said, she'll move to Iowa.

Hoskins, too, hopes to get a Section 8 voucher this year and may or may not move 12 months later. She likes Galesburg. But if she does leave, she probably won't return to Chicago. The suburbs, however, are a possibility.

By no means is Knox County alone. The Register-Mail contacted housing authorities around the country at random and found two right away in similar straits.

Pat Donchez, Section 8 administrator for the housing authority in Bethlehem, Pa., said people move there from New Jersey, New York and Philadelphia, where rents are much higher. They spend one year in Bethlehem under the Section 8 program and return to those high-rent areas.

"We can't help people from our local area," Donchez said.

Karen Mattson, director of the Housing and Redevelopment Authority of Austin, Minn., near the Iowa border, said people move to Austin from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, but also from Chicago. At times, as much as 25 percent of her Section 8 waiting list has been from out of state.

She said, "It's a huge problem and it's something that's going to have to be dealt with at the legislative level. It's just killing housing authorities."

Changes may be coming

Housing authorities may get that helping hand later this year if legislation introduced in the House on March 29 becomes law. The Section 8 Voucher Reform Act of 2007 would require housing authorities to absorb families who arrive with vouchers in hand, said Linda Couch, deputy director of the National Low Income Housing Coalition in Washington, D.C., an advocacy group.

Currently, the receiving authority can refuse to pay for the incoming family's voucher, leaving it for the sending authority to pay.

"We think this is a good idea," Couch said of the bill. "We think it will help housing authorities to support portability."

Until that bill passes, however, HUD allows local housing authorities some leeway in administering Section 8 housing vouchers, which many are using.

Mattson said local officials found one simple, yet effective way of ensuring local families get the vouchers.

"We don't mail out applications anymore. You have to come pick them up (at the office)," she said.

Few people want to travel any distance simply to pick up a form, she said.

Also, she said, they bluntly tell Section 8 applicants they will not be allowed to "port" their vouchers to more expensive areas.

Bethlehem's housing authority also put its foot down.

"We tell them, 'I'm sorry, you can't move to New York,' " said Donchez.

If someone insists on moving, she said, the Bethlehem housing authority will allow it only if the receiving authority agrees in writing to absorb the tenant into its budget.

Tomlin has instituted a plan in Knox County which gives priority to people likely to stay in Knox County. Applicants for the Section 8 vouchers get preference for current Knox County residency and for employment. That plan just began this month, so it is too soon to tell if it will have an impact.

Tomlin has another idea. When he's explained it to housing officials like himself, he said, he gets a good response.

"Once you exercise portability, you have two more years to be on the program and then you're cut off," he explained. "It makes perfect sense to me. That would give people pause. 'Do I really want to boogie out of here?' "