The Section 8 Program:
Getting Cleveland's Welfare Recipients Into Homes is No Easy Task

Aired April 28, 1999

This is INFOhio After Nine, I'm David C. Barnett, welcoming you to Wednesday, April 28th, 1999. As we've been hearing this morning on NPR, more stories are starting to coming out of Littleton, Colorado, about the concerns of some students, and some parents, the concerns they had before the massacre began last week. Tonight, an area school system is going to be holding a community meeting to address the fears of local parents, trying to figure out how we can prevent such violence from happening here. We'll speak with the superintendent of the North Olmstead school system during today's program, but we start things off with some local housing concerns. The federal government has a number of ways to help Ohioans who are moving from welfare to work. One of the most popular, the Section 8 program, offers low-income people vouchers for rent. Recently, additional measures have been taken to allow more people to participate in the Section 8 program. But, as 90.3's April Baer reports, many Clevelanders are still being left out in the cold.

April Baer–Cleveland City Council veteran Fannie Lewis figures that the federal government has poured over a billion dollars of housing money into her central city board since 1951. All that money, she says, and the working poor of Ward 7 are still scraping for a decent place to live.

Fannie Lewis–The money that's in there can provide housing if it's going towards housing. But most of it is going for everything else other than housing. We have a lady over in one of the Section 8 houses, they overestimated her income. She is a working mother with two children, overestimated her income. After a year, they come up and say to her, "well we estimated your income over so you've got to move." And she is livid! "It's not my fault you did that." There should be some consideration given to that woman.

AB–The complaints of Fannie Lewis and others have not gone unnoticed. Last October, when Congress passed a housing budget, it made some big changes in the Section 8 program. Previously, Section 8 was only open to families making 50% of the median income level for Cuyahoga County. Now, Section 8 receivers can make as much as 80% of the median. Also, thousands more housing vouchers have been created. Doug Shelby is with the Cleveland Office of Housing and Urban Development.

Doug Shelby–The idea is to provide a situation where people who are moving from welfare to work don't have to move out of a particular unit, just because their incomes in fact their incomes have risen. What we're trying to do is obviously help people to the extent that we can move away from rental housing entirely.

AB–But there are still big obstacles, keeping most welfare recipients from the mobility that Section 8 has to offer. The first, Shelby acknowledges, is Cleveland's under-developed real estate market.

DS–The problem here in Cleveland is that - in the Cleveland area - there really is not enough of affordable housing, particularly for families. We have a vacancy rate that's frictional, at best, and what that means is that as soon as a low- or moderate-income person moves out of an affordable housing unit, somebody else moves in.

AB–Some say the extended version of Section 8 won't do much good in a market without enough rental units to go around. Gail Livingston is a Boston-based consultant for public housing, and a former employee of the Cuyahoga Metro Housing Authority, or CMHA. She points out that the federal government is more interested than ever in sending its housing clients to the private market instead of building housing projects for them to live in. A flood of new voucher users, she says, can only tighten the demand.

Gail Livingston–A lot of it's going to be market-driven. If there are low vacancy rates in any market, it's going to be more difficult for low-income people to find good housing with their Section 8 certificate, because if the market is very competitive, they're still going to be on the low end of the market. I think supply is a big issue, and it doesn't really matter so much if you need housing, whether or not it's a public housing unit or if you get a voucher-if you get a voucher, you still need a place to use it.

AB–Most welfare recipients who can find a place to use their vouchers may still be faced with a long wait. In March of 1998, HUD strips the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority of its ability to award Section 8 certificates. Federal housing officials describe the action as a response to a history of very poor Section 8 management. In the nine months that followed, no new applications for Section 8 vouchers were processed, and a long waiting list developed. HUD says new applications will be accepted later this year. Until then, it appears Clevelanders will be unable to opt for Section 8 housing. CMHA is reportedly planning to partner with the county to provide vouchers to some welfare recipients, but the agency has declined to be interviewed for this story. One observer says he sees a direct link between the housing problems of the working poor and a greater financial issue in greater Cleveland. Charles Bromly is the director of the Metropolitan Strategy Group.

Charles Bromly–There are symptoms of the pathology of race in greater Cleveland, and until we can unwrap some of the cords that are around our collective necks, it is going to be difficult to resolve these long-term issues. The economic health of our communities is dependent upon this.

AB–This spring, Bromly's group released a report on home mortgage loans, showing a dearth of activity among local African-Americans. Bromly says when he looks at the numbers, he sees evidence of a real estate market that continues to ignore those trying to fight their way up the economic ladder. For INFOhio, I'm April Baer in Cleveland.