Street Roots reported today that 300 households in NW Oregon are being kicked off of Section 8 assistance, essentially rending them homeless.
On Thursday and Friday of this week Street Roots joined forces with a broad base of statewide groups, including the Columbia River Business Alliance (Twice in one week), to ask the U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to reinstate the Section 8 vouchers.
The coalition includes, the Columbia County Citizens for Human Dignity, Neighborhood Partnerships, Oregon ON, Columbia River Business Alliance, Sisters Of The Road, Rural Organizing Project, Tillamook County Citizens for Human Dignity, Columbia Pacific Alliance for Social Justice, Latinos Unidos para un Futuro Mejor, and the Western Regional Advocacy Project based in San Francisco. What makes this particular coalition unique is that many of the groups have not worked with one another before, and boiled up organically in a matter of a week.
It may be paying off.
Street Roots was told this evening that a letter went out this week from both Senator Wyden and Merkley along with Representive Wu asking the head of HUD, Shaun Donovan for immediate redress.
Earlier in the week State Sen. Betsy Johnson, who represents Northwest Oregon, told Managing Editor Joanne Zuhl, she doesn’t give a damn about the appropriate metaphor. “At the end of the day, she says, “families are out in the streets because of somebody’s bureaucratic error.”
And lastly, Street Roots was cc'd on an e-mail from a reader who wrote HUD asking for immediate action. Here's what the HUD officical had to say,
HUD recognizes how critical this situation is for NOHA and we are following up with this case at this time; however, you have to understand that these potential terminations are not related to HCV funding cuts, and that the Department neither has provided funds nor has encouraged the PHAs to lease up for 100% of their baselines, basically because Congress has not provided funds for it. Since 2005 the Department was mandated to allocate the HCV funding on a budget-based, which the PHAs have to efficiently manage to assist the most families possible.
The Office of Housing Voucher Program had a “triage-call” recently with this PHAs, and unfortunately, the facts are that this PHA did not properly managed their unit baseline and ended up over leased and over spending their budget authority, and does not want to consider cost saving measures that were provided to them in the call, which may alleviate their leasing and funding situation, and reducing the terminations.
Regrettably, at this time there are no additional funds that can be provided to the housing authority, other than the set-aside funding, which we know they applied for, but these applications are still under review and we can not assure whether they will be eligible. Given the high volume of applications (over 1,000), these notifications will not be completely disbursed until late July 2009. Some categories might be partially disbursed by the end of this month.
It will be helpful; however, for you and the advocates to encourage the NW Oregon Housing Authority to implement asap those cost saving measures that were provided to minimize the terminations to the lowest possible.
On Monday, we'll find out if the HUD officials response still stands, if in fact, Oregon legislators have responded in D.C.
Posted by Israel Bayer