AFFORDABLE HOUSING FUNDING — WHAT WE ARE LEARNING
 With
the help of a Collective Advocacy Grant from the Developmental Disabilities
Council, ALAW has researched public funding available to help low-income
persons with disabilities purchase or rent houses or apartments. Our
findings indicate that funding for housing for people with disabilities
is minimal and competition for funds is keen. Moreover, many public
housing programs are inconsistent with the goal of having a regular
house in a regular neighborhood.
ALAW has reviewed federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs
and Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency (PHFA) programs, researched
Pennsylvania Office of Mental Retardation funding for housing offered
to service providers, and confirmed our findings with the Technical
Assistance Collaborative (TAC), a national information resource based
in Boston.
HUD programs provide grant funds to large projects such as multi-family
housing or planned communities, and can be used for new construction
or revitalization of existing housing. A skilled developer is needed
just to execute the application package. Access to this funding is
extremely competitive, with points heavily weighted for experience
in housing development.
PHFA programs are Pennsylvania-based and include various homebuyer
programs targeted to low-income individuals with disabilities. These
programs typically have requirements, such as the buyer must have
a full-time job and must save a certain percentage of the cost of
the house for a down payment. These programs also assume that if given
some purchase assistance, the buyer can afford to carry the mortgage.
Such restrictions make these programs unavailable to most adults with
autism, who must maintain Supplemental Security Income (SSI) eligibility
in order to receive the support services they require. Beneficiaries
of SSI, a federal program that provides income maintenance to adults
with severe disabilities, are limited in how much they can earn, and
how much they can save. SSI recipients' incomes will thus remain too
low to pay for the mortgage and upkeep on a house, and they are not
allowed to have savings of more than $2,000.too little for a down
payment. As a result, most adults with autism cannot utilize PHFA
homebuyer assistance programs.
TAC researched the cost of rent in housing markets across the country
and concluded that individuals dependent on SSI income were "priced
out" of the rental housing market. The cost of modest studios and
one bedroom apartments would take 70% or more of their income. TAC
also confirmed our finding that public housing funding streams for
people with disabilities have long waiting lists nationwide, and that
there is a scarcity of affordable housing.
Housing Choice Vouchers are a program administered by county housing
authorities using HUD funds. Vouchers are intended to enable low-income
persons to rent apartments on the open market, with HUD subsidies
closing the gap between what they can afford to pay and the rent for
a modest apartment. Rental vouchers are targeted to people in the
lowest income bracket: 75% of vouchers in a county are reserved for
households below 30% of the median income. Only 25% of the vouchers
may be given to households with 30% to 50% of the median income. Some
counties offer Mainstream Vouchers, a new program specifically for
people with disabilities. Voucher programs have waiting lists of from
two to five years. But even when their turn comes, recipients are
often unable to find a landlord who will accept the vouchers within
the time allowed, and therefore they lose out. Another major obstacle
of this program is that if three SSI recipients live together in order
to reduce the cost of support services, their combined income would
be over the cutoff for 75% of the caseload in their county, possibly
making them ineligible for a voucher. Two recipients living together
would make the cutoff, but if they earned even a small amount of money
by working, they too would be pushed into an income level that might
make them ineligible. Eligibility is no problem for an SSI recipient
living alone, but the cost of support services for people living by
themselves becomes too high for anyone needing more than occasional
assistance.
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Inconsistent eligibility
rules make it difficult for a person with autism to qualify
for both support services and housing assistance.
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The Department of Public Welfare (DPW) currently provides housing
funding through its Office of Mental Retardation (OMR). OMR gives
its service providers down payment and per person/per month assistance
to purchase housing, and retire the mortgage, for group homes the
provider owns and operates. This housing model does not involve any
self-determination on the part of the person with a disability, however,
since the provider chooses the houses, and determines who and how
many people live there. A client who becomes dissatisfied, either
with housemates or with the service provider and wants to make a change,
loses both a place to live and services. Under a self-determination
model, a person is involved in choosing the house and the people sharing
it. A client wouldn't have to move out in order to change service
providers. On the other hand, if a person wanted to move, the services
could follow him or her to a new home. OMR is now proposing self-determination
in housing, but the funds formerly paid to providers for housing costs
will not be used to help individuals choose their own housing. The
funds will be redirected to services for people on OMR's waiting list.
This new direction will put increasing pressure on a public housing
funding system that is already inadequate to the need.
Affordable housing is becoming more and more scarce. This is due in
part to conversion of many HUD-funded projects to elderly-only (a
situation Housing Choice Vouchers were created to address, by enabling
people to find housing on the open market and use vouchers to make
it affordable). Scarcity is also due to housing projects built with
HUD subsidies converting to market-rate rents now that they have reached
the end of their developers' 20-year obligation to charge affordable
rents. These housing projects are not being replaced fast enough by
newly-constructed or rehabilitated units in order to avoid a shrinkage
of the affordable housing supply.
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