The Poor are ‘Trapped’ by Budget Cuts and Less Affordable Housing
By Zenitha Prince
Washington Bureau Chief
PITTSBURGH (Saturday April 12, 2008) – Public housing, shelter of last resort for the poorest of the poor, was designed to provide temporary assistance for families regaining their footing and preparing to get back on the road toward realizing the American dream of homeownership. For African Americans in this western Pennsylvania city known for its football team and bygone-era of smoke-stacked steel mills, public housing is viewed as a trap.
“Pittsburgh gave poor Whites the opportunity to get on the wealth-building track of homeownership and had a racially-segregated response to poor Black people, which was to put them in public housing,” explained Sala Udin, a former Pittsburgh city councilman who represented the Hill District, a Black enclave.
“The choices were in the most undesirable portions of the city – the hilltops – and that was because during that time, the smoke from the factories would billow up the hillside and rest on top of the hills.”
Even worse, Udin added, “All our public housing have these palatial names – North View Heights, St. Clair Village, Bedford Dwellings – it was the ultimate insult to trap us in poverty and give these traps luxurious names.”
In an effort to offer more attractive units, cut down the congestion by reducing the number of units, and have tenants of different income ranges, the net effect is that there are fewer units available to the poor.
Housing experts say that by any name, public housing, and more broadly, the accessibility of affordable housing for low-income citizens remains a chief concern among inner-city communities in Pennsylvania.
Ask one resident, Phillip Harrison, 22, about the state of public housing and he lets out an expletive that translates: screwed up. His assessment is delivered in an explosion of blue-tinged cigarette smoke. He immediately reverts to silence, seeing no need to hurry, and sits quietly in the rickety chair planted in the courtyard. With his silence, a cacophony of background noises emerges.
A loose assembly of teenage boys on the sidewalk engage in a boisterous, expletive-laden exchange, having already scoped out the strange reporter in their midst. And the blare of televisions, radios and voices escape the windows – some covered in plywood – of the line of narrow, barracks-like, red brick buildings that is the Bedford Dwellings public housing complex.
“Too much people need houses,” said Harrison. “You can’t choose where you want to go [and] they’re putting people who don’t get along (because of gang affiliations) together.”
Housing officials agree.
“There are not enough units preserved or produced for people of low income,” said George Moses, member of the Board of Directors of the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania. “Units are being demolished but not enough is being rebuilt.”
Complexes such as Bedford Dwellings are relics of housing policies that came out of the federal government’s investment in housing and urban renewal after World War II.
In recent years, the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh (HACP) has been tearing down dense, blighted public housing buildings and replacing them with newer, less populous properties such as the Oak Hill community, a replacement for the squalid Aliquippa Terrace, and the Legacy, a new apartment complex for seniors, which takes the place of the old Lou Mason High Rise.
However, there is a downside to the new construction. In an effort to offer more attractive units, cut down the congestion by reducing the number of units, and have tenants of different income ranges, the net effect is that there are fewer units available to the poor.
“The Housing Authority has been getting out of the business of serving the people who need it the most,” said George Moses, chair of the Board of Directors of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Godina Jones, 40, a mother of three and a longtime public housing resident now facing eviction, certainly feels that the case.
Jones, who works two jobs and is going to school at night, lost her Section 8 voucher when faulty piping burst and flooded her home, causing the first-floor ceiling to collapse. Jones’ mother Laverda Hicks, who is living with her temporarily, said maintenance of the pipes was the landlord’s job, yet, her daughter was stuck with the $2,000 bill, which she has not been able to pay.
“I hate to see my daughter suffer like this. I could see it if she was just sitting down but she is a good person,” Hicks said.
“If the government is giving out this Section 8 money, why aren’t they checking out these landlords? They should make sure everything is up to par. If she was taken advantage of like this how many other people is this happening to?”
And things have gotten worse. When a normally $100-plus light bill turned into
$700-plus, the lights were turned off, Hicks said, sitting on a red sofa in a gloomy living room. The refrigerator is almost bare as rotting food was thrown away. And the landlord is threatening to evict the family if rent isn’t paid soon.
Jones’ older children, Darron and Lakeisha, who suffer from seizures and asthma, respectively, have had to forego college and other activities to work several part-time jobs. The youngest, Darronda Jett, 15, acted out her pain by getting into trouble.
“I started smoking marijuana and cigarettes because all this moving and struggle has had such an impact on me…I even attempted suicide,” she said.Jones said she is devastated by her inability to offer her children a better life.
“It’s really stressing them out that I can’t take care of them; they can’t focus on school when the light is being shut off, gas is being shut off, the house is cold and we have to keep moving,” she said.
Telephone calls to the Housing Authority seeking comment were not returned.
The fading ability of housing authorities to serve low-income families like Jones’ can be attributed to federal underfunding of public housing and voucher-based programs, said Will Fischer, senior policy analyst for the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
“In every year since 2001, funding, at the least, has not kept up with inflation or has actually been cut,” he said. “There are a lot of unmet needs; these programs only serve 1 in 4 people who actually need to be served.”
According to the CBPP’s analysis of President Bush’s 2009 budget, there is a $6.5 billion shortfall for HUD’s low-income housing efforts.
In Pennsylvania, it projects that 3,681 families have vouchers that will not be renewed (97,218 families nationwide); $54.8 million cut in operating budget ($820 million nationwide) of the state’s housing authorities and $3.4 million cut from their capital budget ($461 million nationwide). Astoundingly, the Hope VI program, which finances redevelopments of severely blighted areas like the Oak Hill project in Pittsburgh, was totally de-funded.
Because these housing agencies may not be able to pay landlords their promised subsidies, an estimated 4,018 affordable Section 8 Project-based units (148,345 nationwide) are highly likely to be lost.
Critics say that while all three presidential candidates have addressed the housing foreclosure crisis, they have not forcefully addressed the issue of affordable housing.
“No candidate is really addressing the issue of the affordability of housing,” said Moses, the Pittsburgh housing official. “Everyone jumped on the foreclosure issue bandwagon because that is out there now.”
Edward Schwarz, president of Institute for the Study of Civic Values, said he is not pleased with housing proposals advanced by Democratic presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton or John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.
“[Obama’s poverty platform] in terms of expanding the supply of affordable housing, it’s a fairly thin set of proposals [and] Hillary is busy strengthening the middle class; what we’re talking about here is for the other class,” Schwarz said. “Both of them are going to be a lot better than someone like George Bush or McCain, who will try to cut this funding.”