Housing expert says city is ‘playing with fire’

This is the third of a three-part series looking at the past, present and future of Section 8 in Middletown.

Continuing the coversation

How this program moves beyond this conflict with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development regarding the future of the city’s Section 8 program will play a role in how the city is shaped in the future. The Journal will continue its in-depth coverage on this program.

Join the conversation

Visit us online at Facebook.com/MiddletownJournal and join our conversation about Section 8 housing in Middletown.

Subsidized housing

Middletown has highest percentage of subdizied units in the state. Here’s a list of neighboring public houisng agencies (number of Section 8 vouchers in parentheses):

Here’s a list of the top five public houisng agencies in the state (number of Section 8 vouchers in parentheses):

*Includes cities of Barberton, Akron, Cuyahoga Falls and Summit County

Source: City of Middletown, October 2012 report

Cutting 60 percent of Middletown’s existing Section 8 housing vouchers would be reckless and could cost the city millions of dollars in funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, low-income and housing experts say.

City officials plan to eliminate 1,008 Section 8 vouchers through attrition in the next five years. They say Middletown is over-saturated with subsidized housing that is taxing city services, generating crime and negatively impacting the city’s image. Middletown has the highest rate of subsidized housing in the state at 9.7 percent.

The Middletown Public Housing Authority presented the plan to HUD back in October, but it has encountered some resistance from the federal housing agency. HUD has told Middletown officials to fill 95 percent of its available vouchers, or transfer its voucher program to Butler County Metropolitan Housing Authority, or face possible legal action.

But city officials recently sent HUD a letter refusing to back down from their position.

HUD spokeswoman Donna White confirmed the agency is reviewing the city’s letter, but would not indicate when or how it might respond.

Elizabeth Brown, executive director of Housing Opportunities Made Equal, a Cincinnati-based housing rights organization, said Middletown officials are “playing with fire if they continue to thumb their noses at HUD.”

Brown said for years Middletown has been “held up as a model for running the Section 8 program,” but now the city is “tumbling off the pedestal.”

“They were serving their residents. They had a need in the community, and they had been meeting the need,” Brown said. “That’s not a negative thing to say they’re successful (serving low-income families).”

Brown said HUD has the ability to cut off all of its Community Development Block Grant funds if the agency believes Middletown is not being fair with its voucher program. Middletown is slated to receive $1.4 million in CDBG funds this year, according to city records.

She said she has talked with HUD after hearing about the city’s plans and that the agency is “extremely upset with Middletown.”

“To me the simplest thing is, if the city does not want to be in the business, they should simply turn the program over to the BMHA, and let them run it for the entire county,” Brown said. “It would be a fair process throughout the county, and it gets the city out of the middle of it.”

Phyllis Hitte, director of BMHA, said she would have no comment on Middletown’s vouchers until something happens with them involving her agency. Hitte said last week that BMHA would assume Middletown’s vouchers if HUD said so because there is a need for the vouchers.

BMHA currently administers 1,111 Section 8 vouchers and about 300 portable vouchers, which are vouchers assigned to other public housing agencies. Hitte said BMHA has a 4,000-family waiting list based on applications filled out nearly three years ago.

But Middletown officials don’t want to give up control of the Section 8 program. They say they just want to run it at a reduced level.

Doug Adkins, the city’s community revitalization director, said because there is a significant poverty rate in Middletown, having no subsidized housing wouldn’t be beneficial.

“Our poverty rate is over 20 percent, and we have a portion of our population that, due to age or personal circumstances, cannot fully provide for themselves,” Adkins said. “Two examples would be low, fixed-income seniors and disabled residents.”

Ignoring the needs of those residents when federal funds and programs are available “would lower those residents quality of life and place additional burdens on city resources to fill those unmet needs.”

“The harder part is finding the balance between helping the disadvantaged without hurting the remaining residents through loss of the income and property tax base and the ability to provide core city services,” Adkins said.’’

Middletown had less than 800 Section 8 housing vouchers in December 1999, but that figure more than doubled by October 2005. City officials placed a moratorium on accepting additional subsidized housing vouchers in 2005 in an effort to stop single-family homes from being transformed into multi-family residences.

A 2005 staff report on the moratorium stated: “A major concern expressed in the master plan is the trend towards higher renter occupancy in formerly owner-occupied neighborhoods. This trend has been coupled with disinvestment in the same neighborhoods.”

Butler County Treasurer Nancy Nix, who served on Middletown City Council when the moratorium was introduced, said it’s “anybody’s guess” what will happen if Middletown is allowed to reduce the total number of vouchers to 654.

“I hope that (HUD) would understand that we are out of balance and let us reduce it to a reasonable amount,” Nix said. “There is no reason that Middletown should be the Section 8 capital of the state. It’s a continued strain on our services, and it hinders our progress to be a more vibrant community.”

But critics of the city’s plan say eliminating the vouchers could create more problems than it solves. Cutting the vouchers would pull an estimated $6 million out of the local economy in funds paid to the city’s 400 Section 8 landlords. It could potentially create more than 1,000 new residential vacancies and displace more than 1,000 low-income families.

“The program participants, for the most part, are people who have lived in the city for generations and generations,” Brown said. “And why should people who have lived in Middletown for generations be kicked out of the city, or fell like that’s what’s happening?”

Miami University Oxford professor Dennis Sullivan, whose expertise is in poverty, public and urban economics, said he has not heard of any public housing agency attempting to reduce vouchers. Typically, you hear of communities needing more, he said.

Sullivan said Middletown’s attempt to cut 60 percent of its vouchers, or roughly 200 a year for the next five years, is a lot in a relatively short period of time. He questioned where program participants would go if the voucher assistance is cut, but also said he disagreed with concentrating Section 8 vouchers in one area of the county.

“I think it’s a very telling thing that so much of Butler County’s Section 8 housing is sitting in the northeast corner in Middletown,” he said.

John Spring, director for the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, said the city’s proposed cuts would greatly affect those who need help the most.

“Generally, cities are suffering, having hard times economically,” Spring said. “Often times, the people that get blamed are the people at the brunt of the issues, the ones in poverty. (Governments) say if those people just weren’t here, then we’d prosper.

“The people who use Section 8 are likely people who’ve lived there for generations,” he continued. “It’s a question of whether Middletown will take care of its own people. The other question is: What happens when we get rid of affordable housing? It creates homelessness, and not homelessness of people coming into the city, but their own people.”

Section 8 allows people to move out of blighted areas and gives them a hand up and a chance to become productive citizens, Sullivan said.

“People are concerned that Section 8 will be a vector that carries blight like a disease,” Sullivan said. “That doesn’t mean that’s the case.”

Brown said Middletown needs to concentrate on economic development, bringing in new businesses with new jobs, and the city’s 23 percent poverty rate will drop.

“That’s where their time and energy should be,” she said.