Middletown City Council approved the transfer agreement to both counties, which ended an 18-month dispute with HUD last July. As part of the agreement, the city will close the Middletown Public Housing Authority.
The Butler Metropolitan Housing Authority said, via news release, that the Nov. 1 change will apply to all current MPHA housing voucher participants and landlords in Butler County. However, this change will exclude vouchers held by those residents in the Robin Springs Development.
All check processing tasks including software conversions have begun and checks from BMHA will begin Nov. 1, although direct deposit will not be available initially, according to the release. BMHA will also be the point of contact for residents and landlords.
The release also noted BMHA and the Warren Metropolitan Housing Authority will be working with HUD, Middletown and Nelson & Associates to complete the transaction quickly and with little disruption of services.
“By combining the management of the MPHA Housing Voucher program with the currently managed BMHA program allows us to more efficiently and cost effectively manage all voucher programs for Butler County.” said Phyllis Hitte, BMHA executive director, in the release. “It will also allow us to better serve the residents by ensuring that the appropriate audits and inspections are completed in a timely manner and within HUD regulations.”
Compliance with HUD regulations allows BHMA to better enforce voucher program guidelines to appropriately allocate housing, ensuring that the needs of veterans, elderly, disabled and other higher risk individuals are handled at a higher priority, the release said.
HUD officials had maintained Middletown was out of compliance with the agency’s regulations by not having at least 95 percent of its available vouchers filled. The city had a compliance rate of only 82 percent, according to HUD.
Of the 1,662 vouchers managed by MPHA, BMHA will be adding 1,312 vouchers for an approximate to the more than 1,100 vouchers they managed as of July. WMHA will add 350 to the approximately to the approximately 450 vouchers that they managed as of July.
“This is a good thing,” said Dave Gully, Warren County administrator. “We have not had any additional vouchers in at least 15 years.”
Gully doesn’t expect any significant changes and said the additional administrative fees the agency will receive will help to offset overhead costs. He also said that it will help the county in the future for future voucher recipients as some users leave the program.
Middletown officials were adamant about their desire to reduce the amount of Section 8, or low-income housing, citing the fact that the city had more Section 8 housing per capita than any city in Ohio and almost double what the rest of Butler County had. Section 8 accounts for more than 14 percent of all available housing in the city and nearly 50 percent of all subsidized housing, according to 2013 data from the city.
The city paid out around $10 million a year in funds from HUD to hundreds of landlords who rent properties to voucher-holders. Middletown was one of two cities in Ohio that still managed its own public housing authority.
The MPHA’s October 2012 plan — which was to reduce its voucher allocation by 1,008 over the course of four to five years — was the city’s response to a HUD letter saying they were out of compliance with assigning Section 8 vouchers to families. The city was required to have at least 95 percent of its housing choice vouchers awarded to an applicant family. In August 2012, the city was around 82 percent compliant. By July 2014, the city said it was closer to 60 percent as it had not reassigned unused vouchers.
Many of the city’s landlords accused officials of using bully tactics and unusually stringent regulations to force them out of the program.
Staff Writer Michael D. Pitman contributed to this report.
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