After NYC rescinds Section 8 vouchers, the neediest suffer
Posted by , March 16, 2010 at 1:03am
After City rescinded Section 8 vouchers, dreams of poor families shattered
In a victory for two of the 3,000 people who had their Section 8 vouchers rescinded, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) has verbally agreed to provide vouchers to two women who were promised housing relief that was later denied.
One of those women, Patricia Argilagos, received a Section 8 voucher in February 2009. Although there’s a long waitlist, Argilagos received domestic violence priority, because she was living with an abusive partner. When her abuser pushed her out of her apartment window later that month, she was hospitalized with serious injuries: A broken back, broken legs, and broken arm. Because she was in the hospital and had difficulty moving, she missed the deadline to find a new apartment with her Section 8 voucher. Her friend found her an apartment, but the process was stymied by bureaucratic delays. And by then it was too late.
In December 2009, because of budget cuts the Bloomberg administration rescinded her voucher, and that of 3,000 other people given Section 8 vouchers. These vouchers were of the neediest cases: People who have recently been homeless, are relocating due to domestic violence, or are youth aging out of foster care. This is in addition to the 128,000 people currently on a waitlist for Section 8 housing.
Argilagos and her three children are still living in the same apartment with her abuser, because she feels she has nowhere else to go.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m in hiding,” she told the Update. “Most of the time, if I hear noise I jump out of my sleep. I always have to be on pills. I have a lot of problems I don’t talk to anyone about. I feel like I have a lot of depression. I don’t want to do anything.”
Despite recent City Council hearings, the housing nightmares of the some 3,000 in similarly impossible situations continues to drag on.
Argilagos is a plaintiff in Palazzo v Rhea, an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) case brought by the South Brooklyn Legal Services against New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) chief John Rhea. Palazzo’s co-plaintiff is a woman who is mentally ill with manic-depressive disorder, and also had her voucher rescinded. Although there this case was settled, there is bound to be more.
“We’re being forced into a position where we’re being forced to litigate as many cases as possible,” said Jennifer Levy, deputy project director of South Brooklyn Legal Services. “This doesn’t seem the best use of the City’s time, not to mention the fact that they’ve broken the dreams of families.”
New York City’s Section 8 vouchers are given to qualifying families through both the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and through NYCHA, which administers public housing.
Citing decreases in federal funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the lack of participants no longer needing vouchers, due to the current economy, NYCHA realized too late in the game that they did not have adequate funding to support all of the vouchers they had already given. Many of the families whose vouchers were revoked were actively searching for apartments. Some had already secured units and had simply not yet moved in.
“It’s a difficult but unavoidable decision,” Rhea told the New York Times in December, when the decision was first announced.
Can City Council help?
NYCHA at first stated its attempt to help those who may be eligible for alternative housing programs or vouchers to find other options. But after three months without significant progress, the City Council’s General Welfare Committee, the Committee on Public Housing, and the Committee on Housing and Buildings stepped in to try to get some answers at a public hearing. The Bloomberg administration failed to appear to testify in the first hearing on February 9, blatantly disregarding the families whose vouchers they had terminated.
On February 23, City Council held a second hearing, and this time officials from both the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development and NYCHA attended and discussed the Section 8 program. Again blaming the federal government, Rhea testified that they were forced to withdraw the vouchers for these 3000 families.
As of yet, most of these families are still without answers. Options are dwindling, and many of the families who have not been designated as eligible for other programs are looking at remaining in shelters as their only option.
According to Levy, City Council members Letitia James and Brad Lander are considering introducing legislation that would move the high-priority people up the list for Section 8 vouchers.
“This really is an outrage. There should be more anger. There should be more outrage. This would not happen to another group of people,” James told City Limits last month.
But Levy is concerned that despite the City Council’s outrage, its influence is limited.
“I thought the administration would be more likely to step up, but that’s not happening,” she said.
If you or anyone you know is on the Section 8 housing waiting list, and wants to serve as a plaintiff in a case against NYCHA, contact Levy at jenniferl@sbls.org.
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