This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Today marks the 29th day of the Federal Government Shutdown. On Jan. 18, I spoke with Jillian Baldwin, executive director at Longmont Housing Authority (LHA) about how the shutdown is affecting our most housing insecure residents.
What is the Housing Authority's role is and what services do you provide?
We don't necessarily provide services, what we provide is decent, safe, sanitary housing. We don't necessarily have a services function, we do have one community, in particular, The Suites, which is a supportive services community that we have a supportive services staff for and we have a partnership in place with Mental Health Partners (MHP). We offer supportive services in that particular community but as a whole LHA's product, if you will, is to provide housing.
Is there a demographic that you help provide housing for?
No, we just provide affordable housing on both sides of the house. Typically, a large portion of our portfolio services elderly housing. Most of our developments are 55 and older, two of the developments are 62 and older, then we have the Suites and the Neighborhood. The Suites is a project-based voucher property and The Neighborhood is multi-family, so it does serve the family demographic.
What are some of the requirements to receive assistance?
It depends. The requirements are different depending on what program. All of our properties are funded through different funding mechanisms so it really does depend on which development you apply to. They should all be looked at like individual small entities. Some developments have HUD funds layered in, some have HOME funds, some have disaster recovery funds, some are project-based so they have HUD fund requirements, so it really does depend on which property you apply for, which program you are coming in under. So, the requirements vary greatly.
Do you receive government funding?
Yes, we do. We receive government funding for our PRACs 202 properties, they're called Section 202 PRACs and they are also designated as elderly supportive housing and they are federally funded through the Department of Housing and Urban Development. And we also receive HUD funds for the housing choice voucher program and our single room occupancy program which we partner with The InnBetween for.
How are those funds being affected?
Like all housing authorities across the country, not just housing authority but every industry is being affected by the shutdown naturally, but we do have contracts that end on the fiscal year and on the calendar year that went out on 12/31. We've been guaranteed funding appropriations. We received an allocation for January, guaranteed February, and then we are being asked to look at alternative pots to fund from there on out until we get more information from the government.
The allocations that you receive from Jan/Feb., those will last you through the end of March?
No, the allocations are for the month of January to cover all HAP (Housing Assistance Payments) expenses, so it's a calculated allocation that we submit on an annual basis. We tell the government, this is how much it costs us to fund the program and they give us an allocation. That's divided. It's released monthly and so it actually only covers the month it's released for. We received the allocation for January, we are going to receive an allocation for Feb. and then March we have to dip into our reserves.
When you talk about the reserves, what do you have to do to get the reserves?
So, we haven't done it yet. Every year housing authorities are given an annual budget authority to run the housing choice voucher program. Within that allocation, a certain portion of it is released on a monthly basis to the housing authority. We hold those funds in an account. And then another portion of that annual allocation, HUD holds it and it's called HUD Held Reserve. And so, the HUD Held Reserve, you have to make a case to HUD as to why you need to access them. We received an email on Monday (I believe) from HUD telling us how we would need to contact them to access the reserves. There is a process we have to go through, we have to meet a report, show the shortfall, and then they'll do a release.
How long does that process take?
It doesn't take very long. A 3-7 day turn-around, typically. It's very quick. In the face of the backlog, I'm not exactly sure. This is the longest shutdown in governmental history. There's no road map. We don't know what we will be up against and we don't know how many housing authorities will be trying to dip into their reserve account. I would imagine that with the expiring contracts around the country, there's going to be a substantial backlog for the processing requests. So that's something that I think about and that I worry about.
Requests are going to fly in from across everywhere, every housing, every voucher agency is going to be submitting these requests at the same time or around the same time, I would imagine.
In the event that you have to wait longer than you expected, longer than that 3-7 days, do you have a plan to continue housing assistance?
We do have a contingency plan but just like any contingency plan, we have a limited amount of funds. We are a nonprofit agency, funded through federal subsidies and through The Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program, that's how our properties are viable. So yes, we do have a contingency plan in place. We have housing authority funds that our board is prepared to perhaps tap into but they are very limited. And that is a decision that will be made at a board level.
Is the plan to call an emergency board meeting to tap into those funds?
No, we've already had this discussion with the board in terms of what the timeline looks like, what accounts, there are certain designated accounts, for example, the HUD Held Reserve account is one that we have to address the housing choice voucher program. We also have net-restricted assets funds, we have public housing held net-restricted assets.
We presented this entire plan to our board and we told them 'Hey, this is how much we have and this is how long we think it will last.' We tentatively know that we can cover one full month of March and perhaps a little into April.
After we hit that time the board would need to make a vote at our next board meeting and the contingency plan would, of course, be in place before April. They were waiting to get the numbers from us and those are being released.
I have my finance team working on putting together a schematics decision tree, if you will, on how many families are in the program right now, how much do we spend in housing assistance payments now, how much of the staff allocated costs go to that program. We are putting together that diagram for our board because we talked about it and I did the introduction of what these different accounts mean and how you can access them and then having that layout will help everyone come to a final decision.
Can you give an estimation of how many people you serve?
Sure. Right now in the housing choice voucher program, The Housing Authority has roughly, I don't have the number right in front of me, but we have roughly about 420 vouchers on the streets. This number fluctuates by the month as people move out of the program, move out of state, or perhaps they are no longer income qualified. Many things allow this number to fluctuate on a monthly basis. Roughly we have a little over 420 or so.
That's only in the housing choice voucher program. Those are individuals who have a tenant-based voucher. They receive a monthly payment, the landlords do from LHA, to cover a subsidized portion of the tenant's rent. So that's one number.
And then we have the property over at The Suites. The Suites has 81 units of project-based vouchers. Those vouchers are attached to the building itself. Tenants move in and out but the voucher stays. There are 81 families who are serviced in that property through the voucher program and are affected by this shutdown. Half of the vouchers belong to the LHA and the other half belong to MHP (Mental Health Partners). Their program is also affected, every voucher program across the country is affected. The entire building is affected. Only half of those vouchers flow through us, so 40 families there.
And then our SRO (Single Room Occupancy) contract, which is also a project-based voucher program that we partner with The InBetween for. They have ten vouchers with The Housing Authority.
And then we have project-based vouchers sprinkled throughout the community but Cristman's Apartments, The Housing Authority is a partner in that development, we have ten project-based vouchers in that property.
And then within our own portfolio, we certainly have a fair number of tenant-based vouchers. I don't have that exact number but it is probably somewhere around 30-40, within the LHA's properties.
That's just a rough estimate.
How much monthly is spent through government funding to help with these assistance programs?
We expend $375,000 on average per month. Some months it is more than that, some months it's less than that, but that's an average cost. That's all just for vouchers. Housing assisted payments through the housing assistance program.
You were talking about The Suites and how those folks are affected by the shutdown. Can you explain how they are affected?
All of the individuals within that development, that whole development, is a project-based voucher development. Every person in there has a voucher that subsidizes a portion of their rent.
Just comparatively, we have Aspen Meadow Apartments, that is just a low-income housing tax credit development. While you may have one or two residents who have a tenant-based voucher, the type of voucher that they can take to any private landlord, the great majority of the tenants just are participants in the low-income housing tax credit for rent, so they are not affected by the shutdown because this is a private-public partnership funds. Those individuals would not be affected by government subsidies because the funding for those buildings don't run through the federal government.
That's why I say, particularly, that The Suites, the supportive services community, the funding for that property, it is also a tax credit property, it's a layered property, so there are many levels of funding but the great majority of the funds for that property come through the housing choice voucher program.
What will happen to those folks when you are no longer able to give them financial assistance?
I don't want to cause panic in the community, especially for the individuals who live at The Suites. Everyone has a great deal of anxiety about this shutdown. I know they do across the country but in communities like The Suites it's very precarious and I don't want to put them into a panic. I would like to be sure to say this statement in the most politically correct way that I can.
From a technical standpoint, any participants across the entire country are responsible for the rent. They engage in a contract when they sign the lease and they are responsible. When they qualify for government assistance, embedded in the language of their voucher contract is a small clause that says that ultimately that they are responsible. So technically, every resident around the country who does not receive subsidy payments for any month, they, by default, become responsible for their rent payment. So that is the technical answer.
The other side of that is, of course, the community is working together to come up with innovative solutions around this because we know that everyone knows that the program participants across the country can't afford to take a hit like this overnight. We don't know how long the government shutdown will last. Dr. Waters is a member of the LHA board and we also have other liaisons from the city and email strings are going around what we can do to come up with gap funding in the midst of the shutdown. We are going to be as creative as possible.
The LHA board is committed to sustaining the program and so we'll expend and exhaust all possibilities that are put on the table. We'll be going to the city to perhaps ask for solutions. There's an affordable housing fund that we may be able to tap into or make a request for funds to come out of that to hold us over until we can repay. There are creative ways to get around it.
Have you heard from any of the property owners that they might be willing to help support the subsidized tenants during the shutdown?
I have not personally heard from any property landlords, with the exception of questions. We're answering questions and handing out statements on behalf of the LHA about what updates and information we have.
We have not received any feedback from a landlord to say whether they would try to work with the tenant because they realize that the tenant can't come up with, if the rent was $1,500 and they were getting a $1,000 voucher, they know that overnight the tenant can't come up with 1,000 extra dollars.
We do expect that the private side is going to work with the community. We can't massively toss people out on the streets. We do expect that to be the response of the landlords but we have not heard, I can't confirm.
Is there anything else about this program that is important to know or to know about how the shutdown is affecting LHA or these tenants?
It's having an impact across the country. I really like to try to level set the feeling of doom and gloom that can come about when we are under the gun this way because the whole country is experiencing this as a whole. All the leaders across the country who sit in this seat and cities across the nation, we are all trying to work together to combat this. This is my fourth state that I have worked in and I've been in the affordable housing industry for a long time. I have executive director friends across the country. We are all calling and talking.
There is a very real cost of the shutdown. We've had to put in an exorbitant amount staff hours into data analytics and sustainability reports to our board to try to come up with how long can we sustain and answer the question. We've had to stop our regular day-to-day operations to kind of focus on this issue. We've gone out to our community and talked to some of our residents, been to community meetings, we have to talk to landlords. It really does waylay the day-to-day operations, so there's a backlog happening for everyone as we try to address this issue.
When you talk about it affecting your day-to-day and a backlog, what does that mean?
I'll just give you an example. On a regular day here at LHA we come in and we have annual reporting that is due to various agencies, we have families that we need to serve, our finance team needs to work with our property managers to run our regular monthly report and check on occupancy and regular business process management.
When you go into a crisis like a 30 day or so government shutdown, you get into crisis mode and now it becomes, OK, we have a research project to do, that we need to focus on. So all staff has to be pulled from regular operations and put into a think-tank type session, where around the clock we are calling, and having conference calls, trying to juggle and push everything back so that we can deal with this issue. That has an impact.
Are you accepting applications for new vouchers or offering new vouchers?
No, it is on hold. The LHA has issued statements to all of the participants who are currently on the street, searching for vouchers who had not entered into their contract, that everything is on hold. That was guidance that we received from HUD, they released a statement, it was an ambiguous statement, kinda broad in nature, but it did say that they were guaranteeing HAP assistance for February but they could not ensure any new costs incurred for additional leasing.
Do you know how many people are on the waiting list?
For our housing choice voucher program, I would say at least 1,000.
I think that that this shutdown has just highlighted the complex ecosystem, if you will, that the affordable housing authority industry is. I think that there has been some misconception about what affordable housing is, what it looks like and who we serve. But I think this shutdown has shone a light on the fact this industry touches every industry. Everyone needs affordable housing. When workers lose the ability to pay for their affordable housing it affects every other economic industry that we have, how much we can spend on entertainment, it affects the restaurant industry, it affects the services industries around the country.
Affordable housing is just the blood that runs through the veins of the country. It touches everything.
Do you have a government shutdown story you would like to share? We want to hear them all, including individual stories, organizations, businesses and governmental agencies. To share your story here.
