Housing board delays vote on site’s single-room designation

The board of Little Rock’s public housing authority on Monday delayed voting on a resolution that would have changed the designation of one of its properties to allow multiple people to live in one unit.

Elm Street Apartments, a 50-unit affordable housing site, is designated as single-room occupancy under the Metropolitan Housing Alliance’s current administrative plan for its Housing Choice Voucher Program for 2020.

Nadine Jarmon, the housing authority’s interim executive director, said that designation was always incorrect because the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines single-room occupancy as housing complexes where residents share bathroom and kitchen facilities with other tenants. Jarmon said those units have always had individual bathrooms for each unit.

“We have never really fit that definition,” she said.

She said a problem arose when a tenant asked to have a live-in caretaker. The designation doesn’t allow for multiple people to live in one unit. The agency has had to deny at least

two people housing there for that reason, according to Jarmon.

Board member Leta Anthony said she was concerned about the building’s physical feasibility and wanted that to be assessed more before allowing more residents to move in. The apartments tend to flood, she said, adding that she had other questions about the building.

Anthony made the motion to table the resolution — which would have updated the agency’s administrative plan regarding the Elm Street Apartments’ occupancy until a feasibility study could be done — and she and the other four board members approved it unanimously.

Anthony said the agency should accommodate tenants who need live-in caregivers on an individual basis.

“We have to look at that adjustment for accommodation,” she said.

Jarmon said that wasn’t possible.

“There’s no getting around it,” she said. “Either we say yes, where we’re allowed to have two heartbeats, or we say no across the board.”

The federal Housing Choice Voucher Program, commonly known as Section 8, provides tenant-based vouchers that serve households with low incomes. The vouchers are administered by local housing authorities, which, per the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s rules, must adopt administrative plans to establish local policies for program administration.