Seniors using Section 8 vouchers faced eviction for failed inspections
Miami Beach residents on Section 8 vouchers were told to leave their apartments after the building owner failed inspections and rent payments were withheld.
Carmen Gonzalez has lived at Shep Davis Apartments for 20 years. The pink-hued, seven-story building on 23rd Street in Miami Beach is almost a century old, a relic in a fast-changing neighborhood. But Gonzalez loves it there. When problems arise, she said, a maintenance worker who lives in the building is always available to help.
The native of Ecuador, whose rent is subsidized through a Section 8 voucher, said she was stunned to be told recently that she needs to move out — or else face eviction. Late last month, building owner Shep Equities LLC gave Gonzalez a notice ordering her to pay full rent of $1,288 starting in October and vacate the apartment by Oct. 31.
“This came as a complete shock,” Gonzalez told the Miami Herald.
The notice was entirely in English, a language Gonzalez doesn’t understand. Confused and not sure what’s coming next, she has started moving her belongings — including clothing and a microwave — into relatives’ homes.
Gonzalez is one of more than a dozen tenants in the 49-unit building who have received similar notices amid a bitter dispute over failed inspections and unpaid rental assistance. The tenants are caught between the landlord and the Housing Authority of the City of Miami Beach, which is independent of the city and administers federal housing programs.
“It’s not fair,” said Clara Perdomo, a 14-year resident who receives Section 8 assistance and was recently told to leave. Finding a new apartment to accept her voucher would be difficult, she said, because “the rent is very high.”
As tenants scramble, their fate is still unclear. Responding to inquiries from the Herald earlier this week, representatives for the Miami Beach Housing Authority and the property owner each said they were working to resolve the situation but that no agreement had been reached.
On Thursday, however, property manager John Bennett said the owner
had agreed to rescind the termination notices after the housing authority said it would pay back rent it has been withholding due to failed inspections conducted by the agency.
“At the end of the day, this is getting resolved,” Bennett said.
Still, 14 units had not yet passed required inspections as of this week, said Vashtye Leon, the Housing Authority’s Section 8 supervisor. And she said the agency has not determined how it will pay back previously withheld rent, which is not typically covered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
“We’re still looking into sources and putting those funds together,” Leon said. “It’s important to us that these tenants remain housed.”
Voucher recipients typically pay 30% of their monthly income toward the rent and HUD covers the rest. Families are only eligible if their income is no more than half of the area median income, which is about $68,000 in Miami-Dade County.
TENANTS ‘IN AN UPROAR’
Shep Davis Apartments sits on prime real estate just one block from the beach and steps away from the swanky W Hotel. It reflects both the old and new of South Beach — a mix of elderly, Spanishspeaking residents on fixed incomes and younger, well-to-do renters in market-rate units.
About half of the building’s tenants utilize housing choice vouchers, the federal government’s largest program to help low-income families, seniors and people with disabilities afford housing in the private market. Many are holdovers from a HUD rental assistance contract that covered the entire building starting in the early 1980s.
When the owner chose not to renew the HUD contract in 2018, tenants had to either accept new vouchers and seek housing elsewhere or stay at Shep Davis using so-called “enhanced vouchers” — which allow landlords to collect more money from the government in rent in an effort to keep tenants in their homes after HUD contracts expire, even in gentrifying neighborhoods.
That security blanket disappeared for low-income Shep Davis tenants late last year, when the Miami Beach Housing Authority stopped making rental assistance payments to the landlord for about 17 units that had failed a series of required health and safety inspections. The agency would not immediately provide copies of its inspection reports to the Herald, but Leon said “basic” housing quality issues like leaky ceilings and broken heating systems have festered over the past several years.
When the landlord didn’t make needed fixes prior to follow-up inspections, the housing authority terminated its assistance contracts for the failing units. That put tenants in a bind. The agency gave them vouchers to find new housing within 10 miles of Miami Beach, but few were successful as rents soared across South Florida.
This summer, after almost a year of the housing authority withholding payments, the landlord gave residents 60-day notices to leave.
“I know the residents are in an uproar,” Leon said. “It’s very difficult to locate affordable units. They don’t want to leave. I can’t blame them at this time.”
Jeffrey Hearne, the director of litigation for Legal Services of Greater Miami, said it’s concerning that elderly tenants on enhanced vouchers could be forced to find new homes as a result of poor maintenance.
In some cases, Hearne said, landlords can look to exploit HUD regulations by letting units fall into disrepair if they no longer wish to house Section 8 tenants.
“I wouldn’t want somebody to be forced out and lose their enhanced voucher and their right to remain just because the owner doesn’t maintain the building,” Hearne said. “That’s a way to do an end-around.”
Bennett, the property manager who began working at Shep Davis Apartments this summer, said the owner is not trying to drive Section 8 tenants from the building and is committed to making repairs.
Now that the housing authority has said it will make back-payments for withheld rent, “he’s not terminating anybody,” Bennett said of Paul Mata, the registered agent for Shep Equities LLC.
Mata could not be reached for comment.
Federal regulations say payments must be withheld from landlords and housing assistance contracts ultimately must be terminated if owners fail to make required repairs — although the regulations give housing agencies discretion to decide when to terminate the contracts and advise them to first give tenants a “reasonable” amount of time to find new places to live.
Gonzalez, the Ecuador native, said she needs more support. She said she believed her unit was in good condition and wasn’t told why it failed inspections, and said no one has helped her look for new apartments or told her how much her new voucher is worth.
“I feel like the [housing authority] should be clearer in their instructions,” she said.
Leon said the agency has been communicating with tenants throughout the process, and is now prepared to reinstate housing assistance contracts to allow them to stay if and when their units pass inspections.
“We followed the rules,” Leon said. “We did what we were supposed to do.”
The conflict between Mata and the Miami
Beach Housing Authority goes beyond Shep Davis Apartments.
At the nearby Blackstone Apartments, a 100unit building on Washington Avenue under the same ownership, housing authority inspectors discovered last year that the city of Miami Beach had issued an unsafe structure notice and that a 12thfloor ceiling was “caving in,” according to Leon.
The agency immediately canceled housing assistance contracts for all 49 of the building’s Section 8 units and issued tenants vouchers to find new homes.
Since then, the owner has addressed the unsafe structure violations and is resolving issues in individual units “bit by bit,” Leon said, with payments still being withheld for seven units as of this week — down from an initial 29.
As she exited the building earlier this week, Section 8 tenant Aida Fonseca told the Herald she has heard about payments to the landlord being halted due to poor conditions. In her unit, Fonseca said, she has dealt with cockroaches and rats.
Unlike at Shep Davis, tenants at Blackstone have not received notices to vacate. Still, Bennett said the owner continues to squabble with the housing authority over reimbursement for payments that have been withheld.
Withholding rent for Section 8 units isn’t unusual among the Miami Beach Housing Authority’s
more than 3,000 housing choice vouchers, Leon said. But she said it rarely affects so many tenants at once.
Hearne, the Legal Services of Greater Miami attorney, said the types of tenants who live at the Shep Davis and Blackstone buildings need to be protected, in part because they often lack transportation and can’t imagine living somewhere else.
“Their whole world is right there where they live,” he said.
Aaron Leibowitz: 305-376-2235, @aaron_leib