Trump’s rent-aid plan hits poor hard
Cindy “Brandy” Werling’s monthly budget would make a miser wince. But if the Trump administration’s proposals for housing help for the poor go through, that wince might instead be characterized as a scream.
The administration’s plan could, if realized, pull $50 a month out of her meager budget — an amount that would nearly cripple Werling’s newfound stability after years of living on the street.
Five months ago, Werling moved into the first apartment she could call her own after 24 years of homelessness and stints in supportive housing rooms, thanks to a federal housing voucher. Housing advocates say reforms in the national housing subsidy program proposed in Washington this week could eventually raise the 52-year-old woman’s
rent so much she would have to cut back on food — and she eats cheap enough as it is.
Werling, who street counselors once called the queen of San Francisco panhandlers, pays 30 percent of her government disability check as rent, and the voucher — commonly called Section 8 — picks up the rest. After paying for utilities, medical bills, laundry and other incidentals, she’s left with about $200 a month for food, clothing and anything else that pops up. That could eventually drop to $150 under the reforms proposed this week by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.
“I guess I’d be eating a lot of beans,” Werling said with a wry grin at her tidy studio apartment near the corner of Harrison and Fourth streets. “I’m used to not living fancy, but I do like eating hamburger now and then.
“Section 8 changed my life, and it was a long, hard road to get to where I am now. Why would they want to change that?”
Carson apparently sees things differently.
His reform proposal would require many of the nation’s Section 8 recipients to contribute 35 percent of their monthly income, instead of the current 30 percent, toward rent, and to work at least 15 hours a week for some periods of the year at minimum wage to qualify for their voucher. For the poorest of the nation’s poor, it would triple what they have to contribute — from a minimum of $50 a month to $150.
The goal, Carson told reporters, is to encourage selfsufficiency while spreading the government’s limited money further to help more people.
“Every year, it takes more money, millions of dollars more, to serve the same number of households,” Carson said. “It’s clear from a budget perspective and a human point of view that the current system is unsustainable.”
Carson’s plan combined with the budget President Trump has proposed for the coming year, which would cut $1.5 billion from the national housing voucher program — gutting some segments, including one for military veterans, by three-quarters or more — would spell disaster for the poor who depend on government help, housing advocates say.
“Despite claims that these harmful proposals will increase self-sufficiency, rent hikes, de facto time limits and arbitrary work requirements will only leave more people without stable housing, making it harder for them to climb the economic ladder,” said Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “Proposing these changes under the guise of saving the government money, just months after giving massive tax breaks to wealthy people and corporations, is the height of cruel hypocrisy.”
The reforms initially propose leaving the rent contribution from recipients at 30 percent for disabled and elderly people, but that contribution could rise after six years — or during negotiations in Congress, where the reforms must now be debated before they can go to the president for his signature.
Bay Area congressional representatives and the state’s two senators have said they oppose Carson’s proposal outright. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco said it “showcases the utter cruelty and cravenness of the Republicans’ special-interest agenda.”
Republicans in Congress have also proposed plans for rent increases and work requirements.
In San Francisco, about 20,000 low-income people pay rent with the help of Section 8 vouchers, and 25 to 50 households are added to that number every month, according to the city Housing Authority, which oversees the program.
“Section 8 changed my life, and it was a long, hard road to get to where I am now. Why would they want to change that?”
Cindy “Brandy” Werling, formerly homeless woman
“If there was a severe decrease in funds, we would have to literally stop giving out new vouchers,” said Dariush Kayhan, the authority’s deputy director. “And that would have a direct impact on our ability to house the homeless.
“We’re not going to kick anyone out of housing, and the only way we can save money is to not issue those new vouchers.”
He pointed out that 70 percent of Section 8 recipients are already working, or had recently worked.
Managers for the nonprofit Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp., which uses federal subsidies to house about half of its 3,000 lowincome-complex residents, say making poor people work to earn their rent help is destructive rather than helpful.
“There are a lot of myths about work, and we need to acknowledge that most lowincome people are already working two jobs to just barely make ends meet,” said Don Falk, head of the corporation.
“When you have Section 8, you can afford education, child care, have better health. Take any of that away, and you’ll see the lowest-income people struggling even harder than before.”
His associate director of supportive housing services, Delene Rankin, said increasing the rent contribution by five percentage points “may not feel like a lot of money, but to a family having to make the choice between rent, food, transportation, diapers and the rest, every dollar matters.”
One of the residents in the Tenderloin program, 60-yearold Debra Copes, said any rent increase could strain her budget to the breaking point.
Formerly homeless, Copes wrestles with bone deterioration, failing eyesight and difficulty walking, and after scoring her own apartment with a housing voucher four years ago, she took leadership training from the Tenderloin nonprofit and led voter registration efforts in her neighborhood.
“Living the way I can now, with the help of TNDC and Section 8, has brought me back to my circle of a positive, healthy and better life,” Copes said. “What am I going to do if I have to pay more rent? Where is the human kindness?” Back in the mid-2000s, when Werling sat every day on the corner of Golden Gate and Van Ness avenues with a drunken grin and a giant stuffed teddy bear in her lap, street counselors called her the queen of the city’s panhandlers because she was so gentle and beloved — in a mostly pitying way — as a colorful character.
She was known as Brandy Hazelett back then. But after she moved into a housing complex with counselors on site to help her clean up, she dropped that name from a former marriage, went back to her childhood name, and got herself free of booze and drugs.
The apartment came into her life in November through the city’s Moving On program, which helps people leave supportive housing for independent living.
“I’ve never met those guys Trump or Carson, but I would just tell them to think a little harder about people like us,” Werling said. “I have an injured back and asthma and can’t work, but I would if I could. I’m just trying to be a good person in society. Sometimes we need help.”