89,000 could see major rent increase

Annette Denny was new to Phoenix, and she wanted a job.

She’d spent years as a file clerk for the state of Indiana and was open to any clerical position accepting applications.

But she was considerably older than when she’d interviewed in Indiana. Her arthritis was getting steadily worse.

As she waited for a position that never came, the small nest egg she’d started building for retirement ran out.

“It was a blessing when I started getting a disability check,” said Denny, now 66. “By the time they sent me to

their doctors, they said, ‘Well, you definitely qualify.’ They said my knees were so bad, they were like bone on bone.”

With regular disability checks, Denny’s monthly income is about $770. She pays 30 percent of that, about $230 a month, to live in a federally subsidized apartment complex near 24th Street and Broadway Road.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development helps cover the rest of her rent, as it does for about 39,000 other low-income households in Arizona.

But a series of changes proposed by HUD Secretary Ben Carson could sharply reduce that assistance.

The reforms outlined in Carson’s proposed Make Affordable Housing Work Act would increase the rents of 97 percent of Arizona households currently receiving aid, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The average hike would be 21 percent.

Carson has argued the changes, if approved by Congress, would streamline rental-assistance formulas and encourage recipients to become more independent.

Affordable-housing advocates say it’s more likely the increases would put recipients out on the street, injecting instability into the lives of vulnerable children and adults.

“The people that live here in the HUD buildings — the overall amount of money they’re paying is low, but they’re just kind of barely making it,” Denny said. “To have (the rent) raised up, I’m sure most people would have to move out.”

Tighter rules, higher rents

About 5 million low-income households in the U.S. receive federal help to rent lower-priced units. Nearly 90 percent of those include seniors, people with disabilities or children.

Major changes to rental-assistance formulas outlined in Carson’s proposal include:

❚ Eliminating all existing deductions for dependents, childcare expenses, medical or disability-related expenses, and elderly or disabled status.

❚ Increasing rent from 30 percent of a household’s “adjusted” or post-deduction income to 35 percent of a household’s total income.

❚ Increasing mandatory rent minimums from $0-$50 to $50-$150.

❚ Changing the definition of “elderly” from 62 to 65 years old.

❚ No longer considering a household elderly or disabled if any working-age adult without a disability lives in the home, even if that person is a full-time student.

❚ Allowing housing authorities or private owners to implement work requirements.

These changes would affect nearly 38,000 of 39,000 Arizona households that receive rental assistance, increasing rents by $750 a year on average, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Of the 89,000 Arizonans who make up those households, 39,100 are children, 14,400 are seniors and 11,000 have disabilities.

Among Arizona’s congressional representatives, Democrat Raúl Grijalva has been the most vocal in responding to the proposal.

In a June 4 letter to Carson, he and the rest of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus called the changes “egregious and dangerous” and urged HUD to seek alternatives.

The plan has received a similarly frosty reception from other Democrats.

Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, released a statement slamming Carson as “a man who used taxpayer dollars to buy a $30,000 dining room table” and now wants to “raise rent on poor people.”

Republican members of Congress have been less forthcoming with their reactions to the proposal, but have generally indicated support for work requirements and cuts to government aid.

Advocates: Rationale for proposal ‘absurd’

The Make Affordable Housing Work Act explicitly says it aims to “encourage families to achieve self-sufficiency,” an objective echoed by Carson and the Trump administration.

In a recent interview with Fox News, Carson described his suggested reforms as “attempts to give poor people a way out of poverty,” indicating that rent increases and work requirements would “incentivize people” to seek higher earnings.

But most rental-help recipients who can work already do, according to affordable-housing advocates — often more than one job.

“This idea that raising rent on the poorest folks somehow alleviates this idea of ‘dependency on the system’ really is absurd,” said Jay Young, executive director of the Southwest Fair Housing Council. “Studies have shown this kind of housing assistance is exactly what allows people to become self-sufficient because it provides stability.”

People receiving rental assistance stop needing help after eight years on average, Young said, and families with children who have working adults in the household typically use assistance for four to six years.

“People are continuing to move off housing assistance as they’re able to advance economically,” he said. “So this idea that this kind of housing assistance is keeping them from entering the workforce … I don’t think the statistics bear that out.”

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analyst Will Fischer concluded that “key aspects of the plan would if anything discourage work, such as raising household rents to 35 percent of income (which would hike rents more sharply as earnings rise) and eliminating the child care deduction.”

“There is no evidence that raising minimum rents on destitute families will lead them to earn more,” he wrote.

One emergency away from eviction

Carson’s administration released a statement contending that under current rental-assistance rules, property owners and public-housing authorities “must spend many hours calculating the correct payments for their tenants, who may themselves be confused by byzantine rent rules for tenant income calculations.”

The administration believes the act would improve “administrative efficiency” via “a simpler, less invasive and more transparent set of rent structures,”the statement said.

Peggy Hutchison, CEO of the Primavera Foundation, called killing deductions and raising rents in the name of efficiency “disrespectful, “uninformed” and “mean.”

The Tucson-based non-profit uses HUD funding to lift people out of poverty through safe, affordable housing and workforce-development programs.

“I have colleagues (who do similar work) in San Francisco, in Los Angeles, in St. Louis, in rural Vermont,” Hutchison said. “All of our markets are very, very different, and you can’t just have one formula that works across every community.

“What I see happening (if these changes proceed) is a huge internal displacement of people.”

In other words, evictions and homelessness. Or in the case of people with disabilities, institutionalization.

“A lot of the people we work with, caregivers are already under so much strain in terms of the care they’re providing to keep their relative out of a facility,” said April Reed, vice president of advocacy for disability-rights group Ability360. “You could be one financial emergency, broken-down car or sick child away from facing eviction.”

Darrel Christenson, Ability360’s vice president of community integration, said it costs the government about $40,000 more a year to support someone in a nursing facility than it does to provide in-home services.

“Yes, HUD may collect an extra $100 a month on rent with these changes,” he said. “But if that forces someone into a nursing home and taxpayers are paying $40,000 more, what’s the cost-benefit of that decision?”

‘A mismatch between rent and income’

Every Arizona housing official interviewed by The Arizona Republic said the government should be looking to increase, not decrease, the level of rental assistance it provides.

For every low-income U.S. household that gets rental help, two to three don’t due to insufficient federal funding, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Applicants for Section 8 vouchers — just one type of housing assistance — wait more than two years on average for help, while some wait closer to ten. When Phoenix reopened its Section 8 waiting list in 2015 after 11 years, about 27,000 people applied.

“Ultimately, there’s a mismatch between rent and income, with incomes not keeping pace,” said Joan Serviss, executive director of the Arizona Housing Coalition. “It’s no longer a male or female thing or a people of color thing. It’s affecting everybody.”

Housing advocates also cited a “critical and severe” shortage of affordable housing in Arizona. Low-income households that have neither affordable options nor rental assistance generally end up putting more than half of their incomes toward rent or becoming homeless.

Denny, the Phoenix resident who receives rental assistance through HUD, said she will cut down on food if her rent increases.

She will also eliminate the yearly trip she takes to Indiana to see her family.

“I thought I was downsized as much as I could go already, so it would be a push, but I think I would be able to do it,” she said. “Not everybody would be as fortunate as I am.”