Public housing not necessarily an answer to homelessness
Mattresses are hidden beneath a bridge in the area, evidence of a homeless campsite.
Shoes and a ballcap are among the items tucked inside a blanket hidden under some brush in an area frequented by the homeless in Washington.
Before the Great Recession hit, the Washington County Housing Authority had vacant units in places such as Fredericktown, which many people would describe as off the beaten path.
But when the housing market crashed five years ago, mortgage foreclosures forced many out of their homes. As joblessness increased, people could not afford rents charged in the private housing sector, and public housing vacancies became a thing of the past.
So the answer to housing the homeless isn’t necessarily found in public housing, as waiting list statistics demonstrate.
“Our vacancies in public housing have dropped to something like 1.2 percent. There’s a lot of demand,” said Stephen Hall, executive director of the Washington County Housing Authority, which derives the bulk of its budget from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.
On applications, the housing authority asks applicants for their current address, but the forms don’t specifically ask if the person is homeless.
“On occasion, someone may tell you, ‘I don’t have a home,’ or ‘I’m living out of my car’ or something like that,” Hall said.
In public housing lingo, even a single individual is considered a “family,” Hall noted.
“The public housing waiting list has always remained open to new applicants,” Hall wrote in response to an e-mailed inquiry. The annual income limit for a single person seeking public housing and/or Section 8 housing is between $13,700 and $35,500.
The waiting list for Section 8 housing, known as federally subsidized housing, which authorizes the payment of rent to private landlords, is so long that the Washington County Housing Authority hasn’t accepted any new applicants for about 2 1/2 years.
The Section 8 rented inventory in Washington County is 1,002 units, with 110 families on the waiting list.
“We usually open a waiting list when it gets down to about 25 or 50 or so,” Hall said. When that occurs, the housing authority advertises availability in the newspaper, a legal requirement but one that may not keep pace with talk on the sidewalk or social networking.
“The word spreads so fast informally,” Hall said.
No new public housing apartments have been constructed in Washington County in the past decade. The newest complex, John Lignelli Manor Apartments for the Elderly in New Eagle, managed by the county housing authority, opened on May 1, 2002, but the agency still receives inquiries from landlords who are interested in adding Section 8 units to the inventory.
“You would think in the city it would be easy enough to find affordable housing, but it isn’t,” said Doug Bush, who came to the City Mission in 1999 as a client and has worked there in various capacities, including director of operations and recycling manager.
“Apartments are just not available for low-income,” he said.
Washington County’s dearth of rentals mirrors the national trend. According to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau, the share of U.S. households that rent rather than own increased from 34.1 percent in
2009 to 35.4 percent in 2011. Nearly a quarter of the nation’s metropolitan areas saw a rise in renting households, while less than 3 percent of the areas saw a decline. And more renters are spending a high percentage of their household income on rent.
“Factors such as supply and demand for rental housing and local economic conditions play an important role in helping to explain these relationships,” said Arthur Cresce, assistant division chief for housing characteristics at the Census Bureau, in a news release.
As the economy was crashing nationally, Western Pennsylvania was seeing the emergence of the Marcellus Shale natural gas industry, which brought an influx of workers in need of housing.
“We still have people turning their properties into Section 8,” Hall said. “It’s a tighter rental market. Now it’s a little bit more fluid.
“Other people have tenants. I don’t want to say they’re Marcellus Shale tenants, but they’re not looking to fill their vacancy quite as fast. The demand for vacant units for Marcellus Shale workers kind of peaked last year, in my opinion. It’s just a sense that I have.”
In the private, nonprofit sector, Bill Leach, director of Connect Inc., provides 43 housing units for disabled adults and families, those who are labeled as “hard to reach” homeless men and women.
He said the Marcellus Shale industry’s demand for rental housing has had a “huge impact on availability. You couldn’t get a unit from a landlord from about Fallowfield Township to the West Virginia and Greene borders,” Leach said. “They’re getting $900 to $1,500 per unit, and HUD’s fair market rate is $600 to $1,000 for a triple.”
Leach, however, said he does not see a housing crunch resulting from Marcellus Shale play to be a long-term problem.
The demand for public housing is something of a good-news, bad-news situation.
“People came back in the rental market,” Hall said. “It’s a big change, something with which I’m very pleased, being able to serve people with a resource that they need.
“In a perfect world, there would be no need for public housing, and that would be a good thing, too.”