SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC HOUSING FACES FURTHER CUTS

By Sara Shortt
Published September 20006 Street Sheet Newspaper


In June, HUD announced to Housing Authorities that due an unanticipated rise in utility costs, they are unable to fund them at the amount previously committed.  Cities across the nation who rely on federal money to house their poorest residents were already bracing for a shortfall of 8% before the announcement. Now, they were told there would be a further cut of 7% more, for a total of a 14% ($600,000 million dollar) shortfall for 2006.  HUD’s June announcement that they would be funding public housing operating budgets at only 85.5% of the need was painful for many reasons. To many, it seemed cavalier considering what the impact would be.  It was as if HUD simply said “Oops”, “We never anticipated that utility rates would rise like that. We never bothered to plan for such a scenario and now that it’s happened we’re not going to try to fix it by asking Congress for more money. Instead you’ll just have to make your budgets leaner and meaner. Tighten up your belts”.  
Yet, “tightening belts” when it comes to public housing translates into serious impacts for residents that can literally have life or death consequences. One of the simplest and quickest ways for Housing Authorities to cut costs when they are under the gun is to cut staff.  This is why after years of continuous funding cuts, the San Francisco Housing Authority (SFHA) has gone from a staff of 535 to less than 400 in the last 5 years.  This year alone 24 employees have been laid off to compensate for loss of federal funds.  
Aside from the loss of good union jobs and the toll this takes on employees and their families (many of whom are current or former public housing residents themselves), these cost-cutting measures the SFHA is forced to take when the budget axe comes down, is disastrous for tenants.  Less staff means longer turn around time on repairs. Residents with “non-emergency” repair needs such as broken windows, clogged sinks or non-working light fixtures may have to wait as long as six weeks or more before their unit is repaired.  “Emergency” repairs, which in the private market would be enforceable code violations, will also take longer to address.  The current SFHA policy for emergency repairs is a 24-hour turn around time, but most tenants would balk at this figure.  Residents say that they wait and wait for serious problems such as broken locks, asthma causing mold and backed up toilets to be fixed, as it is.  The nature of an emergency does not change depending on available funding. A hazardous situation will still need to be addressed within 24 hours yet, with not enough staff to do the jobs, how will the housing authority do it? Either emergencies will remain unabated for longer periods, with major health and safety repercussions, or other less urgent repair needs will become further backlogged.  
An already problematic area that will certainly worsen is vacancies. Uninhabitable units will remain boarded up and vacant for longer and longer.  This affects not only those families who have been languishing on the waiting list (of which there are 30,000) hoping for an affordable home to become available, but it decreases quality of life for existing residents as well. Empty units become a blight on the community and quickly provide refuge for criminal activity. Not having a neighbor beside you also puts you at more risk for crime since there is no one to look out for you. And the isolation created by empty units makes residents an easier target for crime.  
    Less staff means less management oversight and less ability to perform more than the most basic management tasks.  What falls through the cracks when staffing is limited are the other important roles played by management. When the focus becomes simply collecting rent and moving residents in and out because a manager is juggling multiple properties, tenants suffer.  Good managers know their residents. They know who belongs at a property and who doesn’t.  They have the time to pay attention and to take action when problems arise.  They notice if an elderly resident’s health is failing or if a basketball hoop where teenagers play needs replacement.  In San Francisco, where violent crime is a fact of life at the larger, family developments, these things matter.  But no manager will be capable of guaranteeing a secure property when they have too many properties to care for at once and they are beholden to the bottom line.
    When budgets are cut anything that remotely resembles “frills” go away.  In the case of senior/disabled buildings one such program is a resident custodian program where residents are paid to keep an eye on each other and to ensure the property is cleaned and cared for on a daily basis.  Frail, elderly residents put cards on the door saying they are ok and if a card is not visible the custodian knows to check up on them.  The SFHA terminated the resident custodian program in response to last year’s budget cuts, and it is only to due to a labor union challenge by SEIU, Local 1877 that the program still exists.  
    Security services are also considered an “extra” by the federal government.  Funds are given to perform major capital improvements (the capital fund), for day to day operations (operating funds) and a very limited grant is available for revitalizing distressed properties (HOPE VI).  But there is no longer a funding stream to pay for security related items. The Federal Drug Elimination Grant, which provided the SFHA with $1.4 million, was terminated in 2002.  Now, when cuts to operating budgets are made, security services will also suffer since it is one of the only funding sources to pay for it.  There seems to be general consensus that one major way to reduce the plague of violent crime in San Francisco’s public housing developments is to hire police officers during the evening hours, instead of having them go home between 9 and 5.  With resources squeezed so tightly and a mandate to keep rents low and meet basic housing standards, how can the housing authority pay for such other crucial costs such as security?  Yet, how can they afford not to when murders keep happening day after day?
    The sudden, mid-year 06 cuts are also extremely hard to stomach because of the context in which they are happening.  From the looks of it, Congress will only fund next year’s budget at around 78% of the need, a 22% cut.  The President’s proposal shorted public housing operating budgets by $1 billion. While the Senate bill raises that amount by $100 million, it still falls far short.  And this is nothing new. Operating budgets have been cut by $1.5 billion since 01.  Other funding sources have been under assault as well. Although there is a backlog of major repair needs (such as overhauling leaking sewer systems at family developments and replacing old, unreliable elevators at high-rise senior buildings) of $245 million dollars that accrues by $7 million more annually, HUD’s capital fund budget has been cut by 8% ($13 million) this year for the sixth straight year in a row.  The Drug Elimination grant is gone. And HOPE VI is hanging by a thread as it was reduced from $500 million to $145 million last year nationally and has been proposed to be zeroed out this year. There has been no funding for new development of public housing since 1979.  
    All of this paints a clear picture of the administration’s priorities when it comes to housing.  Nothing spells out the agenda more clearly than the axe falling time and time again on programs that provide housing for extremely low-income families.  As a community we need to face this fact and recognize that funding of the war in Iraq is far more important, to not only the President, but Congress as well than funding programs for our neediest Americans.  Given this sad but true fact, it is tempting to conclude that we should stop relying on or expecting anything from the Federal government altogether.  While it is absolutely true that we need to start planning and preparing for local solutions as federal funds continually decrease, we should not let the Federal government off the hook.  Low-income housing advocates and local government need to maintain a double- pronged strategy to adequately respond to public housing cuts.  We need to fight like hell to preserve and increase federal funds for low-income housing.  It would be irresponsible to do anything less.   At the same time, however, we must be vigilant about ensuring that local housing money is earmarked for extremely low-income residents, resourceful about leveraging more local funds for low-income housing development and creative about new ways to house poor San Franciscans, such as community land trusts and developing surplus city property.  San Francisco should adopt the motto “fight for the best, prepare for the worst” when it comes to low-income housing.  
    City leaders are starting to take this motto to heart as the assault on Federally-subsidized, low-income housing gets more and more vicious.  This year, community groups and the Board of Supervisors worked hard with the Mayor’s Office of Housing to pass an inclusionary zoning ordinance that would bring more low-income housing to San Francisco.  In response to community organizing, Supervisor Chris Daly helped garner millions of dollars from the City’s surplus funds for affordable housing.  The Human Service Agency is in the processing of developing a rent subsidy program for low-income families.  
    At the same time, the Board of Supervisors held a hearing the month on the impact of the most recent public housing cuts; and Supervisors Ammiano, Daly, Mirkarimi and Maxwell all spoke in opposition to the attacks on public housing at a press conference held beforehand. Board members will also be voting on a resolution urging Congress to act to restore funding to public housing.  The Mayor has written a letter to Senator Feinstein asking for her support on the issue and has committed to working with his colleagues in the US Conference of Mayors to continue to advocate on behalf of San Francisco’s public housing residents.  
    It is the task of community advocates and residents to ensure that neither the development of local solutions, nor advocacy on the Federal level is left out of the equation as we continue to work to preserve and expand housing options for our poorest residents.  While it is true that we can no longer rely on the federal government to provide housing of last resort for our lowest-income residents, it is also true that we cannot afford to concede to the ideologically driven agenda of Washington policymakers. When we give up demanding that the Federal government meet the needs of citizens of all incomes, we give up the very idea of a democratic society.  And more than that, we allow our neighbors to suffer needlessly as they are befallen by poverty and homelessness at a time when this country’s resources are truly plentiful.