CLPHA Press Room

From Next City:

"The need for this program far exceeds available resources.”

That was how the Housing Authority of the City of Austin put it when it reopened its waitlist for Housing Choice Vouchers last September for the first time in four years. The Housing Choice Voucher program, which was previously known as Section 8, helps low-income families make up the difference between the cost of rent on the private market and what they’re able to afford. In 2014, the last time the Authority opened the waitlist, it got 20,000 applicants. It whittled them down to 2,500 through a lottery. It was expecting to do the same again last year, randomly selecting another 2,000 applicants just to get in the line for a voucher.

But even when a family gets a voucher, says Michael Gerber, president and CEO of the housing authority, they may find it very difficult to find a landlord who will accept it. As Next City has reported before, Texas landlords are allowed to reject tenants based on their source of income. And like a lot of growing cities, Austin is facing a critical shortage of affordable housing across the board, which is especially acute at the lowest end of the income scale.

“While a housing authority I don’t think has a responsibility for fixing all of [the housing shortage], we certainly feel a responsibility to try to address it as best we can,” Gerber says. “It’s hard to say to that resident, ‘Here’s a housing choice voucher. We know you’re not going to be able to use it.’”

So as part of its effort to make more housing available to voucher holders, the housing authority is continuing to expand a strategy of acquiring housing units on the private market and making some of them affordable for low and moderate-income people. Recently, the housing authority, in partnership with the affordable-housing investment group Community Development Trust, bought a 452-unit apartment complex in Southeast Austin, as the Austin American-Statesman reported. The authority is planning to rent the units to tenants earning no more than 80 percent of median family income, which works out to $48,200 for an individual or $68,800 for a family of four. And it’s planning to market at least 15 percent of the units to voucher holders and tenants receiving assistance through HUD’s Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program.

Read Next City's article "Austin Housing Authority Buys Private Apartments to Rent to Section 8 Tenants," featuring the Housing Authority of the City of Austin.

From the Asheville Citizen Times:

Growing up on a farm in rural Kentucky, Gene Bell learned the value — and the price — of hard physical labor.

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Now, six decades later, Bell has retired after a 25-year career with the Housing Authority of the City of Asheville, including the past 14 as CEO. He spent 20 years before that in the business world.

Bell will continue working part-time with the authority, strictly to see through a project he views as his baby: the transformation of the 96-unit Lee Walker Heights public housing development into a 212-unit mixed-income and mixed-use neighborhood.

Bell was honored July 25 with a farewell gathering at the Arthur R. Edington Education & Career Center, a program attended by about 130 friends, family members and coworkers. Asheville Vice Mayor Gwen Wisler read a proclamation declaring the date "Gene Bell Day," and Buncombe County Commissioner Amanda Edwards noted the county plans to offer a similar proclamation at the Aug. 6 Board of Commissioners meeting.

Read the Asheville Citizen Times' article "Housing Authority's Gene Bell retires: 'I’ve been the luckiest guy in the world,’" featuring the Housing Authority of the City of Asheville. 

A new study by Economist Raj Chetty and his research partners illustrates how the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) and King County Housing Authority’s (KCHA) experimental program is helping low-income families relocate from low-opportunity to high-opportunity areas, a move that can greatly improve their children’s life outcomes. Through the innovative Creating Moves to Opportunity (CMTO) program, SHA and KCHA are helping families move to high-opportunity areas in order to access better education, health, and economic opportunities for their children.

Chetty and his team at Harvard University’s Opportunity Insights had previously found that where a child grows up has a significant impact on his or her earning potential: young, low-income children who move from low-opportunity to high-opportunity areas experience a nearly $300,000 increase in total lifetime earnings compared to children who stay in low-opportunity neighborhoods. The Opportunity Insights team is also mapping these high-opportunity area across the country in their interactive Opportunity Atlas, showing residents’ average life outcomes based on their income, race, and gender down to the city block level.

Opportunity Atlas map of Seattle/King County showing areas with higher average household incomes (blue) and areas with lower average incomes (red). 

The groundbreaking collaboration between researchers and housing authorities was initiated by Greg Russ, the New York City Housing Authority’s newly appointed Chair & CEO, when he was at the helm of the Cambridge Housing Authority. Representing a group of innovative housing authorities, including SHA and KCHA, Russ proposed partnering with housing authorities to test approaches to improve access to higher opportunity neighborhoods. Working in partnership with Chetty’s research team and with support from the Gates and Surgo Foundations, SHA and KCHA launched the CMTO program, offering vouchers with higher rent subsidies to families so that they could afford to live in more resourced neighborhoods. The housing authorities also provided “navigators” to help voucher holders find apartments in these areas. According to the Chetty team’s latest study, this CMTO program increased the share of low-income families who rented in high-opportunity neighborhoods by 40 percent. Through interviews with families, the study team also found that navigator assistance was instrumental to this success, providing customized lease-up assistance based on each family’s unique challenges.

The national media has taken notice of SHA and KCHA’s success story: Vox, The New York Times, NPR, and City Lab have detailed the results of Opportunity Insights’ new study in depth.

Chetty called the results of SHA and KCHA’s innovative program “incredibly encouraging” and highlighted the great impact that this relatively straightforward program can have on life outcomes: “Through CMTO, we found that a small intervention can dramatically change a family’s ability to provide their children with the upward mobility promised in the American Dream.”

Jackie Rath, a beneficiary of the CMTO program, told the New York Times that moving to a higher-opportunity neighborhood in Seattle will likely make a huge difference in her daughter’s life outcomes. “Lots of people need a footstool to get ahead,” she said. “That’s what this program is.”

CLPHA applauds SHA and KCHA for their creative approaches to improving the lives of the families they serve.

Read the Opportunity Insights team’s study “Creating Moves to Opportunity: Experimental Evidence on Barriers to Neighborhood Choice.”

From the Auburn Reporter:

Puget Sound Energy has awarded the King County Housing Authority with a grant to install solar panels at the Meadows on Lea Hill Apartments in Auburn.

The Village at Overlake Station in Redmond, and Windsor Heights Apartments at SeaTac also will receive solar panels.

Collectively, the three systems total 82 kilowatts, enough clean energy to lower the KCHA’s operating costs.

“These rooftop installations help advance the Housing Authority’s Environmental Sustainability Plan,” said KCHA Executive Director Stephen Norman. “The impact of these investments is significant – they not only reduce our housing’s impact on the environment but also lower utility costs and keep these apartments affordable to families that are increasingly struggling with escalating rent and utility costs in these markets. They are part of an ambitious five-year plan to reduce KCHA’s carbon footprint. We truly value the partnership with Puget Sound Energy and Washington State University in moving this effort forward.”

Read the Auburn Reporter's article "King County Housing Authority receives PSE grant for solar panels."

From Connect Boston: Commercial Real Estate News:

Construction is underway on the renovation of Millers River Apartments, a 285-unit affordable housing community in Cambridge.

To complete the project, MassHousing provided $82 million in financing to the Cambridge Housing Authority (CHA), through the agency’s Conduit Loan Program. The transaction will enable the CHA to extend affordability for the life of the property.

Read Connect Boston's article "Renovation Begins of 285-Unit Affordable Housing Community in Cambridge," featuring the Cambridge Housing Authority.