Coordinator: Thank you for standing by, and good afternoon. All participants will be able to listen only until the question and answer portion of the call. This conference is being recorded at the request of the Office for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Health and Human Services. I’d like to introduce your leader for today, Ms. Claudia Schlosberg. Ms. Schlosberg, you may begin.

C. Schlosberg: Thank you. Good afternoon, and for those on the West Coast, good morning. As you’ve heard, my name is Claudia Schlosberg, and I’m a Senior Analyst with the Office for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Health and Human Services. It’s my pleasure to welcome each of you to the first National OCR Olmstead Technical Assistance conference call.

We have some housekeeping matters, and before I make introductory remarks and introduce our speakers, I did want to acknowledge OCR’s Principal Deputy and Acting Director, Robin Sue Frohboese.

R. Frohboese: Thank you, Claudia. I just wanted to join Claudia in welcoming all of you to this very important call. Last count, the operator told us there were 195 individuals, 195 lines already linked up with about 50 more queued up; and we think that this is really a wonderful opportunity and we’re pleased that all of our state and local partners out there, as well as agency, staff, consumers and advocacy organizations can join with us on this important call.

C. Schlosberg: Thanks, Robin Sue. First of all, if you’ve not already done so, materials for this call can be downloaded from OCR’s Website at www.hhs.gov/ocr/mis.htm. I know that the materials were there on the Website for a period of time, but they were hard to find, and they should be readily accessible at this point in time. If you go to that site, the first bullet says Housing for People with Disabilities, and in the parentheses you can click on and open the slides, either in HTML format or PowerPoint format.

Secondly, we’ve had an overwhelming response and we really do appreciate that many of you are gathered around speaker phones to listen in. For those who are not going to be able to access the call, there will be an instant replay available within an hour of our ending. The number for that call is 1-888-566-0648. And in addition, there will be a transcript of the call available within a week of the call. So this, too, will be available, and we will post it on our Website and make it readily available via
e-mail.

As many of you know, on June 18^th, the President, President Bush, signed Executive Order 13217 on Community-Based Alternatives for Individuals with Disabilities. The executive order explicitly states that the US is committed to community-based alternatives for individuals with disabilities, and recognizes that such services advance the best interests of all Americans. The order calls for the full enforcement of Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act, and directs all federal agencies to work cooperatively to assist states to fully comply with the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Olmstead v. L.C., a landmark decision affirming the right of individuals with disabilities to receive treatment in the most integrated setting.

Whether you work on systems issues, for example, as a state agency administrator or whether you are working with a focus on individuals, or you are yourself a consumer, you know that availability of housing that is both affordable and accessible is one of the most challenging barriers to community living faced by individuals with disabilities. A key federal program that can help consumers access housing are programs administered by HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development; and the Section 8 Voucher program.

Today, this call is focused on that program and in particular, the use of Section 8 vouchers as rental subsidies. We know that Section 8 can also be used to help consumers purchase homes, but this call today is going to focus on Section 8 and voucher programs in terms of rental subsidies.

I’m very pleased that we have gathered in the room and on this call as your presenters, individuals who together have – now I have to count up – probably over 70 years of experience in housing programs for people with disabilities. I’m going to briefly introduce each of the speakers, and then I’m going to turn it over to them. When they are done, we will have the remainder of the call for questions and answers or comments.

We’re going to begin with Anne O’Hara who is the cofounder and Associate Director of the Technical Assistance Collaborative, a Boston-based nonprofit organization that provides technical assistance to states and disability organizations working to expand affordable housing opportunities for people with disabilities. Anne has written extensively about federal housing policies and programs for people with disabilities, and formerly served as the Assistant Secretary for Housing and Director of Rental Assistance Programs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Ms. O’Hara will begin by providing us with a broad overview of the Section 8 Program. She will discuss Section 8 Programs specifically targeted to people with disabilities, and she will also talk about special features of the Section 8 Program that are important to people with disabilities and provide some suggested approaches for expanding access to Section 8 vouchers, particularly for people with disabilities who are impacted by the Olmstead decision. She is here today with one of her colleagues, Emily Miller, who also will be here for the Q&A portion of this call.

I’m also very pleased that we have been joined by staff from HUD. In particular, we have with us today Rod Solomon, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, Program and Legislative Initiatives at HUD’s Office of Public and Indian Housing. Over the past several years, Rod led the administration’s participation in the formation of what has become the most comprehensive public housing reform legislation in the program’s history. He is now leading HUD’s effort to implement that legislation. Prior to coming to HUD in 1994, Rod served as the Deputy Executive Director and Acting Executive Director of the Atlanta Housing Authority.

He devoted a dozen years to bringing the Boston Housing Authority from receivership to release from court control and removal from the HUD troubled list by serving as general counsel and head of Planning, Reconstruction, and other divisions. He has also served as a legislative assistant, working with the Senate Housing and Urban Affairs Subcommittee, and in various other federal, state, local and private positions in the housing field.

He is joined today by two of his staff: Susan Sacca, who is a Senior Program Analyst; and in addition, we have Jerry Benoit, who is the Director of the Real Estate and Housing Performance Division, and Jerry tells me that he – because I didn’t understand the title, but he is the administration of the voucher program and an expert on Section 8 vouchers.

In addition, Karen Tamley joins us from Chicago. Karen is the former Housing Coordinator for Access Living, which is an independent living center serving the greater Chicago area. Karen now serves as and was promoted to Program Director for Access Living, and she has dedicated her career to advocating for the rights of people with disabilities to live independently in their own communities. In 1994, she co-founded the Disability Rights Action Coalition for Housing, DRACH, a national grassroots housing advocacy organization, working to develop housing policies with respect to the civil and human rights of people with disabilities.

Karen is going to talk about some of the practical issues facing consumers using Section 8 vouchers, or the kinds of challenges and issues that Section 8 vouchers alone do not resolve, and some of the innovative programs that she has helped to development and implement throughout her career to address some of those very real issues.

So with that, let me turn it over to Anne, and we’ll begin.

A. O’Hara: Thank you, Claudia. And thank you all for taking the time out of what I’m sure are very busy days to join us. It’s a pleasure for me to be here today. It’s a challenge for me to be here today because the Section 8 program is an incredibly complicated program, in my view, and is if anything, getting more complicated rather than less complicated, now that it also can be used for home ownership, as well as rental housing.

I’m very conscious of the time limits we have today, and so my goal is to try and give as good an overview of the basic Section 8 voucher program for rental housing as I possibly can, knowing that there is much more detailed information on virtually very subject or issue that I’m going to touch on, that I just would not have the time to clarify. Hopefully, we can do some of that in the Q&A. Hopefully, we can also be available for folks who need more information.

I’m realizing that some of you are probably quite expert on the subject of how Section 8 vouchers work, and others of you may have only recently even learned about the availability or the potential use of Section 8 vouchers, so we hope to strike a balance in terms of the knowledge of the group that is on the phone with us today.

So what is the Section 8 voucher program? And if you want to follow along, I will start on slide 2 and try to cue folks as we go down the list. Obviously it is a federal housing assistance program. It’s administered through HUD and through public housing agencies, which actually used to be called in the old days, Public Housing authorities.

The program assists people, households with low incomes, typically divided into three groups: Families with children; elders, meaning people or households where the head or the spouse is 62 years of age or older; and people with disabilities, to help pay for decent and safe housing. The program provides financial assistance in the private housing market and that’s the key.

We are talking about using federal funding to access housing that is privately owned and managed in the private rental market; and obviously the private rental market fluctuates from month to month, from year to year. There are times when the private housing rental market is easier to access; there are times when the market is very difficult to access because of price increases, and that’s a very important dynamic that drives the Section 8 Program.

The program provides a financial subsidy, which is based on two things: the income of the household and the cost of the housing. And because it is based on the cost of the housing as much as it’s based on the income of the household, it’s a very locally-driven program. There are obviously wide variations in cost of housing between expensive housing markets like New York, San Francisco, Boston, and some more modestly-priced housing markets that you might find in parts of the Midwest or in some of the rural areas of the United States. So the benefit that Section 8 provides is very much based also on the costs in the housing market that you happen to be in.

On the next slide, slide 3, are the benefits of Section 8. One of the primary purposes of Section 8 is to help people either rent or own their housing that they choose in communities of their choice. So it’s very much about choice. It’s permanent housing, meaning that it’s housing that is governed by landlord/tenant laws wherever the housing is located. It is long-term, meaning it’s not time-limited in most cases, and it’s affordable.

And the way in which the Section 8 Program is made affordable is that tenants pay rent according to their income, not according to the cost for the housing; and under federal law, affordable is defined as paying no more than 30%, and now up to 40% of your income towards your housing costs. There are instances in the program, which we won’t go into today, where some folks can pay a little more than 40%, but basically when you enter the program, you will pay as a resident, as a tenant, as a participant, between 30 to 40% of your income, whatever that is. It’s independent housing, which can be linked with, but is clearly separated from services and supports that some people with disabilities need in order to be able to live in the community and in their own home.

On the next slide, we just mention briefly that there are really four ways that Section 8 can be used. Under the Rental Assistance Program, you can have a tenant-based subsidy or a project-based subsidy, and we’ll talk about both of those. And then as Claudia mentioned, under the Home Ownership option, which is very new, there are Section 8 payments that can be used for home ownership assistance and now for down payment assistance. But we will – if we can ask folks not to ask too many questions about the Home Ownership Program today, because we’re primarily focusing on rental.

On slide 5, Who Manages the Section 8 Program? Well, here we have a diagram that shows everything starting with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. And actually, we probably should have put Congress at the top, because the funding is appropriated by Congress, the rules are made by Congress. Congress then turns the administration of the program over to HUD.

HUD in turn grants these funds to public housing agencies, who in turn give them out to low and very low-income households. And we will talk more in a few minutes about public housing authorities and how they’re made up and what they do, but for right now, it’s just important to know that they are the administering entity for the Section 8 Program.

As far as who makes the rules is concerned, one of the things that’s important to know for people who are going to be working with
Section 8, is that it’s a 26-year-old program. It may be going on its 27^th year as we speak. Any federal program that survives that long has a multiplicity of rules and laws and regulations, which have evolved over time from Congress and from HUD, that make the program very complicated.

It’s very rare that the federal government repeals any rules; they just add more rules because Congress adds more rules. And so when you get into the real detail of Section 8, it’s often very – it’s difficult, particularly if you’re not familiar with the program, to know exactly what you can and can’t do. I just want to put that out there for people who will be working with the program down the road and who may feel a degree of frustration at the level of complexity that exists.

Congress makes the housing laws, authorizes the ways in which the program can be used and appropriates the money, including appropriating special set-asides of Section 8 in recent years that are targeted exclusively to people with disabilities. HUD then takes those laws and takes those appropriations and develops regulations and guidance that form the basic framework for how the program operates.

However, increasingly as we have gone through the decade of the 1990’s, and authority for federal housing programs has devolved from Washington down to the local level, public housing agencies have had more and more discretion about how they administer, how they choose to run their
Section 8 program in their particular jurisdiction. And while they do have a tremendous amount of flexibility, we also have to keep in mind that local housing authorities can only do Section 8 administratively in accordance with what the laws say they can do and what the regulations permit them to do. So it’s a complicated equation that starts with Congress and ends with the flexibility at the local housing authority or housing agency.

I’m moving on now to slide number seven. One of the questions that we get asked all the time about the Section 8 Program is, how much money does the program actually provide? So what we’ve done in the presentation today is try to show in a three-step example based on different geographic locations, how the Section 8 Program works financially. And we hopefully illustrated this, so you can see that the amount of money that is available for Section 8 in communities varies greatly as you move across the country, from less expensive to more expensive housing markets.

Step one in the process is that HUD publishes fair market rents or what are called in the jargon, FMR’s, for what is called modest rental housing. And there is a definition of modest rental housing that determines the way HUD actually sets the rents, the fair market rents for the program. So the rent levels, the fair market rent levels are set by HUD. Then each housing authority or housing agency establishes from those rents what is called a payment standard for the program. And the payment standard is somewhat flexible, because it can be between 90% of the fair market rent and 110% of the fair market rent.

In addition to that flexibility, there are also ways that HUD can approve higher rents for particularly expensive housing markets. Once you have the payment standard, then the Section 8 payment is the difference between 30% of what the household’s adjusted income is and the
Section 8 payment standard. And what I’d like to do is just walk you through an example, so that I can illustrate this point a little more clearly.

So in slide number eight, we’re going to go through three steps. Step 1 is that HUD publishes the FMR’s or the fair market rents. They’re published every year. They’re usually published in the spring or early summer for comment, so that they’re actually published as proposed rents. That allows advocates and housing agencies at the local level to actually give HUD comments about whether the rents that are being proposed are reasonable for the market in that locality.

The rents are also based on the size of the housing, so that there is a different rent for a one-bedroom apartment or a one-bedroom unit; there is a higher rent for a two-bedroom and three-bedroom and four-bedroom, and so on. And what we’ve used on slide number eight is an example, and please let me say right at the start here, that these are the published fair market rents for the localities that we’ve listed. These localities actually may be operating under exception rents granted by HUD for specific situations, but we weren’t aware of that when we used these examples, so these are the published fair market rents.

You’ll see that in Boston right now, the fair market rent for a one-bedroom under the Section 8 Program is $782. In Austin, Texas, it’s $615. In Springfield, Illinois, it’s $393, and in Spokane, Washington, it’s $436. So you can see there that the amount of the fair market rent can be as much as 200% higher in one location to another.

Once HUD publishes these rents as a final rule usually in October of every year, then you go to step two. And step two is the flexibility that the housing agency, the housing authority has to adopt what is called the Section 8 payment standard. And as I mentioned before, the payment standard can be anywhere between 90% of the fair market rent and 110% of the fair market rent.

In this example on slide number nine, we chose to use 110% of the fair market rent, so we could illustrate this principal. Currently, housing authorities are finding it difficult to rent units, and for that reason you will hopefully find that payment standards are actually higher than the fair market rent. So you see by applying the 110%, that the Boston payment standard now is $860 a month, which is obviously higher than the fair market rent; Austin, $676; Springfield, $432; and Spokane, Washington, $479.

Now if you move to step 3, we have calculated what the tenant rent would be, based on the amount received by a person who is receiving federal supplemental security income benefits. And these are SSI amounts that we took out of a recent publication that we did called Priced Out at 2000, so these are actually not accurate; these are 2000 SSI amounts, not 2001. So in Boston, 30% of a person’s income if they were receiving SSI, would be $175; Austin, $145; Springfield, $145; and Spokane, $145. The reason Boston is higher is that the state of Massachusetts provides an SSI supplement.

And then finally we get to slide eleven, which is the actually subsidy amount. And what you see here is that we have subtracted the amount the tenant would pay, which is in slide ten, from the payment standard, which was in slide nine; so that the subsidy in Boston is $685; Austin, $531; Springfield, $287; and Spokane, $334. And I apologize for going into such detail on this, but I think it’s very important for people to see that the amount of benefit that Section 8 provides can vary greatly from place to place around the country. It can vary greatly within a state.

For example, where I come from in Massachusetts, the amount of the subsidy in Boston is very high; the amount of the subsidy in some of the less expensive housing markets like New Bedford, Fall River and some parts of western Massachusetts, the subsidy can be literally half of what it is in Boston. And I think that’s particularly important for Medicaid directors and other people who are trying to figure out how the Section 8 program benefit fits into Olmstead planning activities.

Okay, let’s move to slide 12. How does the Section 8 Program actually work? Well, for those of you who are familiar with Medicaid, I think the most important thing to point out is that Section 8 is not an entitlement. Approximately 200,000 people with disabilities currently receive
Section 8 voucher assistance. Those of us who work with SSI know that there are literally millions of people currently receiving SSI; so you can see that the number of people with disabilities who actually receive Section 8 assistance at the moment is quite small.

In order to get Section 8, you have to apply to the PHA and get on the waiting list. Section 8 is driven by a principal of first-come, first-served, and that’s because since the beginning of the program, there’s never been enough Section 8 to go around for all the people in the United States who qualify for it. That’s why it operates on the basis of waiting lists.

Now, I didn’t mention this on the slide, but I think it’s important to point out that people can be on more than one list. Each housing authority has a Section 8 list. In Massachusetts, for example, if you had enough fortitude, you could go around the state to the 154 housing authorities that administer Section 8 and get your name on every single one of their waiting lists.

Once you’re on the list, your name moves from the bottom of the list to the top of the list in an incredibly complicated process that I will describe a little bit more in a few minutes. Once your name is at the top of the list, you then are issued a Section 8 voucher. And for people who have waited a long time, this can feel like the bonanza, like the birthday party or the Christmas where you got more presents than you thought you’d ever get. But it’s actually just the beginning of what is a very complicated and difficult process of trying to find housing that actually is available and that is consistent with the Section 8 program guidelines.

If you find that housing and it can be approved by the housing authority under the Section 8 rules, the housing authority pays the subsidy directly to the owner, and the tenant pays their share, whatever it is, directly to the owner, so the owner receives two payments.

Moving over to slide 13, eligibility for the program. I think it’s fair to say that every single person that’s on SSI is currently eligible for Section 8 in terms of their income. Anyone below 50% of median income is eligible, and nationally, SSI is equal to 18.5% of median. However, there are eligibility and screening criteria that housing authorities use. They may screen for criminal history, for past rental history and for other local criteria that the housing authority adopts that are consistent with the Section 8 rules. The program participant or the applicant must also verify their income and verify their disability status.

Section 8 is not a time-limited program. The assistance is continued until the cost of the unit equals the household share of the rent, or unless their participation is terminated for noncompliance, or unless Congress doesn’t fund the appropriation; but in the 26 years of the program, that has never happened.

I want to turn quickly now to public housing agencies. They are as we said, the primary administering agency. There are over 2,500, there maybe 2,600 Housing Authorities nationwide that run the Section 8 Program. There are some that do not, but about two thirds of the PHA’s in the United States do run Section 8. Housing authorities are a quasi-governmental body. They are a separate, corporate body politic governed by an elected or appointed board of commissioners and run by an executive director. And these are the folks that make the policies that actually end up determining who gets Section 8 assistance in their community.

On slide 15, I just wanted to point out that right now there are about
1.4 million Section 8 rent subsidies across the nation. About 90% of those are currently being used; the number may be a little bit higher than that. There are typically Section 8 vouchers that are issued to people, and those either get leased or they get turned back to the PHA to be reissued. There are also about 22 nonprofit organizations that administer Section 8 vouchers directly. Those nonprofits have just begun to receive vouchers in the late 1990’s. There is a HUD Website you can go to with a list of PHA’s that’s noted on slide 15.

We had mentioned that there are two kinds of rental assistance: tenant-based and project-based. I want to describe the tenant-based rental assistance program, which is a program that was actually authorized by Congress in 1998 and merged what used to be the certificate and voucher programs together. As I said, participants pay between 30% and 40% of their adjusted income and choose housing in the community. It’s important to know that in most states, landlords are not required to accept Section 8 vouchers, so that the participation by the owner or the management company in accepting the voucher is voluntary, with the exception of a few states that have laws which do protect Section 8 voucher-holders.

What does the housing authority do to actually help people use the
Section 8 program? Listed on slide Number 17 are the different activities that housing authorities do to run the program; outreach to groups that are eligible, including hopefully people with disabilities; managing the waiting list; screening in eligibility; getting the voucher and obtaining housing; inspecting the housing to make sure it is consistent with HUD’s housing quality standards; re-certifying income and program participation once a year; providing reasonable accommodation to people with disabilities, consistent with the Fair Housing laws; and also developing specific plans for the Section 8 Program.

On the outreach’s waiting list, what’s important to know here is that PHA’s are required to outreach to people with disabilities, and they are required to establish waiting lists and to add names to a waiting list if they do not have enough people on the list to be able to provide vouchers that they would receive from HUD in the following year.

PHA’s unfortunately have a mixed track record on outreach to people with disabilities. What you’ll find as you do your work is that some PHA’s have very strong relationships with disability organizations, and others have not done such a good job in making sure that people with disabilities get access to the waiting list.

When you apply, when the housing authority opens the list, one of two things can happen. Either the applications are accepted and then randomized in a lottery, or they’re accepted in chronological order, based on the date and time of the application.

I’m on slide 19, and I want you to star the second bullet on this slide; it says that PHA’s can establish waiting list preferences. This is a very important point for those of you who are working on Olmstead plans and trying to target vouchers to particular groups. PHA’s can establish preferences for people with disabilities, for people with Medicaid waivers, for homeless people, for people living in substandard housing, and a variety of other categories. These preferences are called local preferences, and are part of the PHA’s flexibility that they have increasingly obtained from the federal government in the last three or four years.

It’s also important for you to know that most PHA’s have closed waiting lists or lists that are very long. So if you’re looking to work with a PHA to target vouchers for people with disabilities, you need to make the point that they need to look at how many people with disabilities are on their waiting list, not just how many households are on their list.

On slide 20, we mentioned that once you get to the top of the list, you are issued a voucher. You can use the voucher in housing that you are currently living in; you do not have to move, provided the housing meets the program requirements and the landlord is willing to accept the voucher; or as most people find, you can search for new housing. That housing has to meet HUD’s inspection requirements and have a rent that is reasonable, based on comparable housing units in the community that are not assisted under the Section 8 program.

Once you get the voucher, you have at least 60 days to look for housing; but most housing authorities now are granting up to 120 days, because it is so difficult to find housing that is available, given the tight rental housing market that we’ve had in the United States over the last year or two.

I’m going to skip over slide 21; we mentioned about inspections and verification of income.

I want to focus on slide 22, and I want to point out that the federal fair housing laws, particular the Fair Housing Act and Section 504 of the Rehab Act, require that HUD and housing authorities make reasonable accommodations in their programs, policies, procedures to ensure the active participation by people with disabilities. And some examples of reasonable accommodations, meaning things that the PHA will do that are different than what they will do for other applicants. They can allow, for example, Section 8 applications to be mailed, rather than delivered in person. They can grant exceptions to screening criteria. They can extend the time for housing search. And very importantly for Olmstead plans, for people who need accessible housing, they can grant exceptions for higher rents, including for units that are accessible or barrier-free.

Briefly, project-based assistance, you probably will not run across project-based assistance too much in the next few months, but you may as PHA’s begin to implement a new project-based program. Basically what you need to know is that the PHA does have the ability to tie the subsidy to a specific unit in a specific project. The person receives the assistance if they move into the unit, and if they want to move out of the unit, they can get a voucher from the PHA to do that as long as they have stayed in the unit for at least a year, I believe.

So how do you put all this together? Well, look at slide 24. Most of the information that you need to figure out what a PHA is doing with the Section 8 program is contained in two documents. Each PHA has what’s called a PHA plan, which they have to complete once a year and send to HUD for approval. In addition, they also have something called a
Section 8 Administrative Plan, and that’s really where they outline all of their policies, procedures, preferences, application requirements, waiting list protocols, etc. So those of you who are looking to partner with housing authorities, my advice is for you to very quickly ask for a copy of their PHA Plan and their Section 8 Administrative Plan.

Let’s wind down with the last three or four slides. And what does this all mean in the context of Olmstead planning? Well, I think clearly what it means is that those of you who are working on Olmstead-related issues, working on housing for people with disabilities, need to look at creating partnerships with housing authorities. They clearly are the sole-source player here, virtually, for the Section 8 program. And particularly for those of you who are working on state Olmstead plans, I would encourage you to work with your state PHA. Most states have an agency at the state level that does some Section 8 administration, and it seems as though, as Olmstead planning goes forward, that that’s a good place to start, since it would be state agency to state agency.

One of the things to point out in the opportunities that are going to be possibly available is that right now, PHA’s are under a fair amount of pressure from HUD to use all of their vouchers. The utilization rate for Section 8 has gone down somewhat recently, primarily because of the high cost of rental housing. HUD is doing everything it can to help PHA’s get higher rents. There are now much easier procedures for PHA’s to get higher rents in their program, and that means that there are vouchers that PHA’s need to use.

One of the things that’s helpful to know is that a PHA doesn’t get paid for the vouchers unless they are used, so a PHA with 50 or 100 unused vouchers is sitting there with income that is not being received because the vouchers are not leased up. So one of the questions to ask is about utilization of existing vouchers that the PHA has.

Another thing is to apply for new vouchers that are set aside for people with disabilities. We hope that there will be new vouchers in the budget for 2002. Believe me, it is not too soon to start talking to your housing authorities about whether they would be willing to apply. Every year, only 10 to 20% of the housing authorities actually apply for vouchers for people with disabilities. We need to get that number up to a much higher amount, and the way to do that is to start talking now about an application for next year.

On slide 26, what we’ve tried to do is just show you some of the ways that vouchers set aside for people with disabilities have been given out over the last few years. There is a program called Section 8 Mainstream. About 1,600 vouchers are funded out of that program each year, and both nonprofit organizations and housing authorities can apply. There are vouchers set aside for designated housing, and those vouchers go to PHA’s that can show that there has been a loss of housing in their community from the creation of elderly-only housing.

There are vouchers set aside for people with disabilities from something called Fair Share Incremental vouchers. Those are the vouchers that PHA’s applied for last year that can go to any household. Many PHA’s agreed they would set aside some of those vouchers for people with disabilities and for people who are participating in the Medicaid home and community-based waiver program.

So if you are looking at Olmstead planning and you want to think about who the key actors might be, this is some advice that Emily Miller and I think could help you for the future. First of all, you should look at the state PHA. Again, as we said, there are some states – and I shouldn’t single states out, but there are states like New Jersey and Michigan and Massachusetts that have very large statewide PHA programs that can provide vouchers to people living in every single community in that state.

I would also look at large PHA’s that have good track records. I will save HUD the problem of having to say that not every single PHA has a good track record, and if it’s a large PHA with a poor track record, that’s probably not the PHA that you want to go to right away to ask for help with this, because they’ll be struggling to just deal with their basic program administration.

There are lots of small and medium-sized PHA’s with a real history of innovation, and what we’ve listed here are two organizations that you could contact. There is a group called the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities. They’re in Washington, DC, and you can reach them at 202-638-1300. I’m sure they probably have a Website, and they could give you the names of the largest PHA’s in the country.

And then the other organization that represents the large, medium and small PHA’s is the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, or what’s called NAHRO. And the state chapters of NAHRO can be very helpful. They usually have meetings once a month; they have some of the best PHA directors on their board. You could go and request time on their meeting agenda. And then finally the 22 nonprofit organizations that have Section 8 Mainstream vouchers for people with disabilities, and I’m sure HUD has a list of those.

Let me end by just listing these key questions that are typically the kinds of questions you want to ask a PHA if you’re looking to form a partnership. Ask whether they’ve applied for any new vouchers for people with disabilities. Those set-asides have been available since 1997. If they did, when did they apply? Did they apply in ’97, or did they apply last year? How many did they receive? Some PHA’s only applied for ten or 20; others applied for 200.

Are they all being utilized? We believe that there are a lot of unutilized vouchers out there, and some PHA’s probably are just waiting for you to knock on the door and say, "Have I got a good idea for you!" Ask if the PHA is willing to discuss creating a preference in the voucher program for people covered under state Olmstead plans. You might also want to ask if the PHA is planning to project-base vouchers, because that’s a very good way of obtaining accessible and barrier-free housing in newer housing complexes.

I know many of you are interested in the Home Ownership Program, and so while you’re asking all these questions of the PHA, it probably would be a good time to start to talk to them about whether they plan to run the Section 8 Home Ownership Program.

Okay, that’s it, Claudia.

C. Schlosberg: Thank you, Anne. Rod and Jerry?

R. Solomon: Thank you, Anne, that was great. While I’m thinking of it, there are just two things you said that I would supplement. You mentioned PHA plans. This is something housing authorities have to do, both on a five-year basis as you said, and annually. Those plans have to be available to the public, and their supporting documents is what HUD calls them, which includes a Section 8 administrative plan that Anne mentioned, also has to be all in one place, accessible to the public. So if you get in touch with the housing authority, those documents are supposed to be there for you to look over.

Also, Anne listed toward the end of her presentation basically the sources and magnitude of what’s come out for persons with disabilities in the voucher area. I think that’s very important. If you count up all the vouchers that have been issued, even just say in fiscal 2000, she mentioned mainstreaming vouchers, about 1,600 of those, vouchers in relation with communities where there’s been so-called designated housing for elderly only about 6,500 or more of those, and then the so-called Fair Share Program of HUD’s. HUD gave extra points in its Fair Share distribution to housing authorities who said they would use vouchers either for persons with disabilities in general or with Medicaid waivers, and there were about 5,000 more vouchers which housing authorities said they would use in that way. So we’re up to about 13,000 of them, just in fiscal 2000. I would think 2001 would have similar numbers.

I want to briefly talk about Project Access, which the President and HUD Secretary Martinez announced on June 20^th. I wanted to mention all those other resources because housing authorities are free to have what Anne called and what the program calls preferences, where they can take these other vouchers and they can decide to prefer a group, such as persons with disabilities or families with those persons in them. That’s something you need to work on locally with your housing authority.

But Project Access is something that we started in conjunction with the Department of Health and Human Services as a specific demonstration related to Olmstead, to see what can happen in the de-institutionalization area if we focused and pinpointed vouchers just for that. So communities can do that on their own, but we’ve basically taken 400 vouchers in the first year and on that date, we announced eleven different sites where the vouchers would be awarded.

And the idea is that the housing authority would work with the state Medicaid agency and with others in the community who are interested, such as groups like many of you are in, and the individuals and families being assisted that, where there are resources like the nursing home transition grants that HHS has, that we would try to combine those resources and sort of put our efforts together to see how we can help with the de-institutionalization effort.

The idea was also that there would be a technical assistance arm of this, that HUD is in the process of signing up; an entity that would both help in these individual communities and also make sure that everybody knows what everybody else is doing; that there’s a – I guess these days, everything is a Website – that there’s a Website, but that we have the benefit of knowing that if something is working in Colorado, that somebody in Michigan or wherever else it might be, New Jersey or wherever, or in states that, frankly, don’t have vouchers awarded to begin with, can use techniques that seem to be working out.

So that’s basically what Project Access is; it’s really just getting going. The sites have been announced. At the moment, they frankly may not know much more than that they’ve been announced. They did apply, meaning it wasn’t a formal competition, but they expressed interest for the most part. HUD published a Federal Register notice last December about the possible demonstration. We got about 200 comments about how to run it, and we got a number of housing authorities and states expressing interest in the program. Again, for the most part, that’s – we picked the grantees from among those who expressed interest, or who frankly, we thought would be very good candidates, and talked to them about doing this.

So this is an effort which is really just getting going. I think it will be very important to Olmstead. But I also think, and just want to emphasize again, that you should note it in the context of all of these vouchers that are possibly available locally, so that you can follow the demonstration and work on that, but also work more broadly on the issue with the housing authorities, Medicaid agencies and others that will be concerned.

Jerry, is there anything that you would want to add at this point?

J. Benoit: No, I’ll just wait until we get to the general question and answer period. Anne did a pretty good job of summarizing how the program works, and it was better her than me!

C. Schlosberg: Thanks. Karen?

K. Tamley: Hello?

C. Schlosberg: Hello, you’re still with us?

K. Tamley: Yes.

C. Schlosberg: Great. You have the floor or the mike.

K. Tamley: Okay. Can you hear me if I’m on speakerphone here?

C. Schlosberg: Yes.

K. Tamley: Okay. Basically you wanted me to address just some of the barriers that people with disabilities face in terms of getting housing; and I’ll say I’m the Program Director at a Center for Independent Living in Chicago, which obviously is a huge housing market in this country. We have a number of advocacy and services that we provide around helping people with disabilities live independently in the communities of their choice.

Just to kind of touch on obviously the biggest barriers that anybody who is disabled or works with people with disabilities knows the story, that housing really is the number one issue in our community. It’s really the key ingredient to independent living. But unfortunately, our community really has had too few choices. We have a very long and shameful history of institutionalizing our community, both in the past and still in the present. We have a tremendous barrier in getting people with disabilities out of institutions because of the lack of affordable, accessible and integrated housing in the community.

I think we add to this fact because people with disabilities are disproportionately poor. Over 70% of our community is not working and on some type of fixed monthly income, and so the need for housing really becomes an economic issue.

Then on top of that, you couple this with the need for accessible housing, and I use the word "accessible" very broadly, to mean not just physical access, but housing that is removed of barriers, attitudinal barriers or environmental barriers or physical barriers. The need for accessible housing and the discrimination that people with disabilities face in accessing housing really becomes a tremendous problem. So finding housing, I’m sure as everybody out there knows, can become like finding a needle in a haystack. It’s just not out there.

And I think because of this, Section 8 vouchers are so critically important. They’re important because I think additionally, because they address two additional issues. One is they address the economic issue, the fact that our community is disproportionately poor. So many of us are on fixed incomes that the need for housing assistance is so critical. But it also addresses the integration issue, particularly with vouchers, that people with disabilities can have the choice to live in the communities of their choice, and obviously can move around, and they don’t have to live in a specific building just because they have this type of disability or that type of disability; truly they can live in the communities of their choice.

I do think that there are a lot of real-life barriers, specifically to Section 8, that people with disabilities face. First of all, the availability of Section 8 is very slim obviously for all people, including people with disabilities. So there needs to be obviously more availability of this inner community. We need to also make sure that there are Section 8’s available in a timely way. Many, many people actually die waiting for a Section 8, as in our city of Chicago, because the time it takes for individuals to be able to secure housing assistance is tremendously long, so the timing is particularly important.

Getting landlords to take Section 8 is obviously another big problem. I know, Anne, you mentioned that. Chicago is one of the lucky cities that has an ordinance that prohibits landlords from discriminating against not just all protective classes, but also individuals based on source of income, including Section 8. I guess on an advocacy end, if that’s something that you don’t have in your city or your state’s human rights ordinance, it may be something to look at. But landlords not taking Section 8 I know is a barrier.

Then also making sure that the markets support the Section 8, particularly in cities that have very, very high rental rates. Many people just can’t use a Section 8, so making sure that the market supports the subsidy is really critical.

Some of the more disability-specific issues that we faced here locally, which we tried to address through some kind of model program, I just want to take a few minutes and talk about that. One of them is the issue of modification funds. Obviously in big cities or pretty much any city obviously, the need or the ability to locate accessible housing is really hard. And in many senses that if you have a Section 8 or you have a subsidy, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to work if you can’t find an accessible unit. It’s like having the keys to your apartment without being able to get in.

And so one of the things that we’ve been trying to get for a long time, back when Henry Cisneros was Secretary of HUD, is to look at the availability of modification funds, so that individuals with disabilities can have more options to be able to use that voucher to live in more areas that they want to live. And I’ll talk a little bit more about that in a minute.

And then the second area, too, which we’ve really found is educating public housing authorities on disability rights issues, making sure that their offices are accessible, that they provide the programs and services in an equal manner to people with all types of disabilities. That’s been a big issue in Chicago where we’ve had individuals who are deaf, who go to see folks at the Section 8 office, and none of their materials are in an accessible format; their videos are not captioned; there are no materials available in Braille or large print. And so program access, ensuring that the programs are accessible, really is another big barrier that we’ve seen here locally.

So I think too that – I think Section 8 is important, but I also think that HUD really can play a big and a very important role in ensuring that people with disabilities have real housing choices, the same housing choices that people without disabilities have. And they can play a very big and important role in the whole implementation of the Olmstead mandate.

I think that while Section 8 is one major piece of it, and many of you who are there from HUD know that we’ve been at the table for quite some time, bringing out the issues or some of the barriers that people with disabilities face; and aside from increasing Section 8, I think we need more resources to people with disabilities, whether it’s Section 8 or integrated housing options. Clearly, there needs to be much more resources available to people with disabilities in integrated settings, settings that don’t segregate our community.

An increased enforcement of Section 504 in the Fair Housing Amendments Act, not just in the public sectors, but also in the private sectors, is also a key issue in terms of people with disabilities having housing choice. And I would encourage all the advocates out there to continue to look at what type of public housing is going up in your area and ensure that it is in compliance with these laws. We have found otherwise in our city, and our city may be representative of what’s happening in other communities across the country. So definitely increased enforcement of 504 FHAA, and also looking at tax credit housing too, and making sure that that set styled housing is also compliant with Fair Housing laws.

I think there also needs to be, and I think the use of Section 8 for home ownership is really great, and obviously it’s going to be up to our communities to make sure that our PHA’s really give people with disabilities that choice, but more support around home ownership options for people with disabilities. When we talk about increasing the national home ownership rate of all people, people with disabilities need to be part of that equation and that solution.

So going back to some of the things that we’ve worked on here locally, one is the area of de-institutionalizing people with disabilities. And I think we can’t really talk about getting people with disabilities out of nursing homes until we talk about the housing and the housing crisis for our community. Here in Chicago, we have not just a huge affordable housing crisis, but obviously we have a lot of people with disabilities.

Living in nursing homes, we’ve identified 40,000 people living in Chicago nursing homes, and we have a state program through the State of Illinois where Centers for Independent Living are able to get state money to help individuals de-institutionalize. That money can be used for first month’s rent, security deposit and household equipment, and some of those are really major barriers that have been addressed through the provision of those funds. Because as we know when you’re in a nursing home, you only get about $30 a month. How can you save up the amount of money needed to get out and get into the community? So that has been a major, major help in terms of us being able to de-institutionalize people.

We’ve been able to get 74 people out of nursing homes in the last three and a half years, which just in the first year and a half alone, the state estimated it saved them $11 million in providing individuals with services in the community, as opposed to nursing homes. So we hope that this is really a move in the right direction in terms of realizing not just the cost savings, but also the fact that it is a human and civil rights issue for people to be able to live independently in the communities of their choice.

The people we have been able to de-institutionalize are mostly non-elderly, cross-disability, people with physical disabilities, mental illness, psychiatric disabilities; and we’re going into the nursing homes in some of the state-operated facilities as well. And I think the state, as they come back to us and they feel like in many ways our numbers are low, that we should be able to get more people out, and that they’ve really recognized that the housing is the biggest barrier that people are facing in order to get these people out. It was interesting to hear the state in a meeting last week saying, "I think you guys could be getting more people out if you had more housing resources," which is true.

Typically, most of the people that we’re working on de-institutionalizing are on SSI – actually, all of them – and about $520 a month, and then the average rent here is $450 a month. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that there is a huge problem and that Section 8 really becomes a key tool, aside from the security deposit money and the funds to set up the household, that Section 8 really is so important.

We have got a commitment for 23 vouchers for Chicago to help move people with disabilities out of nursing homes and into the community, and we feel like this is going to really help us increase our numbers. I would just say that it’s not just important that we have the Section 8, but they be really available in a timely basis, so that when people are ready to move out, the Section 8 is right there to help them get out into the community.

The second issue that we’ve tried to address here is the issue of individuals who are not necessarily institutionalized, but have a Section 8 or are on the waiting list, who may need funds for modification. And again, this was something that we had brought to Secretary Cisneros and former Secretary Cuomo around the issue of establishing a modification fund for Section 8 recipients. Unfortunately, we’ve not yet been successful at that on a national level, but on a local level we have.

Again, what Anne was saying about establishing a relationship with your housing authority is really important. I know it’s a hard thing to do, but we’ve been fortunate to have some people here that get it, at least from our Section 8 end, who have really worked with us on trying to develop some innovative ways to deliver Section 8’s to the disabled community.

I think that our approach to the Section 8 has been pretty much multi-pronged in terms of increasing access and awareness of disability issues, and a lot of it has been based on problems that we’ve had or barriers, in terms of our community being able to get a voucher. Some of the things that we’ve done are, number one we’ve educated all of the Section 8 staff here, because time and time again, we found people that weren’t able to access their program. Again, the program materials weren’t in an alternative format. You look through their briefing materials. There is never any mention of disability.

So we’ve been able to work with their Section 8 staff on providing trainings on not just disability awareness, but disability rights laws, and what are their obligations under 504 as a recipient of federal funds; what are their obligations to ensure that all their programs are accessible to people with all types of disabilities. That has actually – sometimes I don’t know if education always works, but in our experiences we’ve had some good things that have come out of it. Particularly, we had a couple of individuals that had EIMCS, or multiple chemical sensitivity, who needed an accommodation, needed, say, two bedrooms instead of one bedroom. And because of the training we did, they got it. They said, this is an accommodations issue under the law, and they granted that person a two-bedroom, due to their disability.

Same thing with extending the period that people with disabilities can look for housing. Because we did this training, they got that; and the next time this issue came up, that individual was able to get access to that program, so I think that’s an important thing.

The second is we got our Section 8 office to establish a 504 ADA office. It’s taken us many, many years to get our housing authority to get one, which they finally did; but we were also successful in getting our
Section 8 office to have one. In Chicago, our Section 8 office is separate from our housing authority. But we felt like this was a really important component in terms of individuals or their staff being able to handle accommodation requests, being able to provide people with disabilities information on what are their rights and that kind of thing, so that’s something that’s been established.

We’ve also been contracted to educate mobility counseling agencies on disability rights issues and rights laws. There are many agencies here in Chicago that provide counseling, in terms of helping people with disabilities locate housing when they have a Section 8, either they’re moving out of public housing or they’re wanting to move. I think we made a decision at our center that we didn’t want to provide the mobility counseling; we wanted other organizations that serve all people to serve people with disabilities. So we got them to allow us to work with some of those mobility counseling agencies, which we’re going to be doing in the coming year, educating them, not just on what are our issues, but what are our rights as well.

The fourth thing that we got was a modification fund, and we were able to secure $100,000 of funds from the housing authority to be available to people with disabilities who have Section 8’s, either those on the waiting list, those moving out as a result of designation or redevelopment, or those wanting to move in general. And also, when we do get a Home Ownership Program, we’re hopefully going to be able to link that modification fund to individuals purchasing homes with the use of Section 8 in Chicago. We’re currently in the process of drafting our plan for a Home Ownership Program.

And then lastly we’ve been able to fund a staff person, or the housing authority has been able to fund a staff person to kind of coordinate all these efforts, doing the modification assessments in people’s homes, arranging the contractor; and there’s a cap up to $5,000 for Section 8 holders to be used for modifications.

So in general, these are just kind of two ideas that we’ve done locally to try to address some of the problems. It’s not the whole solution; obviously, it’s just really a piece of the solution, and we need obviously a more comprehensive approach. Section 8 is vitally important. We need to not just increase Section 8 for all people and people with disabilities and those living in nursing homes, but also we need more integrated project-based housing, we need more enforcement of our civil rights laws.

And I think that the disability community, it’s so important to be vigilant on your local level, to make sure that our issues are on the radar screen and that we develop more programs, which help address this really desperate need for housing. Getting your housing authority to apply for more vouchers, getting them to do the Home Ownership Program, getting them to develop Section 8 Programs. And also getting involved in your public housing plan, your Consolidated Plan, and really monitoring the type of housing that’s being built in your community to make sure it’s compliant with civil rights laws.

So I guess that’s it in a nutshell, and I would turn it back to the moderator.

C. Schlosberg: Thank you, Karen. I think you’ve certainly underscored for all of us on the call the importance of developing a relationship with your local public housing authority; and you certainly demonstrated that good things can come from that.

I’m going to ask Brad to come on the line. Before we queue up for the questions, Karen, when you and I talked previously and you talked about the modification fund, I asked you what the average cost of modification was. Can you just answer that question for the others on the call?

K. Tamley: Yes. For a Whipter ramp, it’s been like $5,000, approximately. But for other modifications that are smaller, it’s been less than that.

C. Schlosberg: Okay, that’s great.

K. Tamley: And sometimes this program can’t cover the cost of all the modifications, but we have other programs in our city, and we also administer other modification funds from the private sector that can help supplement this.

C. Schlosberg: That’s great. Brad, I think that we are ready to open the lines for questions, so if you could, we’ll just proceed. And I would ask that when people do ask their question, if they are directing it to a particular speaker, if you would make that clear. Thank you.

Coordinator: At this time, we’re ready to begin the formal question and answer session. One moment. Our first question comes from Salina Periman.

S. Periman: Hello. This question is directed for Karen. How would a Section 8 voucher be able to help someone who is disabled, who is working?

K. Tamley: For someone who’s working with a disability?

S. Periman: Yes.

K. Tamley: I would assume it would be like it would be able to help anybody else who has a disability, that it would cover your rent, based upon your income.

S. Periman: Okay. And what was the median income again, you said?

K. Tamley: Well, at least of the people that we see who are on SSI in our state, it’s about $520 a month is their income. But it differs by state, and so does the median housing price differ by state and city.

S. Periman: Okay. So someone who is disabled who is working, despite their disabilities, wouldn’t be able to qualify?

J. Benoit: Can I jump in?

C. Schlosberg: Sure, Jerry.

J. Benoit: HUD sets income limits based on the number of persons in the household annually. They are set for every county in the United States and for every metropolitan statistical area in the United States. You can get the income limits from the HUD Website if you’re interested in particular states. They range tremendously from different parts of the country. And keep in mind, that the majority of families that are admitted to the program, 75% must have incomes below 30% of median income, is what we call extremely low-income families.

S. Periman: Okay, and this goes the same for the purchasing of homes through the Section 8 program?

J. Benoit: Well, this was not supposed to be on that. As far as purchasing of homes is concerned as a general rule, the program will be limited to current program participants, including the families with a disabled member.

S. Periman: Okay. Thank you.

Coordinator: Ma’am, it looks like we have around 38 questions.

C. Schlosberg: Okay.

Coordinator: Our next question comes from Dan Moore.

Beth: Yes, actually this is Beth calling for Dan.

C. Schlosberg: Okay.

Beth: You mentioned the Council of Large … the PHA’s, and you gave a phone number. But you did not give a phone number for the large, medium and small.

A. O’Hara: I’m sorry about that. Let me get it for you. Rod, you know it off the top of your head.

R. Solomon: It’s 202 – they’re all Washington – 289-3500. That’s the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. They’re members of almost – I wouldn’t say every housing authority, but the majority of housing authorities are members of that.

Beth: Okay. And how would I get information on the local level? I’m calling from Florida.

J. Benoit: Where?

Beth: Tallahassee.

W You can look in the Blue Pages in your phone book, or you can go on the HUD Web page at www.HUD.gov, and you can look under Public and Indian Housing, and they have a list of all the public housing authorities.

R. Solomon: They also have approved PHA plans, the plans I mentioned. The approved ones are on a Website that HUD has, but I still think you’re better off just contacting your local housing authority, so you would be able to see if there’s one pending that they’re working on now.

Beth: Okay, thank you.

J. Benoit: If you’re interested in just Tallahassee, contact the Tallahassee Housing Authority. But if you’re interested in the whole state of Florida, you might ask them who is the president of the FLAHRO, Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials.

Beth: Thank you.

C. Schlosberg: Next question?

Coordinator: Gwen Marshall, you may ask your question.

G. Marshall: Thank you. This question is directed to Anne. Anne, I understand the tenant-based rental assistance. I’m a bit confused concerning the project-based rental assistance. Is a project-based program one in which PHA designates a specific project that will be used only for Section 8 vouchers?

A. O’Hara: I’m sorry that I didn’t have more time to talk about the project-based program. There are some fairly new rules at HUD about how a housing authority can tie its Section 8 vouchers to one or more units in a specific project—

G. Marshall: Are these units then, owned by the PHA?

A. O’Hara: No, they’re not. No, they’re owned by a private owner, and by tying the voucher to the project or to a unit in the project, it guarantees the owner that the owner will have the benefit of the Section 8 payment for a period of time, and that’s a decision the housing authority makes.

G. Marshall: I see.

J. Benoit: Sometimes the property could be owned by the public housing agency or a nonprofit created by the public housing agency, and this is not public housing.

G. Marshall: I see. Okay.

A. O’Hara: One of the reasons we brought up project-based vouchers is that often – we’re hoping that housing authorities will see project-basing as a way to secure really good, accessible, barrier-free units in the marketplace that might be difficult for people to otherwise obtain.

G. Marshall: I see. So basically they just guarantee the landlord Section 8 customers.

A. O’Hara: That’s right. Thank you. I’m going to write that down; it’s a much better way of saying it.

G. Marshall: Okay. I have one other quick question for Rod. I had some kind of interference and missed entirely your explanation of what Project Access is. Do you have a couple-of-sentence, thumbnail –

C. Schlosberg: Can I – in the interests of time, since we have so many other questioners on the call, we will have an instant replay of the call and a transcript of this call will be available. So if we can move on to the next questioner, because that information will be up on our Website, or you can access it through the instant replay, right after the call.

G. Marshall: Okay, that’s fine. Thank you.

Coordinator: Peggy Schmidt, you may ask your question.

P. Schmidt: I’m project-based, too, and I think there’s one more little clarification I need. That’s when we say unit in a project, are we talking about a unit in a project, or any type of rental property?

A. O’Hara: It could be – Jerry, do you want to do that?

J. Benoit: It could be anything from a single-family house, to duplex, to multi-family property.

P. Schmidt: Okay. So it’s not really project-based, it’s unit-based.

J. Benoit: Well, okay. Our acronym is project-based where the subsidy is tied to a particular unit building. And if a family moves out, then a new family is referred to that owner for that particular unit, as opposed to tenant-based subsidy, where the subsidy just follows the family wherever they go. It could be single-family homes.

P. Schmidt: Thank you.

C. Schlosberg: Next question.

Coordinator: Charles Tabray, you may ask your question.

C. Tabray: Yes. I think that Anne could perhaps answer this question; it has to do with how to pay for modifications. Is there any regulation within HUD which enables PHA’s to get commitments for community development block grant dollars, to be dedicated to physical barrier removals for rental properties not owned by the agency?

A. O’Hara: There is no regulation per se, but I’m very glad you brought that up, because there are funds that are received by states and by what are called entitlement jurisdictions. They are Community Development Block Grant funds and HOME funds, H-O-M-E, and both of those programs can, and in my opinion should be linked with the Section 8 Program to improve the availability of funds for accessibility.

K. Tamley: Anne, can I ask something?

A. O'Hara: Please.

K. Tamley: This is Karen. I also think it’s really important that you participate in your Consolidated Planning process, because that’s another vehicle by which you can get some modification funds allocated to your community, particularly under the CDBG Program. Sometimes it’s hard to impact the con plan, but this is basically your community’s blueprint of how housing dollars are going to be spent and so, it’s important to raise these issues in that arena as well.

R. Solomon: It’s also important to know that what was described for Chicago cannot be done in too many cities. They have special authority, as they’re a demonstration city under one of HUD’s programs. They were able to use some of their money for modifications that other cities couldn’t necessarily use. That means it’s more important to look at HOME and CDBG in those other cities as a possible way of doing this.

A. O'Hara: And CDBG is Community Development Block Grant funds.

C. Schlosberg: Those funds, the HOME, the Community Development Block Grant funds and the plan that controls them, which is the Consolidated Plan, are all developed at your state level, and as Anne said, in certain local communities at your Community Development Department. So if you want to get a copy of the Consolidated Plan or learn about those resources, again you want to look at the Blue Pages in your phone book or call your mayor’s office or your governor’s office to determine what community development or housing and community development department has those resources.

A. O'Hara: And just to throw one more program out to everybody, there is a program administered by the Department of Treasury, particularly the Internal Revenue Service, called the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program, and that’s administered by state housing finance agencies primarily. And it produces new units of multi-family rental housing all over the country every year. And those owners are required to lease at least 20% of the units in those projects at lower-than-market rents in most cases. And a lot of those units could be targeted for people using Section 8 vouchers who need accessibility, who need barrier-free or more accessible housing. And a lot of that is not being done.

C. Schlosberg: Next question?

Coordinator: David Guest, you may ask your question.

D. Guest: Hello. Actually, you almost just answered my question. I’m calling from the Housing Authority of New Haven, and I’m trying to get more accessible housing for Section 8 property right now; none of it is in
New Haven. And yes, I wanted to ask maybe a little more detail about IRS stuff. I heard there was a $10,000 tax credit available somewhere. And also, Karen, you mentioned just some modification funds that you had tracked down in the private sector; I was wondering if you could go into a little more detail about that.

C. Schlosberg: Karen, go ahead.

K. Tamley: Mostly from either individual donors or through some discrimination cases that we’ve had, through settlement, we’ve been able to get some modification funds allocated to individuals with disabilities, not necessarily on Section 8, but just individuals wanting modifications in their own home.

D. Guest: Okay.

A. O'Hara: If you want, what I would suggest you do is call the Connecticut Housing Finance Agency, CHFA. Ask for the person who administers the low-income housing tax credit program. Ask for a list of the projects that have been allocated tax credits for the last five years. It usually takes 24 to 36 months from the time the tax credits are allocated until the project is actually ready for occupancy, and they typically – you would be amazed at how many of those units are not going to people who need them, because they’re not marketed properly.

D. Guest: Okay. Great. Thanks a lot.

A. O'Hara: And I don’t mean that for Connecticut; I mean that across the country.

D. Guest: Right. Okay.

J. Benoit: I would like to add something on modifications, because none of the speakers really touched on this point. While there is no direct appropriations for making modifications to retrofit units, one has to keep in mind that under our program, the owner is not the recipient of the federal benefit; the family is. So there is no obligation imposed on the owner to make any modifications; however, he cannot refuse a reasonable request to make modifications if somebody else will pay for it.

D. Guest: Okay.

J. Benoit: Two, and I also think a lot of people lose sight of this, housing agencies can approve higher exception payment standards for persons with disabilities as a reasonable accommodation, including reimbursing owners on a monthly basis in the form of rent for the cost of making modifications.

D. Guest: That’s perfect. That’s almost exactly what we were planning to do. We were going to tell them they could get a tax credit to pay for the modifications and then apply for higher rent, so that they can actually almost make a profit off of making these changes as a landlord.

J. Benoit: Even without the tax credit, if the owner makes a – chances are, if a family with a disabled person moves into a unit and the owner makes modifications, chances are that person will stay there as a long-term tenant.

D. Guest: Right, exactly.

J. Benoit: So that if the owner spends $2,000 or $3,000 to make a modification, so over a two- or three-year period maybe he recovers his costs and makes a little bit of money as a result of his spending this extra money in exchange for a higher rent.

D. Guest: Right. Thanks a lot.

J. Benoit: Okay.

C. Schlosberg: Next question, please.

Coordinator: Kevin Lofton, you may ask your question.

K. Lofton: Yes, hello. I’m here at the Memphis Center for Independent Living and I have someone here in our conference room that’s listening in. He’d like to ask a question. Go ahead, Robert.

Robert: I want to know, how long can you stay on Section 8?

C. Schlosberg: Okay. Anne?

A. O'Hara: You stay on Section 8 until your share of the rent based on your income equals the rent for the entire apartment. So if the rent is $500 a month, and you are a person on SSI, and your income doesn’t change, your share of the rent is $150. And that means you can stay on the program paying $150 a month until Congress decides not to fund the program anymore, and that has never happened. Or unless you violate a couple of – you have to report your income annually and you have to just do what you would do for any federal program. You have to make –

Robert: Okay, why isn’t Section 8 just for people with disabilities?

A. O'Hara: Why isn’t it just for people with disabilities?

Robert: Well, I know somebody doesn’t have a disability that’s on Section 8.

A. O'Hara: It’s because it’s a program for all low-income families.

K. Lofton: And could you repeat the Website you gave out earlier? I think it was the HHS Website, please, the URL for that, please?

C. Schlosberg: The HUD Website?

K. Lofton: The HHS Website, please.

C. Schlosberg: It’s www.hhs.gov/ocr. If you go to that site, there is right at the top of the page, it says Olmstead Housing Call. And you click on that and you’ll get information about the call and getting the transcripts and the instant replay.

K. Lofton: Thank you.

C. Schlosberg: Okay. Next question.

Coordinator: Deborah Mann, you may ask your question.

D. Mann: Thank you. This is directed to Karen. Ideally, people with disabilities establish these long-term relationships with the PHA’s, but for the consumer who is looking for housing right now and is having a real challenge with that, what would you suggest as strategies for two things—these are particularly for people in our area with multiple chemical sensitivity where housing is so scarce. One would be on getting the exception on the higher rent for a place that works for a person with multiple chemical sensitivity. The other would be getting an exception on something about possibly on some of the appearance-type things, like not being able to move into a unit that’s been recently painted, so perhaps getting a waiver on the rules about painting.

J. Benoit: There are no rules on painting.

D. Mann: Well, there’s a rule about not having the chipped or flaking paint in the booklet we were given.

J. Benoit: That’s only if the family has a child under the age of six.

D. Mann: Okay.

K. Tamley: Well, and again, any individual with a disability has the right to request a reasonable accommodation or modification to their landlord and/or to that entity that’s delivering housing services to the individual. So I don’t have any specific strategies; I know that just at least an example that I provided earlier, we were able to get, just through the advocacy efforts and the relationship that we developed with our Section 8 office, get them to look at some of their policies and make sure that individuals with multiple chemical sensitivity can get equal access to housing due to changes in policy or procedure. So it’s a tough one, but again, you do have the right to request that from your landlord.

A. O'Hara: One suggestion that I have is I think that often if the person with the chemical sensitivity will go to the housing authority and ask for a blanket exception before they go out to search for housing. Housing authorities are very reluctant to do that and actually have to base their decision on the rent for the unit after they see the unit. So maybe one thing to do is to actually go out and find, do a housing search, find units that would likely suit you and your environmental situation, and then get the housing authority to quickly respond to you to go and check it out and determine whether the rent is reasonable.

D. Mann: One situation we’re having is that they won’t consider anything above the standard rent until looking at least a month, and we have a tight market where a lot of things are gone that quickly.

A. O'Hara: And that’s where I think Karen’s advice about kind of getting to know these folks a little. It’s always harder to say no to somebody whom you have a personal relationship with, so to go in and try to sit down, take some time –

D. Mann: We’re not actually able to go into their office, which is another issue in itself.

A. O'Hara: Right. Is there someone perhaps who could go in on your behalf, and you could join them by conference call? But I really believe that a lot of PHA’s are – I know the first time I ever had to deal with this issue, I had no idea what the issue was, and once it was explained to me, then we were able to be much more flexible. But we just were unfamiliar with what the problem was and how the housing would by definition, be much higher because of the issue of synthetic fabrics, etc.

D. Mann: On that, I wonder, too, do you know any range on like how much they might be willing to go above the standard amount?

A. O'Hara: It’s depending on your local market, I’m afraid. I think you have to show that you have done a diligent housing search.

J. Benoit: And you have to demonstrate that the family has been unable to find housing that will accommodate their disability within the rent level set. The housing agency will go up to 110% of the HUD-published fair market rent, and if that’s not adequate, they can seek HUD approval to go to 120% of the HUD-published fair market rent.

D. Mann: We’re looking at places that would be two or $300 above the amount of the $470 in our area.

J. Benoit: Well, it depends on where you live, but – could be in California, yes.

R. Solomon: Hopefully you’re talking to the housing authority about the issue of getting into their offices, too.

J. Benoit: Yes. The housing authority certainly should be willing to meet with, brief you on issues relating to families that you assist. And if you come over there in a positive way, one of the things housing agencies have a very difficult time in doing is finding housing that’s accessible. So to the extent that you’re willing to help families with housing searches will certainly help housing agencies out.

While they do try to maintain lists of owners who have accessible units, some families still have difficulties finding housing. We’re doing a study at the moment to see to what extent this is a real problem. But I am aware of some housing agencies that will grant some relief up front, while maybe not on rents, they might on their standards, for example. I know in the case of persons with multiple chemical sensitivities, housing authorities up front will authorize them to look for a two-bedroom unit, even though they’re only eligible for one, in order that they may have a—I don’t what they call it, a safe or a clean room.

D. Mann: In our area, they have not granted that; they’ve given the people who requested it only one-bedroom vouchers. You had doctors’ letters stating the need for the two-bedroom.

J. Benoit: Well, then, I would – I’m only guessing – then apparently, the family didn’t make a good case to the housing authority as to why they needed this extra room.

D. Mann: Well, these were with good, documented doctor letters.

C. Schlosberg: I’m going to, because we have 15 minutes left and I know there are a lot of other people in the queue, some of the questions and issues that are being raised clearly are not going to get resolved in this phone call. And I know all of the people who are here gathered around the table, and I’m sure Karen as well, at the end of this call, for example, there are Websites and other resources that we can direct you to. I’m going to make sure that if we don’t do it at the end of this call, that we get some additional information up on our Website as to where people can go to get additional information and some other resources that we can point you to.

Why don’t we take the next call?

Coordinator: Helen Mitchell, you may ask your question.

H. Mitchell: I’d like some clarification. The first presenter, a gentleman, had said that it was possible to be on multiple Section 8 waiting lists, and I’m aware that our state has several housing offices. But on the application, you have to verify that you live or work in the county for which you are applying; therefore, that doesn’t afford you the opportunity to be on several different Section 8 housing waiting lists.

A. O'Hara: Well, you’re right, that many PHA’s will ask you the question about whether you live or work in their jurisdiction, because they are permitted, but not required by the law to have what they call a local preference. And if they have a local preference, then they can accept or choose applicants off the list who have that preference before they can choose applicants that do not have that preference.

But not all housing authorities have a local preference, and even if they do, if the waiting list is open, they do have to accept your application. It is correct, though, that it’s very difficult to go ahead of people who are living or working in the jurisdiction.

H. Mitchell: Thank you.

A. O'Hara: Yes.

C. Schlosberg: Next question.

Coordinator: Susan Nordmark, you may ask your question.

S. Nordmark: I wanted to ask a question about – I am a person with multiple chemical sensitivity and my sister has that illness also, and we receive Section 8 vouchers, but we’re not able to find rental housing during the period required. And we received an accommodation from our housing authority—this is in Oakland, California – to be able to – well, I’ll talk about it facultatively as putting the vouchers on the shelf as it were, and taking a break from the housing search period and later reactivating the housing search period.

Now, they have called – my local housing authority who granted this called this tolling, administrative tolling. I am not familiar with the process, but I wanted to ask more about what the regulations or what is allowed here regarding this process, so that we would know how much time do we have.

We’ve both recently been diagnosed with Lyme disease, and we went through a difficult winter. And so when we received this tolling possibility, I was told this vaguely by someone in the housing authority. I said, "Well, how much time do I have before I have to reactivate this and possibly lose the voucher? Because we definitely want to be able to hold onto the possibility of having the voucher, after being on the waiting list for several years and finally receiving it."

And she said, "Well, I don’t think you have a year." This is very vague. We’re very fearful about losing the voucher and we’d like to know, how much time can we be on this – putting it on the shelf before we’ve got to use it or lose it?

A. O'Hara: I’m not familiar with that policy. Jerry, are you?

J. Benoit: Somebody is confusing the concept of tolling, and probably it’s just a semantics problem. The regulatory definition of tolling is to stop the voucher term during the time that a family has submitted a request for a particular user, so that while it’s undergoing housing authority review, the time is not running against the family because of the housing authority.

S. Nordmark: Yes.

J. Benoit: But our –

S. Nordmark: I think that the housing authority is using their latitude to use that tolling procedure. Because our local – I mean, in the Bay Area, we have one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, and they’re finding that less than 50% of their voucher holders are finding any housing and using the voucher.

J. Benoit: But they don’t need –

S. Nordmark: I see that they’re trying to assist me, and I’m wondering –

J. Benoit: They don’t have to go through this convoluted process. The housing authority can extend the voucher however long they want.

R. Solomon: Right, they can extend it – in general they’re under some pressure, as we said earlier, to lease up; but they do have the authority to extend it as long as their local policies that they’ve adopted have let them do it.

S. Nordmark: I could wait as long as I wanted to reactivate and find something?

C. Schlosberg: I don’t know that anybody here can answer that particular question. I want to pose this to our speakers, because I’m hearing a number of questions from individual consumers who are dealing with public housing authorities, and things are coming up and they need clarification of what the rules are, what the policies really are. Is there anyone here who can point someone to a resource or an organization or someone at HUD who generally – a place where people can go to get clarification on some of these rules?

A. O'Hara: Well, I think that’s part of the frustration, frankly, because we at TAC try to help folks if they e-mail us, provided it’s a quick answer. Often it is a local policy issue, and we would have to refer people back to the PHA. You could e-mail us at tacinc.org, and if there is an easy way for us to refer you on, we will do that. But I believe that if you’re not getting satisfaction from the PHA, you need to go up the chain of command at HUD from the PHA to the field office to headquarters, because they’re the official – they have the official word, and my word doesn’t really count for anything.

C. Schlosberg: And I would again encourage you to look at what’s in writing. They have an incredibly long Section 8 administrative plan that spells out everything they would do, including when they would free the voucher or toll on a voucher or when they wouldn’t; and that needs to be in writing. That needs to be available to you, to the public. You can get a copy of that plan, and –

S. Nordmark: I heard that mentioned earlier, and it seems very helpful.

C. Schlosberg: You have a right to get a copy of that plan.

A. O'Hara: Put your request in writing, too. I think if you’re unclear about what their policy is, then you need to send them a letter saying, this is what you’ve told me, and I need more clarification about what this means.

S. Nordmark: Okay.

R. Solomon: So you would start with the housing authority. If you can’t figure it out with them and with what they have for you to look at, then you would go to the HUD field office. That would be the next step.

S. Nordmark: Would that be the regional office? Here it’s in San Francisco.

C. Schlosberg: Yes.

S. Nordmark: I see.

C. Schlosberg: We have about seven minutes left. I don’t know, Brad, if you can give us a read on how many folks are queued up for questions.

Coordinator: Ma’am, we have around 45 questions standing by.

C. Schlosberg: Okay, well, obviously we’re not going to deal with 45 questions in six minutes. If we could move through as many as we can in the next five or six minutes, let’s just try to do that.

Coordinator: Ms. Patricia Small, you may ask your question.

P. Small: Hello, this should be quick. This is on project-basing. We’ve been trying to work with some housing authorities on project-basing for some DMH and DMR programs, and there recently has been an issue raised that it’s illegal or otherwise improper to project-base for specific disabilities, any reading on that?

J. Benoit: That’s true. We can’t prefer one disabled group over another. However, that’s for occupancy of the building. However, to the extent that you’re going to be providing services onsite, you could limit services to persons of a specific disability.

P. Small: Okay, thank you.

C. Schlosberg: Next question.

Coordinator: Bob Costa, you may ask your question.

B. Costa: Yes, this is for Rod Solomon. I was just curious, you mentioned Project Access. I was wondering, are there going to be some more vouchers going to be issued for when HHS issues their RFP’s to the new nursing home transition?

R. Solomon: Well, as I think you know, there is no legislative authority in particular to do it for fiscal ’01. Congress is considering fiscal ’02 appropriations now.

B. Costa: So in terms of Olmstead, HUD is not going to do it, then?

R. Solomon: As I said, there is no particular legislative authority to do it.

B. Costa: Right. Okay. So are you saying HUD is not going to do it?

R. Solomon: I said what I said.

C. Schlosberg: But we need to move on to the next question. I think HUD doesn’t have the authority to issue the vouchers, is the answer. If we can get to the next question, Brad.

Coordinator: Joseph Smaller, you may ask your question.

J. Smaller: Yes. As far as I know, the Public Housing Authority is the agency that approves the property for Section 8 housing. This goes to by the way, the HUD folks. And also if they are, is HUD doing anything to work with the PHA’s to educate them on property accessibility and maybe outreach to the public?

J. Benoit: Yes. We have provided guidance in a notice on accessibility issues and responsibilities or lack thereof of the owner, and trying to get housing authorities to encourage owners to participate in making these changes in exchange for a higher rent. And it also covers lots of public housing issues with respect to Hope Six, and you can get that notice on the HUD home page.

C. Schlosberg: Next question, please.

Coordinator: Tara Freeberg, you may ask your question.

T. Freeberg: Yes. I’d like you to – Anne – to discuss a little bit more about portability.

A. O'Hara: Okay, and I’d love Jerry to chime in. This man has more expertise than I do on all of these things. Portability is the ability of a voucher holder to take the voucher outside of the jurisdiction of the housing authority that gave them the voucher in the first place. And there are some limits on that policy, which PHA’s can impose. And Jerry, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the PHA may, but does not have to, require that the individual or the family live in their jurisdiction for the first year of the program.

That being said, what I would also say is that if the person needs to move outside of the jurisdiction for any reason, that’s an area where you would want to ask the housing authority for a reasonable accommodation to their policy under the 504 and FHA, Fair Housing Act, provisions of the fair housing laws. Is that right, Jerry?

J. Benoit: Yes, that’s right.

C. Schlosberg: Next question?

Coordinator: Dierdre Hammond, you may ask your question.

D. Hammond: Is there any requirement for reporting in the PHA plan, the efforts that the PHA’s are making to outreach to individuals with disabilities, and what types of alternative formats they make available to the public?

R. Solomon: I believe there are questions about it. The PHA plan, the document that HUD requires them to submit, has some questions and answers that they’re supposed to do, and I think there are some questions about it. They’re pretty general, though. All they’re really meant to do is put issues out there that then can be pursued locally, if somebody’s interested enough to pursue them. So that’s probably what you would have to do.

D. Hammond: Okay, thanks.

J. Benoit: We’re in the process of doing a study, and one of the things it’s going to get at is the extent to which housing authorities do outreach and how successful that outreach is.

C. Schlosberg: Jerry, when do you think that study – what’s your target date for completion?

J. Benoit: The study will probably be awarded to the contractor within the next month, and I believe there’s like a six-month completion period, looking probably winter.

C. Schlosberg: Okay. Brad, a question for our conference operator: Is it possible to extend this call a few minutes, maybe ten minutes, 15? I’m getting signals from the director. Fifteen minutes; is that a possibility?

Coordinator: Yes, ma’am.

C. Schlosberg: Okay. All right, why don’t we continue on and try to get to some more of these questions, next question, Brad?

Coordinator: Nancy Violet, you may ask your question.

N. Violet: I’m calling from Michigan. I wanted more information about Project Access. I’ve looked it up and it said that there are 40 vouchers slated for Michigan, and I just want to know where do I go and when do I go to try to look into asking for them.

R. Solomon: Well, they were awarded directly to the Michigan State Housing Development Authority, to MSHDA, so you should talk with them in Lansing. That doesn’t mean that’s where they would be used necessarily; they could be used through the state. But that’s who you should talk to.

N. Violet: Okay, thanks.

R. Solomon: Sure.

C. Schlosberg: Next question, please.

Coordinator: Doris Phillips, you may ask your question.

D. Phillips: Yes, just a moment, okay, our question has already been answered. Thank you.

C. Schlosberg: Okay. We can go on.

Coordinator: Carol Pollin, you may ask your question.

C. Pollin: I’m from a very small CIL, and I’m just about ready to go and speak with our housing division, and was wondering if you had any suggestions on what would be the first opening I should make with him. We are in need of just about everything.

A. O'Hara: When you say "housing division," do you mean your housing authority? Or do you mean –

C. Pollin: Well, it’s the county housing division, the ones that issue the Section 8’s.

A. O'Hara: Okay, great. Well, the very first thing you should ask them is – actually, the questions, if you have the slides, if you could return to actually the last slide on page ten, I’m sorry, it’s slide Number 28, excuse me. I would start with another question there, though, which is, is their waiting list opened or closed. That’s the first thing you want to know. And then you want to know if it’s closed, how many households are on the list and when do they anticipate that they would reopen the list? Okay, those are really basic questions. Then you might want to also point out to them that there have been new vouchers available every year from HUD since 1997, and ask whether they have ever applied, vouchers for people with disabilities – excuse me?

J. Benoit: Not limited just to those, because remember, persons with disabilities can apply for any underlying basic voucher program by definition.

A. O'Hara: Right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to mislead people there. I guess my point is always that when a housing authority gets a whole lot of new vouchers just for people with disabilities, it makes the waiting list move a lot more quickly. But you’re right, Jerry.

I always ask them, what was the date of application for the last person they gave a voucher to because that often can tell you how long the waiting time is. If the list is closed, ask them in writing to notify you when they’re going to open up the list. Ask them about how they are going to open up the list; are they going to keep it open – there was a housing agency recently here in Maryland that only kept their list open for five days, and people with disabilities had difficulty getting the applications completed in five days; and because of complaints about that, they’re now going to do the whole process all over again.

C. Pollin: Thank you very much.

A. O'Hara: You’re welcome. Good luck.

C. Schlosberg: Next question.

Coordinator: Marge Arnold, you may ask your question.

J. McGurkey: Can you hear me? This is Jim McGurkey actually, with Alaska Housing Finance Corporation. And in the last two years, we’ve gotten Fair Share allocations in our state, and we promised that we’d set aside a certain number of those vouchers for people with the Medicaid waiver. My question is, once our State Department of Health and Social Services saw the HUD release, 9886, in which we were going to hopefully use that to match our database against theirs and identify the folks who had the Medicaid waiver, they said that that was inadequate. I was wondering if there’s anybody out there who can enlighten us as to how we could make this work, so that we could cross-reference our population.

A. O'Hara: Was it an issue of confidentiality?

J. McGurkey: They just simply said that that HUD waiver was inadequate for them to release the information to us about whether or not the family had a Medicaid waiver.

A. O'Hara: That could very well be true, based on either federal law or state laws. But what typically works is for the agency to send a letter that you could perhaps help them draft with another small form inside, sending that mailing to everyone who’s on the waiver list and informing them that there is this opportunity. And that if they’re interested, they should return the form to the PHA or to you, whichever works best, so there’s a way to link the two agencies’ information together.

C. Schlosberg: This is Claudia. There may also be a way – many states have waiting lists for their waiver programs, and many states through their Olmstead planning and other initiatives are beginning to look at those waiting lists and trying to identify who’s really on them, what their needs are and to try to target, working with the Medicaid agency to target vouchers to people coming to the top of the waiver waiting list; that is, people who may not have housing, who may be institutionalized now.

A. O'Hara: I’m sure there are agencies – are you in Anchorage?

J. McGurkey: Yes, I am.

A. O'Hara: Yes. I know that there are a couple of agencies in Anchorage that provide home and community-based waiver services, so you may want to network with them. I would just ask around for agencies that are providing supports and services to people with physical disabilities, mental retardation. Those are the types of disabilities now that typically benefit from the waiver, and so you maybe could get referrals from the agencies that are providing those services.

C. Schlosberg: You might also want to be in touch with any independent living centers in the Anchorage area, and advocacy organizations. Next question?

Coordinator: Ann Ford, you may ask your question.

D. Warren: This is actually Debbie Warren from Springfield Center for Independent Living. And what I wanted to know was, where do I get information to take to our housing authorities? We serve five counties here. So some of them don’t have Section 8 Programs; some of them don’t even have public housing programs. Where do I get information to take to them and say, "This is how this program works. This is how you apply for these vouchers and for the programs"?

A. O'Hara: Well, if they don’t have a Section 8 Program – Rod, I’m going to defer to you a bit here. We at TAC have information on the set-aside programs and how to apply, and we provided that information on our Website this year, starting when the notice of funding came out in February. And we hope to be able to do that again next year when the notice of funding comes out. And we also have some basic information on our Website that you could access. I don’t know whether HUD has basic materials to encourage housing authorities to start running Section 8 if they haven’t ever run it before.

R. Solomon: Well, unless Jerry knows, not that I know of. I think probably the best – there are some basic descriptions, regs and so on, and probably the field office would be a good place to help with that, the HUD field office.

C. Schlosberg: Rod or Jerry or Anne, could someone from HUD explain the role of the Community Builders?

R. Solomon: Well, I think it’s changing, so I really don’t think it’s –

C. Schlosberg: Okay.

R. Solomon: I mean, there are people in the field offices whose – there’s a Public Housing Director who also has programmatic responsibility for the voucher program and I think, given that HUD is in some flux at the field offices about who does what, that’s probably the best liaison person at the moment.

A. O'Hara: The person who just asked the question, are you in a rural area?

D. Warren: No, we’re in the capital city, in Springfield, but we do have four rural counties that we serve.

A. O'Hara: Because often if there are no housing agencies in those rural counties, the state will run a statewide program that covers those counties that don’t have PHA’s. I don’t know if you’ve tried to contact the state housing department.

D. Warren: No, I haven’t.

A. O'Hara: I would suggest that you do that. They usually administer – in fact, I know they have one. I know it isn’t available in every single county, but I do know that the state has a Section 8 program that covers areas that PHA’s don’t cover.

D. Warren: Okay. Thank you.

C. Schlosberg: Next question.

Coordinator: Our next question comes from Tanya Cruz.

T. Cruz: Yes, I had most of my questions answered, so I came with a new one. I’m wondering and you haven’t discussed it, if you could give me a brief description of CMAP, the Section 8 Management Assessment Program, just briefly.

R. Solomon: Well, Jerry could pick it up if you want more details, but what that is, it’s the program that HUD uses to evaluate administrators of Section 8. Mostly it’s housing authorities. In a few instances as Anne mentioned, it’s nonprofits that have been awarded some rental assistance. But it’s – for HUD, to figure out whether the administrators are doing an acceptable job.

T. Cruz: Thank you.

C. Schlosberg: Next question.

Coordinator: Jane Cruz, you may ask your question.

J. Cruz: We have a local owner of a small apartment building that is not interested in dealing directly with Section 8 or the Public Housing Authority, but is willing to lease the property to our agency, which provides services to persons with disabilities, and then allowing us to sublease the individual units. And my question is, is there any problem with that in terms of the—our agency actually leasing the property and dealing with Section 8 and the tenant being the sublessee?

A. O'Hara: As far as I know, there’s no barrier in the program, as long as you as the lessee have the legal right to sublease under the applicable landlord/tenant laws. Jerry, is that right?

J. Benoit: And you would assume all the responsibilities of the owner because under our regulations, you would be the owner. Now you also would not be able to refuse to rent to any other Section 8 family, not only clients that you serve particularly. So if your client found a unit and then the owner didn’t want to do business with the housing authority, then at that point you could sign the lease with the owner and sublet to the family. But you’ve got to be careful because, depending on the rent, the housing authority may not be able to pay you what you’re paying the owner.

J. Cruz: Okay. Thank you.

C. Schlosberg: Karen, did you want to respond to that at all?

K. Tamley: No.

C. Schlosberg: Okay. Next question, and then we just have really just a minute left, so if we can get one or two more questions in.

Coordinator: Cecil Walker, you may ask your question.

C. Walker: Yes. I was just wondering if you were going to hold another one of these on ownership of Section 8 vouchers, if you’re going to hold one of these teleconferences, and if you were, when.

C. Schlosberg: We don’t have a date set. We’re looking into various scheduling issues as well as resource issues here, but our hope is that we can get one scheduled, and we will let you know.

C. Walker: Okay, thanks a lot.

Coordinator: Lori Montgomery, you may ask your question.

L. Montgomery: Yes. Hello, I’m with the Northern West Virginia Center for Independent Living, and I was wondering if there is some location where I could get the information on the DRACH or the DRACH – I’m not sure how you pronounced it – the accessibility being built into the homes. And just clarification: There are not PHA’s for each individual county? And I could contact, you said, the state?

A. O'Hara: I would contact your state organization. Usually it’s called the state chapter of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials or NAHRO.

J. Benoit: The HUD field office generally will know who administers vouchers in a particular area. In addition at counties, we also have instances where we have regionalized a consortia of housing authority who have joined together to run a program over a bigger geography than one city or town.

L. Montgomery: Okay.

C. Schlosberg: Karen, do you have any contact information for DRACH?

K. Tamley: Yes. They can either call me at Access Living at 312-253-7000, or our DRACH headquarters, which is out in Topeka and contact Becca Vaughn. And her number is 785-233-4572. We can certainly send out a lot of information.

C. Schlosberg: Great. Why don’t we take one last question?

Coordinator: Julia Noven, you may ask your question. Julia Noven, your line is open.

J. Noven: Yes. I believe it was Anne who earlier had mentioned low-income housing tax credit, housing, how they are supposed to allocate 20% of their units, I believe to people with very low income. I didn’t quite catch what you were saying. Could you go into that, and does that go beyond the income ranges?

A. O'Hara: Yes, it can go beyond the income ranges in some localities. But generally speaking, when a developer receives an allocation of tax credits from a state finance, housing finance agency to build or rehabilitate multi-family rental housing, at least 20% of the units in that project have to be set aside for people with incomes below 50% of the median income, which is the same – roughly the same income limit with some exceptions for the Section 8 Program.

And so in communities where you have this housing either up and running or where it’s being developed, often there are units that are rented or that are priced below the market. For example, in Massachusetts, you might have a project where the 20% of the units that I’m talking about might be renting for $800 or $900 a month, and the other units in the project, the market rate units, might be renting for $1,500 or $1,600 a month. And the units that are renting below market often can be within the Section 8 Program guidelines, within those payment standards that we were talking about before. Those owners very rarely will actively market to people who have Section 8 vouchers. And yet based on a lot of people’s readings of what their obligations are under the tax credit program, there are many of us who believe that they are in fact obligated to accept Section 8.

J. Noven: Okay. Now, what you’re saying is that 20% are for those receiving Section 8.

A. O'Hara: No, no, I didn’t say that, and I don’t want you to take that away. No. What I said was that 20% of the units in a tax credit project are rented at what they call the tax credit rent, which is often below the market rents for the community, meaning it’s much more likely that it might be available if you have a Section 8 voucher. It might be approvable under the Section 8 voucher program. Or you might be able to get an exception rent to lease that unit. But it’s not a supply of units that typically is easy – it’s not easy to get information on those units; the owners don’t advertise to Section 8 voucher holders; housing authorities often don’t know where those units are.

C. Schlosberg: We have run out of time, and we are actually 20 minutes over the time of our call. I recognize that there are many people in the queue who were not able to get their questions answered. There will be an instant replay of this call and a transcript, and we will try to get some information posted on our Website, so that people who didn’t get their questions answered will be directed to some other housing resources.

I want to thank our speakers, Anne O’Hara, Rod Solomon, Karen Tamley. I also want to recognize Lisa Lauritzen and Greg Chakotis for their support, and Jerry, I’m sorry, Jerry Benoit as well; and thank everyone for their participation and their patience. And hopefully, we will be able to continue this type of call in the future. Thank you very much.