Leaving More Homeless

IF PRESIDENT Bush wants to end homelessness, he should protect federal
rent subsidies. There are no magic carpets that whisk people out of
homelessness, but subsidies work. Poor people pay 30 percent of their
income in rent with a so-called Section 8 voucher, and the federal
government pays the rest.

Unfortunately, Bush's 2005 budget proposal is $1.6 billion below the
amount needed to maintain the current level of assistance and could cause
250,000 households to lose vouchers, according to the Center on Budget
and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.

Bush's budget would also distribute voucher funding in block grants and
loosen the rules. This could lead to states requiring payments of more
than 30 percent of income for rent, an impossible burden for the
poorest residents.

In Massachusetts there is no money for new vouchers. In April, people
who had vouchers almost lost them when the state's Department of Housing
and Community Development faced a funding shortage, and officials
prepared 650 eviction notices. The crisis was avoided after the state's
congressional delegation and Governor Romney objected, and the federal
Department of Housing and Urban Development increased funding to account
for inflation.

But if Bush's 2005 proposal goes through, more than 8,000 people in the
Massachusetts voucher program could face eviction, according to the
state. That would be 44 percent of the state's 18,500 vouchers.

It's a bad time to kick people out of their homes. The state is still
working its way through a list of more than 2,000 people who were
promised vouchers; more than 620 are still left. And the state can provide
these only through attrition: Each month some 80 households leave the
program and their vouchers are reused.

There are an additional 50,000 names of those who want vouchers on the
state's waiting list. Housing officials say they can use attrition to
meet their needs, but not until 2005.

In a report released last month by the Center for Social Policy at the
University of Massachusetts in Boston, researchers estimate that 28,800
individuals were served by the state's emergency homeless shelters in
2003, up from 25,000 in 1999. Of those surveyed, 60 percent cited
financial problems or unemployment as the cause of their homelessness.

Shelter workers are seeing more chronic problems because of state cuts
in health insurance coverage and the loss of thousands of drug and
alcohol detox beds. And without vouchers, staffers say, average stays are
stretching from months to a year or more.

With housing costs at record levels, even people who get services and
jobs will still need rent vouchers to afford apartments. Bush should
invest more wisely. For many homeless people, vouchers are the key to
getting a home.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.