To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: CPPH_Info-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There are 7 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest: 1. Rainier Vista - Seattle/ January Settlement From: Grant 2. Article on HOPE VI in "The City Paper" (Washington DC) From: Grant 3. HOPE VI and Section 8 in Seattle -- from The Seattle Weekly From: Grant 4. Rainier - Summary of Concessions from Law Suit From: Grant 5. Rainier Vista (Seattle) settlement From: Grant 6. Seattle P-I article on Rainier Vista Settlement From: Grant 7. Wash Post article on federal programs for the poor From: Grant ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 07:27:06 -0800 (PST) From: Grant Subject: Rainier Vista - Seattle/ January Settlement Friends: For those of you who have been following the Ranier Vista struggle in Seatle, here is one of the (more or less) recent developments. Grant --- Wayne Sherwood WA - Seattle -- a Low-Rent Victory Beacon Hill News, Seattle, 1/8/2003 The city's political dialogue is often heated with rhetorical posturing about affordable housing. Sometimes the subject seems like the weather. It's everyone's favorite complaint, but nobody does anything about it. That's why the recent settlement in the Rainier Vista redevelopment project stands out in the affordable housing struggle. Especially noteworthy is the fact that it took citizens from the bottom up to help make it happen. Near the corner of South Dakota and Martin Luther King Way, 481 public housing units were scheduled to be demolished in favor of a mixed-income redevelopment plan, financed by a $35 million federal HOPE VI grant. The plan was fought with a lawsuit, which voiced concerns that very poor tenants would be displaced by higher-income renters. The demolition was temporarily stopped in early December so that plaintiffs could have their day in court. In mid-December four days of intense federal mediation produced a binding agreement announced on Dec. 30. The settlement allowed the project to proceed. The major victory came with the provision that the residents of the former Rainier Vista who were living there as of August 1999 will be able to return to the new facility to homes of comparable size and quality. Rents will be no higher than 30 percent of tenant incomes. Density for the new project will be limited to 1,010 units, with a minimum of 310 of the new units designated as public housing units serving low income families. The city council cannot amend this agreement. There are other details of the agreement worth noting. A blow for senior housing rights was struck with the suspension, until Sept. 30, 2003, of any changes in rents, how vacancies are filled, and all other policy changes on units created by the Senior Housing Bond Program. Rents were scheduled to be raised above very low income standards. Additionally, construction impacts on the neighborhood were addressed, especially the mitigation of traffic volumes at key intersections. The creation of a Citizen Review Committee, made up of neighborhood residents, Rainier Vista residents, developers and local community representatives, is part of the package. Some people take a break during the holidays. The parties to the agreement did not. These were Friends of Rainier Vista, the Seattle Displacement Coalition, two residents from Rainier Vista, Seattle Housing Authority, City of Seattle, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Neighborhood citizens and groups took it upon themselves to hold SHA accountable. Determined citizens really can make a difference in the fight for common decency. (END) > __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 2 Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 06:44:27 -0800 (PST) From: Grant Subject: Article on HOPE VI in "The City Paper" (Washington DC) Friends: I am cleaning out my old e-mail files and came across this article. It gives a valuable look at HOPE VI around the country. Recently I met someone who thought that what was happening to public housing in Chicago was horrible -- but things were OK everywhere else. While this article is several months old, I think it helps dispel some illusions. Grant Wayne Sherwood Article on HOPE VI in "The City Paper" (Washington DC) The City Paper (DC) Sept. 27-Oct. 3, 2002 'HOOD WINKED Making public housing livable is as simple as getting rid of the people who live there. by Laura Lang and David Morton By most accounts, Stephen Davis should have been thrilled when he heard the news in the summer of 2001. The D.C. Housing Authority (DCHA) planned to tear down the "deteriorating buildings" that make up the public-housing complex where Davis resides and replace them with a mix of brand-new, tastefully designed town houses and apartment buildings, a new community center, and services for residents such as job training and computer classes. Under the plan, the federal government would pick up the $35 million tab through a program known as HOPE VI. Other city agencies and community groups would supplement the money with additional funds for a complete redevelopment of Davis' neighborhood. All Davis and his neighbors at the Arthur Capper and Carrollsburg Dwellings in Southeast Washington, D.C., would have to do, DCHA officials told them, was move quietly away for a few years while the local government built them fresh and modern homes. The plan certainly caught the attention of District politicians and local developers, who happily signed letters supporting the plan and attached them to the application to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which doles out the HOPE VI funds. Local media gave the plan positive press, lapping up the DCHA's promise that the revitalization of the neighborhooda 10-block area bounded by the Southeast Freeway and M Street SEwould spur $400 million of further development just a dozen blocks from the Capitol. In an article published that summer, the Washington Post daydreamed: "Twenty-five acres of squat public housing would be bulldozed, giving way to more than 1,500 town houses and apartments as inviting as those on neighboring Capitol Hill." But Davis had a different reaction when he stumbled into a community meeting that summer at the recreation center across from his one-bedroom apartment. There, for the first time, he heard the plans for the revitalization. "I thought about the Indians, actually," says Davis, a tall, skinny, 48-year-old Army vet who walks with a cane. Davis has been living at the housing complex for two years, after repeated knee injuries and severe arthritis ended his job as a cook at a local veterans' hospital, put him on disability, and landed him into public housing. "They didn't give us any options. [They said,] 'We're going to move them out.'" The way Davis sees it, the grand plans for his neighborhood didn't come from the generosity of local and federal officials concerned about improving the living conditions for Davis and his neighbors. Instead, Davis says they probably realized that his neighborhoodsurrounded by swanky, refurbished town houses and a revitalized Washington Navy Yard with its 6,000 employeeswas ripe for further development. Davis and his "deteriorating" home simply stood in the way. "At the meeting, I spoke out," recalls Davis. "I broke it down and said, 'You're just taking our land because we're here in Capitol Hill. I can walk to Union Station in 20 minutes, and I have a bad leg.'...Where I'm sitting is such an ideal location." In the weeks following the meeting, Davis and a group of residents and volunteers calling themselves Friends and Residents of Arthur Capper and Carrollsburg canvassed the 10-block area, gathering signatures of 67 percent of the residents on a petition denying their support of the proposal. He and other residents, along with public-housing tenants from Miami, staged a protest at the Capitol last fall. HUD awarded the HOPE VI money to the housing authority anyway. Larry Dwyer, director of the DCHA Office of Planning and Development, acknowledges that the area surrounding Davis' home is a quickly changing neighborhood. But he promises that Davis and his neighbors will return to the revitalized homes and benefit from the surrounding development. "They are tracked and explicitly told they have a right to return and a preference if they choose to. And some don't," says Dwyer. Federal and local housing planners have a long history of making pledges to low-income residents before moving them out to make way for a new and improved way of lifefor others. Recommendations from a 1992 congressional commission created the HOPE VI program, which was supposed to provide better lodging for low-income residents of some of the country's most troubled public-housing developments. In 1998, after yearly renewals of the program, HOPE VI was authorized through fiscal year 2002, which ends Sept. 30. With Congress considering whether to extend HOPE VI, some housing advocates fear that the program hasn't helped the residents it was intended to. According to HUD figures, 43,135 public-housing residents have been relocated from projects slated for HOPE VI development. Only 7,335or just over 17 percenthave returned to the refurbished housing. No one is really sure what's happened to the others. Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg residents are now discovering that displacement is as indispensable a component of HOPE VI as shiny new town homes and ribbon-cutting ceremonies with federal bigwigs. Families will have to start leaving Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg next spring, and demolition will probably start next fall. "You have the option to come back," says Debra Frazier, a five-year resident of Carrollsburg and one of the project's loudest critics. "It is possible to return. Nowhere does it say you have a guaranteed right." On June 15, a group of residents from Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg gathered at Van Ness Elementary School for a meeting with DCHA authorities on the new development. Meetings like this one are a staple of the HOPE VI program, for the simple reason that moving an entire community from its moorings is more of a PR operation than a logistical one. Breakfast and lunch are free for all comers. DCHA officials had prepared well for the event. Architects working with the housing authority explained the attractive new buildings that would replace the drab-looking current development. They referenced various artistic renderings of the apartments, town homes, and recreational spaces that they hoped to build on the site where the public-housing complex now stands. Clearly impressed with their undertaking, the architects went so far as to outline options for porch and window design. In a break-out discussion group, DCHA relocation coordinator Janice Burgess was asked about federal restrictions on public-housing residents who have past felony convictions and the vague rule that only residents in "good standing" would be allowed to return. "We don't want those type of people to come back anyway," she replied, and proceeded to steer the discussion toward less controversial subjectstraffic flow and building façades. Burgess & Co. were following the HOPE VI script, which advocates giving public housing a face-lift above all else. The ideological vehicle for the program's aesthetic makeovers is "New Urbanism," which encourages the construction of mixed-use communities, the combination of apartments and homes with retail stores and office space, and residency by people from a range of income groups and ethnic backgrounds. New Urbanism also emphasizes the blending of new construction with the architecture of the surrounding area. As an ideal, New Urbanism beats whatever set of beliefs formerly inspiredor doomedpublic housing. In 1992, Congress' National Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing urged the federal government to take immediate action to improve the 6 percent of public housing identified as "severely distressed," which amounted to about 86,000 unitsmany of them found in high-rise structures that were packed with poor families. >From the commission's recommendations, Congress created the HOPE VI program, originally called the Urban Revitalization Demonstration. During the 10 years of its existence, the program has allowed HUD to administer $4.5 billion in HOPE VI funds to local housing authorities with plans to completely or partly demolish the troubled units and replace them with revitalized developments. HOPE VI seemed to promise a break from federally supported warehousing of the poor, as well as from the blight and crime that has long clustered around public housing. But even some of the plan's architects wonder whether the program hasn't become a taxpayer-supported shot in the arm for gentrification. Lawrence Vale, for one, has seen this sort of policy before. Vale served as a consultant to the commission that led to the creation of HOPE VI. Although he was initially hopeful about the outcome of the commission's report, he worries now about the impact the program will have on very low-income communities. "I have very mixed feelings," says Vale, head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "I understand the impulse of HOPE VI, and I understand the impact of those before-and-after photos of the desolate tower structures, which are replaced with picket fences and happy people. But I also am aware of a long tradition....[Officials constructing] public housing, even when it was built the first time, often tore down the residences of the very poor and often replaced [them] with residences they couldn't afford. And I'm afraid we're doing too much of that again." In the late '30s, the federal government responded to the hardship of the Great Depression by launching a massive public-housing building campaign. But a federal law at the time required that for each new public-housing unit that was built, a substandard one had to be destroyed, says Vale, author of From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors. The result was that cities demolished acres of so-called slum areas to make way for the new housingmuch of it two- and three-story-walk-up apartment buildings. But when it was built, many of the people who had been living in the run-down structures couldn't afford the new housing. Others were barred from living there because it was reserved for white families, says Vale. They scrambled to find new homes, often congregating again in impoverished areas. Following World War II, the federal government again set its sights on improving downtrodden areas. Congress passed the Housing Act of 1949, which encouraged slum clearance and the construction of public housing. Poor residents living in shabby housing were again told to pack up and move out, and few of them returned to the new public housing, if it was ever constructed. By the late '50s, the federal government had shifted to "urban renewal" programs, clearing out massive impoverished areas to redevelop in an attempt to attract more affluent residents to the areas. The poor residents had little hope of returning. Many wïre instead moved to the latest thing in public housingsoaring, high-density, high-rise structures that could hold hundreds of poor families. They would become the eyesores of todayprompting the creation of the commission Vale assisted. "I think it's that there is a cycle that's gone on in terms of moving one group of people out to build a nicer-looking building," says Vale. "People believed public housing was this great step up into modernity and now itself has become the slum to be rebuilt. And when the new structure is built it's seen as too good for poor people. My question is, Why do we believe that?" Public housing expert Todd Espinosa is equally baffled. Espinosa worries that many of today's HOPE VI projects resemble urban-renewal programs of the past. Many of the projects are taking place in areas already slated for development, says Espinosa, formerly an attorney with the Oakland, Calif.based National Housing Law Project who helped research False HOPE: A Critical Assessment of the HOPE VI Public Housing Redevelopment Program, released in June. Espinosa fears that HOPE VI may be a mechanism to clear out run-down areas to make way for the planned construction. Several HOPE VI projects in Chicago as well as one in Birmingham, Ala., are occurring in areas already noted for development and gentrification. Another, in Danville, Va., coincides with the construction of a 60-acre golf course nearby. The redevelopment plans rarely have room for all of the low-income families that moved out. "It seems really unfair to exclude them from their homes after their homes have gone through multi-billion-dollar revitalizations," says Espinosa. "They lived there through the bad times. They should be able to live there through the good times, too." At Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg, District officials claim they're stretching the charitable potential of the HOPE VI program. In replacing the decaying housing units, the DCHA is exceeding HOPE VI's minimum standards by doing "one-for-one" replacement. That is, a new unit of public housing will take the place of every unit that is demolished. The DCHA's one-for-one claim is accurate but nonetheless deceptive, because not all public housing will be created equal. Instead, HOPE VI at Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg will be public housing for those who can afford it. In the current development, there are 707 total units, of which 297 are reserved for senior citizens. Through HOPE VI, 300 units will be built for seniors close to where they are now, and all of the seniors currently on site are guaranteed a spot without even having to move during construction. But only a fraction of the 580 public-housing units in the new development are targeted for the people now living in the 410 walk-ups and town houses on the demolition list. Most of the new units will be reserved for households that earn 30 percent to 80 percent of the metro area's $91,500 median income. These are working poor and middle-class families who make more than roughly $27,000 a year and as much as about $73,000. So who loses out? A majority of the project's current residentspeople who depend almost entirely on public assistance for their incomeare lucky to take in $10,000 annually. For them, there will be only 140 units available, 270 fewer than currently. (Officials promise to start building 127 low-tier units nearby in two to three years.) Paul Rowe, the housing authority's HOPE VI project director for Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg, says public housing isn't intended to serve only the poorest of the poor, even though that's what's happened over the decades. Working-class families that are eligible for subsidized shelter have been scared away from the pits that many housing projects have become. "We serve the population we're supposed to serve," says Rowe. Whatever that means. The statutory language that authorizes the HOPE VI program set a vague goal of "improving the living environment for public housing residents of severely distressed public housing projects through the demolition, rehabilitation, recánfiguration, or replacement of obsolete public housing projects." Although thousands of families have been moved from these dilapidated structures, only a fraction of them have actually returned to revitalized developments. And when HOPE VI first began operating, in 1993, the federal government mandated the one-for-one scheme that the DCHA is voluntarily adhering to at Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg. But housing officials and developers around the country were having trouble replacing all of the lost public-housing units while still creating mixed-income homes. Construction of new housing fell behind. In 1998, Congress eliminated the requirement for HOPE VI projects, hoping to jump-start building efforts. The plan worked: Housing authority officials let out a collective sigh of relief and began razing developments ready for new construction. The result wasn't a good one for poor renters. In 1999, the DCHA, along with its community and development partners, completed its first HOPE VI project, the Ellen Wilson Dwellings, which was renamed the Townhomes on Capitol Hilllocated only blocks from where Stephen Davis lives. A mix of town houses and apartmentsall tastefully designed to fit in with the surrounding Capitol Hill neighborhoodreplaced the dilapidated high-rise and row-house structures that had made up the old development (see "Dream City," 4/16/99). Completion of the project marked a highly publicized victory for the District's public-housing agency, whose colossal dysfunction had landed it in a federal receivership in 1995. The selected fix-it guy was receiver David Gilmore, whose goal was to revolutionize public housing in the District by reforming not only the agency but also the housing stock and the population that lived there. At Ellen Wilson, that approach translated into displacement. Less than a third of the 134 units were reserved for the lowest-income families that make up the majority of public-housing residents. In the end, only 11 of the 129 families that had lived at the project in the first place returned to the revitalized structure. That's not a comforting precedent for Davis. Competition for the 140 low-income units in the renovated development will be fiercea dynamic that pleases housing officials. The high demand and low capacity will enable the DCHA to cherry-pick its ideal residents and pull off the sort of social engineering implicit in HOPE VI. In choosing the new crop of residents, housing officials will be able to act almost like the admissions office of a prestigious university. Although they say original residents are given priority to return to new developments, many of the new HOPE VI projects include a stringent screening process. Rent-payment history, credit and criminal background checks, and home visits are all part of the gantlet. Some revitalized developments also require a security deposit that can be as much as two or three months' renta hefty sum for renters already on a tight budget. The screening requirements and paucity of low-income dwellings have turned many residents of Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg into sneering critics of the HOPE VI conversion. At the Van Ness Elementary meeting, for example, Frazier proclaimed to her neighbors: "We have no guaranteed right to returnwe're entitled to that. And they tell us there will be a one-to-one replacement, but not at income levels we can deal with," she continued. "Even if it's $20,000 a yeardo any of you plan on making $20,000 this year?" Frazier asked the audience. "No!" yelled the crowd. Rowe hopes 40 percent of the families that leave return, a far greater proportion than at Ellen Wilson. "A lot of people won't return because they won't want to return," he says. "They become settled where they are. They're probably in a better situation than they were before." Housing officials have had plenty of practice responding to complaints from residents such as Davis and Frazier. Accordingly, they have some pat answers for the commonly aired gripes about low-income housing units. DCHA official Rowe, for instance, acknowledges that the background screening and rental-history checks will weed out some current Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg tenants. However, he prefers not to term the procedures "restrictions" on securing a place in the new development. Rather, he says, "I'd call them opportunities." HOPE VI, he says, provides intensive job-training programs and other social services that will help even those excluded from the complex get their lives in order. Residents who can't find room in the new Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg will learn how to repair their credit or earn a healthy wage. That doesn't mean they get in, now or ever; it means they get specialized attention that may pay future dividends. "It's an incremental process. For some, it's shorter-term than others; some, longer-term than others." The feds, meanwhile, respond to displacement complaints with little more than a shrug. Michael Liu, assistant secretary for HUD's Office of Public and Indian Housing, which oversees HOPE VI, says officials there have heard anecdotal stories and unofficial results but they have no solid records about where displaced residents settle. The most comprehensive analysis of displacement patterns to date comes from the Urban Institute, a D.C.-based think tank that examined the limited data available on the phenomenon. Its study found that about 49 percent of displaced residents moved to other public housing. Thirty-one percent signed up to receive Section 8 vouchers under a HUD program that subsidizes rent for eligible tenants at privately owned dwellings. The remaining 20 percent were no longer receiving HUD assistance. Housing officials like to presume that those residents had progressed beyond the need for housing assistance. However, the report also noted that there is "another serious concern on the 'people side' of the program that we do not have the data to examine here: namely, that in some developments, the local Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) operating HOPE VI have, in effect, 'lost' many original residents in the process of displacement and relocation." Liu says HUD has contracted with the Urban Institute and consulting firm Abt Associates to conduct a more comprehensive study of displaced residents. He says that he and other officials at HUD, like residents and their advocates, are anxious to see the results. HUD, however, doesn't have an official deadline for the report. In the meantime, the housing crunch in the D.C. area and nationwide pushes more and more families to the brink of homelessness. Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, says that across the country, there are few places for low-income renters to go. HUD research shows that the number of units available to families making less than 50 percent of the area median incomethe same people who make up the majority of the public-housing population, says Crowleydropped by 1.3 million between 1991 and 1999. Poor families struggle to find space in subsidized buildings, many of which are already filled to capacity, or add their names to lengthy waiting lists. In D.C., about 15,000 families have signed up on the waiting list for public housing. And there are 22,000 on the list awaiting Section 8 vouchers. Loss of housing stock and massive displacement caused by HOPE VI only aggravate the situation, says Crowley. The District's experience with HOPE VI illustrates the chaos that the federal housing program can wreak. The city has a total of six HOPE VI projects in various phases of development or planning. Only three other housing authorities have received more in HOPE VI funds than the DCHA, according to a HUD report submitted to Congress in June. The upshot is that several public-housing projects are being demolished at about the same time, making transition relatively permanent. Last year, for example, Sheila Green moved with her daughter to Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg from East Capitol Dwellings when East Capitol started its own HOPE VI transformation. Now she's going to have to move again before she can return to East Capitol. "When it's time to leave, I'm hoping we'll hear there's someplace else to go." Dwyer and Liu say that they expect many of the displaced residents to take advantage of the federal Section 8 vouchers. They say that program allows residents the freedom to move where they choose, ideally to mixed-income areas, and therefore further advance the dispersion of poverty. "It was the intent of the program and the intent of Congress that as public housing became transformed, that it all not be put back in the same spot," says Liu. "I think there has been a movement toward not pigeonholing people. [We're no longer saying,] 'Well, once in public housing, always in public housing.' We want to give a chance [for residents] to move to other areas or toward self-sufficiency." That's a noble goal, but it loses steam in the Washington area's cutthroat housing market. Some 1,300 people who received vouchers in the past year put them to use, but there are still 500 vouchers that have yet to be usedmost likely because the market is saturated. Rowe acknowledges that finding places in the Washington area to use vouchers is difficult and that space is tight in existing public housing, but "Someone is not going to be put out in the street, let me put it that way." Until officials can show that all displaced residents find themselves in better living conditions, whether they return to the revitalized project or not, then HOPE VI has failed, says Crowley. "At the end of the day, everybody who was there to begin with should have their housing circumstances improved," says Crowley. "If they're not, then you have not succeeded." Crowley says she can't help her cynicism when it comes to HOPE VI. "It's not really about what residents need. It's about what the developer wants, what the city wants, what the government wants. They go through the motions of resident involvement and people think, Maybemaybethis is real. And then they get screwed again." The debate over HOPE VI might not amount to much if the arguments didn't come at a critical point in the tenure of the program. With the current authorization set to end, advocates on all sides of the issue see this as the perfect time to implement necessary reformsor to give up on the program altogether. Liu is one of the first to admit that HOPE VI could use some fine-tuning. He says he is troubled by the pace of "tens of thousands" of projects that have lagged well behind schedule. He blames the delays on poor planning. Housing authorities are required to supply evidence that other agencies or groups will supplement the HUD money with additional funds, but Liu says that some struggle to actually acquire the funds after a HOPE VI proposal is approved. In their FISCAL YEAR2003 budget proposal, HUD officials indicated to Congress that they will be submitting a detailed proposal to reauthorize HOPE VI, says Liu, who adds that he hopes to see some changes to the program. He's not the only one. The U.S. Senate committee that approves the HUD budget recommended continuing the HOPE VI program for another year, with $574 million in additional funds. However, in the appropriations bill, the committee urged department officials to use the year to scrutinize current HOPE VI projects, submit a report on the public-housing units still in need of revitalization or demolition, and think hard about what a reauthorized program should look like. "The Committee is taking this action because of concerns over the future and mandate of the HOPE VI program," reads the bill. And in March, Rep. Marge Roukema (R.-N.J.) introduced legislation that would extend HOPE VI for two years but encourages department officials to alter the criteria for awarding grants. Winning applicants should be able to complete their plans "expeditiously," minimize displacement of current residents, and create more public-housing units, according to the comprehensive housing legislation. Both bills have to get the once-over from the full Senate and House of Representatives. While members of Congress hash out their proposals, housing advocates urge them to scale back the demolition-heavy element of the program and encourage local housing authorities to consider rehabilitation of existing buildings whenever possible. Espinosa urges a return to one-for-one replacement idealsor at the very least, a greater effort to ensure that demolished public-housing units are replaced by others that are open to very low-income residents. Espinosa says HOPE VI is changing public housing so fast that no one really knows what it's doing. "If Congress is going to reauthorize the program, then they should do it on a short-term basis that requires reporting before continuing," he reasons. "I think there's a real argument for looking at the program and saying, 'Do we need it anymore?' We addressed the 6 percent of housing [identified as 'severely distressed']. If we're going to continue, we need to rethink what its purpose is." As housing-policy wonks debate urban-planning philosophies and income qualifications, the residents of Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg project have a unified message for the administrators of public housing: Play it straight with the tenants. Residents say they've never had a real say in what's happening at Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg. Davis said he learned about HOPE VI by chance, after seeing some people crossing the street to a meeting. It was a false bill of goods from the beginning, says 12-year resident Mary Robbins. "They lied to us," she says. "They told us they were going to renovate...2not tear it down!" The public-input sessions are a sham, she adds. "They were telling us about our new community and what we would like in it, knowing full well it wouldn't be our community: We won't be here." Davis, who is on one of the project's resident subcommittees at Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg, suggests that the DCHA confuses public comment with fait accompli. Two weeks ago, for example, he received a letter announcing the subject of the next subcommittee meeting: a blueprint for social services that had already been submitted for HUD approval six weeks before. In their June report to Congress, HUD officials agreed that a failure to work well with othersnamely, public-housing residentsis not unheard-of among housing authorities. "Baseline assessments of early HOPE VI revitalization projects revealed that a number of housing authorities actually discouraged resident involvement, while others only peripherally engaged residents in the development process," reads the report. Rowe insists that DCHA authorities have provided ample notice of everything that has been going onthrough door-to-door canvassing and mailings. The social-services plan, he says, was based on resident focus groups, and in the interest of meeting the project timeline, it was passed along to HUD. It can still be altered, he says. But Davis hasn't given up. He and his group of concerned residents meet weekly. They want to ensure that everyone will be able to return, or at least have a safe place to live. "We'll chain ourselves to buildings, sit on politicians' doorsteps, whatever it takes," says Davis. Residents are experimenting with other forms of resistance as well. This summer, Frazier et al. got some 300 signatures on a petition against using a credit check as part of the readmission process. They have yet to show it to the DCHA. Frazier says they haven't been given an opportunity to do so publicly, because the agenda at the public forums is so strictly controlled. Rowe says the critics of HOPE VI in the neighborhood represent just a handful of voices. "There is a large segment of the population that is indifferent to what's going on," he says. Might that be because people believe that decisions have already been made for them? "That's probably part of it," but "there are people who actually work and have lives and really could care less." CP Sarah Godfrey contributed to this report. Washington Free Weekly Inc. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 3 Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 06:47:32 -0800 (PST) From: Grant Subject: HOPE VI and Section 8 in Seattle -- from The Seattle Weekly Another useful article from my un-sent archive. G. --- Wayne Sherwood Home (not so) sweet home Rochelle Johnson had to quit working to get adequate housing for her family. She's not the only one who has a problem with the Seattle Housing Authority. The Seattle Weekly 3/27/2002 BY ERICA C. BARNETT It's 1:30 on a wintry March afternoon, and Rochelle Johnson is just sitting down at the table in the dining room of her snug four-bedroom Arbor Heights bungalow for a late lunch of pasta and shrimp. The meal is a short respite in a daily schedule that consists mostly of running from place to place--getting her four kids to school and driving to classes in North Seattle in her weathered maroon minivan, then doing the whole thing in reverse, scooping up the kids and getting home in time to put dinner on the table. Johnson's story seems like a classic by-the-bootstraps tale of triumph over adversity. The single mom pulled herself off welfare, moved out of the Holly Park public housing complex in Southeast Seattle, and is working to improve her financial situation, taking time off from her job as a kidney dialysis technician to go to nursing school. It's true that her quiet neighborhood, near the southwest tip of West Seattle, has seen better days. It's a remote, secluded place where gas stations share street-front space with vegetable markets and down-at-the-heels 1960s wood-frame homes. But it's about as far away from Holly Park as a suburban shopping mall is from a downtown minimart, and Johnson likes it that way. Johnson came here to make a fresh start in 1996, shortly before Holly Park was torn down for renovation by the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) under a federal program known as HOPE VI, which gives grants to local housing authorities to demolish public housing projects and redevelop them into mixed-income inner-city communities. Johnson had wanted to get out of the projects and into "regular" housing for a long time; before Holly Park was torn down, she had spent years waiting to get a housing voucher under a federal program called Section 8, which gives working poor people assistance with their monthly rent and utility bills. The planned demolition pushed Holly Park residents to the top of the list. So why does Johnson feel cheated? She says the housing authority, which distributes the Section 8 vouchers, did nothing but stand in her way when she tried to move away from public housing and toward self-sufficiency. After she got her voucher, Johnson says, she found herself spending more than 40 percent of her monthly income on rent and utilities, even though federal law says tenants displaced from public housing can pay no more than 30 percent. When she pointed out the discrepancy, SHA disputed her income and insisted that she was ineligible for the lower limit. Instead of encouraging self-sufficiency, Johnson says, SHA was creating an incentive for her to cheat the system. "I was working full time, and my [portion of the] rent kept going up, going up, going up," Johnson says--to $736 a month in 2000 and to $918 in 2001. Finally, last year, Johnson quit her $23,000-a-year job as a kidney dialysis technician. Now SHA pays her entire rent of $1,450 a month. Johnson's case is part of a federal complaint against the agency and the regional office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) filed on Wednesday by the Seattle Displacement Coalition, an advocacy group for low-income tenants, on behalf of six Section 8 voucher recipients. Her situation illustrates some of the pitfalls that have accompanied a shift in the government's approach to low- income housing from "dependence" on public housing to "self-sufficiency" in the private market, a change that's happening not just in Seattle but all around the country. LEFT BEHIND These days, no one talks about going back to the days of public housing when crumbling inner-city tenements became symbols of a federal bureaucracy that gave its intended beneficiaries a place to live, but no services or assistance to pull themselves out of poverty. Today's typical public housing complex will likely include child-care assistance, a job-training facility, and a community center alongside a mix of owner-occupied and rented homes. Holly Park, the first project to go under the HOPE VI knife in Seattle, is designed on this model. The idea is to deconcentrate poverty and create vibrant, diverse mixed-income communities by mixing homeowners and tenants, black and white, poor and middle class. At the same time, city housing authorities are using Section 8 vouchers to move former public housing residents into apartments in the private market. The goal: to rebuild the nation's low-income housing from the ground up, starting with the definition of "low-income housing" itself. HOPE VI's rapid development can be seen as evidence that the program works. It has been nothing if not prolific--HUD has handed out nearly $5 billion in grants for HOPE VI redevelopments from Buffalo to Memphis since its inception in 1993. Seattle has proved especially adroit at sucking HOPE VI dollars out of the federal trough. No fewer than three major redevelopments of 1940s-era public housing projects are in the works, with one--NewHolly, the former Holly Park--nearing completion. But as with welfare reform, which left thousands to fend for themselves with poverty-level jobs when their benefits dried up, public housing reform hasn't always worked out as planned. According to advocates like John Fox of the Displacement Coalition, projects like NewHolly do nothing for the hundreds of people displaced when their homes are demolished, many of whom never return to enjoy the project's new job-training facility, computer lab, or community center. And programs like Section 8, Fox argues, present working poor people with a Hobson's choice: Move out of town, where rents are cheap, or pay more than you can afford. The Displacement Coalition's complaint touches on almost every aspect of the new housing philosophy. It alleges that some 3,100 recipients of Section 8 vouchers were systematically underpaid by SHA for their housing and utility expenses, concentrating them into new pockets of poverty on the southeast and southwest fringes of Seattle's city limits. To understand the complaint, it helps to know a little about the Section 8 program. Section 8, much like public housing, is aimed at the very low-income and "working poor": Only people making less than 50 percent of an area's median income are eligible, and most Section 8 vouchers are reserved for people making less than 30 percent of the median (in Seattle, that means less than $16,350 for one person). Under federal rules, housing authorities are supposed to give Section 8 clients a monthly allowance, called a voucher, to find housing on the private market. Housing authorities set a "payment standard": the maximum amount that a person can receive in voucher assistance. In Seattle, the maximum payment for a one-bedroom apartment was recently raised from $582 to $650 a month; the maximum for a four-bedroom like Johnson's is now $1,500. That may sound like a lot, but most people don't get the maximum; voucher recipients have to pay at least 30 percent of their income on rent, so about the only way to get the maximum payment is to have no income at all. The idea is to keep people afloat--not give them a free ride. Generally, housing authorities are required to set the payment standard high enough so that voucher recipients don't spend more than 40 percent of their monthly income on "gross rent," or rent and utilities (30 percent is considered ideal). The Displacement Coalition believes that by setting its payment standards low for the Seattle market (according to apartment consultants Dupree + Scott, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in King County in October was $777), SHA has allowed many of its clients to pay more rent than they can afford. Those who do find affordable apartments, the coalition believes, find them in areas like White Center, Delridge, and the Rainier Valley, where a large number of very-low-income people are concentrated. The allegations, if proved true, could constitute a violation of federal fair-housing laws, which say housing agencies and HUD are supposed to ensure that low-income housing is dispersed throughout the city. The fair-housing component of the complaint may be the easiest to demonstrate. Since the projects were built starting back in the 1940s, the federal government's philosophy toward low-income housing has undergone a seismic shift. Instead of herding poor people into massive public housing projects, housing agencies are under a new mandate to spread housing opportunities throughout the city, increasing diversity and preventing the development of new urban ghettos. Whether this notion constitutes good public policy or paternalistic social engineering has become largely irrelevant; the question now is: Are the new housing policies accomplishing this goal? According to data collected by the coalition, SHA's Section 8 program may be doing the opposite. A map plotting voucher recipients by address shows that Section 8 clients are clustered tightly in lower-income areas like Southwest and Southeast Seattle, while affluent areas like Magnolia and Wallingford are virtually bare. Using the map along with census data detailing the racial and income makeup of areas with large numbers of voucher recipients, the Displacement Coalition determined that poor and minority voucher recipients have overwhelmingly been pushed into pockets of poverty far away from central-city jobs and services. "They're flouting the rules and accentuating racial segregation," Fox says. BALANCING ACT But fair housing is only one branch of the problem. The root, Fox believes, is SHA's low payment standards, which the Displacement Coalition has spent years trying to get the agency to raise; today, thanks in large part to the coalition's efforts, they're higher than they've ever been. Ordinarily, housing agencies are held to the federal rule that says voucher recipients can't spend more than 40 percent of their income on gross rent. But SHA says that because of its special status as a Moving to Work agency, a designation that frees it from many federal regulations, it doesn't have to ensure that tenants stay under that limit. The policy, according to a HUD spokesperson interviewed several months ago (HUD did not return calls for comment for this story), is meant "to allow tenants, particularly in high-rent areas, to be able to find housing." Fox calls that a gross violation of both the letter and the spirit of the program. "There is nothing in the Moving to Work agreement that says they can charge more than 40 percent for [gross] rent," Fox says. What's indisputable is that, for at least the last two years, SHA has done exactly that. According to SHA's own records, about 43 percent of its clients were paying more than 40 percent of their income on gross rent before the new payment standards went into effect this January, and around 70 percent were paying more than 30 percent. One Section 8 client associated with the complaint, who wanted to remain anonymous, has had to set aside as much as 92 percent of her income to pay for rent and utilities. The client, who has lived in the same three-bedroom house for nearly 20 years, says things have changed since she first entered the program in 1983. "When I got on housing, they told me that this is [supposed to help] people get ahead--it's to give you a little cushion," she says. But recently, she says, that cushion has gotten thinner and thinner. The client says that when she started the program, SHA paid most of her rent, which was around $700 a month. Now that her kids are gone, she gets less assistance and the payment standard has failed to keep up with her monthly expenses. These days, she pays around $300 a month--more than half her monthly unemployment income of $516. "I am responsible. I don't go out and buy clothes. I have a used car," she says. "I'm not spending money. But it takes most of my income to live here." SHA spokesperson Virginia Felton says that the payment standard is generally set at a level that, in theory, makes 40 percent of the available housing affordable to voucher recipients. However, "that doesn't mean that people with vouchers are going to find those type of apartments," she says. SHA deputy executive director Al Levine says higher costs are the tradeoff tenants have to pay for living in a high-rent area like Seattle. "We do have a balancing act between what Section 8 people can pay and how many [vouchers] we have available," Levine says. "We don't want to just raise allowances without increasing the number of vouchers." Part of the problem, Levine believes, lies in voucher recipients' insistence on picking apartments they can't afford. "If you have a family that chooses to pay more, that's the choice part of the program"--the part that says families should be able to live where they want, Levine says. "It's my opinion that people need to take more responsibility for their decisions. The whole philosophy of the program is self-sufficiency and choice." FOLLOWING THE MONEY It's not as if SHA needs to scrimp on its Section 8 payments because it's hurting for money. As of last June, the agency had invested around $29 million in a statewide investment pool for "surplus" dollars--$23 million more than the King County Housing Authority, which serves almost as many clients. Last year, Felton says, SHA earned around $934,000 from its state investments; currently, it has around $17 million in the fund. Whether a million dollars is too much profit for a housing agency that's supposed to spend most of its money helping low-income residents is debatable; as far as the Displacement Coalition is concerned, any "surplus" money should go to pay for Section 8, which has a waiting list five or six years long. What is clear is that, like other housing agencies across the country, SHA's mission has changed: instead of simply housing the poor, SHA is working to promote a broader range of housing strategies including home ownership, market-rate housing--the "mixed" part of New- Holly's "mixed-income community"--and private-market rentals. Levine says that SHA is just following the trail of federal dollars, which more and more leads away from things like low-income public housing and toward programs like Section 8, HOPE VI redevelopments, and programs that encourage the dispersal of low-income residents throughout the city. "Congress hates public housing. The public doesn't like public housing. There's steadier, more stable resources" for programs such as Section 8 that focus on private housing and self-sufficiency, Levine says. Between 1999 and 2002, the number of public housing units in Seattle was expected to decline from 6,258 to 5,230, while the number of Section 8 vouchers was expected to increase from 4,685 to 8,212, according to SHA's Moving to Work annual plan. AFFIRMATIVE STEPS Since the Displacement Coalition started putting together its complaint, SHA's Section 8 program has gone through some significant reforms. Last October, Levine says, SHA adjusted its payment standards--from 100 percent of fair market rent to 110 percent. In addition, "we are much more restrictive on going over 40 percent than we were last year," Levine says. But critics point to agencies like the King County Housing Authority (KCHA) as examples of how SHA could accomplish its mission of self-sufficiency without leaving its poorest clients behind. Unlike SHA, King County has raised its payment standard above 110 percent in expensive areas like Bellevue, Redmond, and Kirkland. KCHA also ensures that its clients pay no more than 40 percent of their income as gross rent, according to Graeme Atkey, KCHA's Section 8 manager. Fox says SHA should do the same, raising its standard to a level more in keeping with Seattle's high housing prices. Columbia Legal Services attorney Steve Frederickson, who represents low-income people, agrees that raising the standards would be a better solution than allowing people to pay more than they can afford. "My feeling is that the payment standard that the housing authority is using is too low for this market, and that the answer to that problem . . . is to increase the payment standard so that more low-income families can afford to live here." SHA's Levine says the agency considered implementing higher payment standards in some areas, especially in North Seattle where housing prices are higher, but were stymied by the prospect that they could be accused of redlining, or paying less for certain "less desirable" areas, usually those with higher concentrations of low-income people and minorities. Raising the standards, Fox says, would go a long way toward giving SHA's clients a toehold in a shaky rental market. But the Displacement Coalition doesn't want it to stop there: The group would like SHA to start tracking where all Section 8 clients go and how much they pay to make sure that Section 8 clients aren't being ghettoized by their low-income status, and to ensure that everyone who has to leave a public housing complex gets full payment and relocation services, not bureaucratic hassle. Ultimately, Fox says, if the complaint changes SHA policies even incrementally, it will have been worth the effort. "This kind of exposure has a cumulative effect," Fox says. "Already, there is evidence we're having some impact. If we do that, to heck with all this other stuff--I can walk away pretty happy at the end of the day." ebarnett@seattleweekly.com > __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 4 Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 07:29:48 -0800 (PST) From: Grant Subject: Rainier - Summary of Concessions from Law Suit --- Wayne Sherwood Message text written by "John McLaren" [Ignore previous message. One of the many disadvantages of working alone is that it's impossible for me to catch all of my typo's and omissions. This has a few needed corrections. make your own too before forwarding, if you see ayn.] Wayne, Here is the summary that I promised. Feel free to distribute through your lists. Prior to HUD approval of a local housing authority's "Request for Release Of Funds" [RROF], for a HOPE VI project, the proposed project must undergo environmental review according to National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA] guidelines. This applies to each and every HOPE VI project around the country. Therefore, there are a number of opportunities for those concerned about HOPE VI redevelopments in their communities to challenge these projects on NEPA grounds. A group of advocacy organizations and Public Housing residents recently challenged the adequacy of the NEPA-level environmental review for the Seattle Housing Authority's proposed HOPE VI redevelopment of the 481-unit Rainier Vista public housing community in Seattle's Rainier Valley neighborhood. Carolee Colter, of the Friends of Rainier Vista, has already written a good summary of the concessions won though settlement of the lawsuit that grew out of this challenge. This is a brief summary not of those concessions, but of how the case was made by co-plaintiffs the Seattle Displacement Coalition, Friends of Rainier Vista, and - acting on behalf of a group of Rainier Vista residents - the Northwest Justice Project. [Respectively: SDC, FORV and NJP] The required NEPA review is called an "Environmental Assessment [EA]. An EA results in one of two different findings, which is the either [1] a NEPA-level Environmental Impact Statement [EIS] is required for the project, or [2] a Finding Of No Significant Impact [FONSI] is made. As I understand, typically HOPE VI projects receive FONSI's as a matter of course. I am not aware of any HOPE VI project for which a NEPA-level EIS was required, but I haven't researched this in depth. NEPA environmental review criteria include a number of significant social, environmental, and economic justice considerations. Since it is a relatively straightforward matter to demonstrate that a typical HOPE VI project will have very significant social, environmental and economic justice impacts at the local level, it should be possible to successfully challenge a FONSI for most HOPE VI projects, especially the larger ones. The co-plaintiffs recognized this and decided to appeal the FONSI for Rainier Vista. The local social/environmental/economic justice impacts of HOPE VI that are significant at the local level are well known, and can include: a.. Lack of meaningful resident participation, because residents are not fully informed by the PHA or able to fully participate. b.. Low likelihood that a majority - if that - of the original residents will be able or even allowed to return to the redeveloped project. c.. Likelihood that residents opting to leave in exchange for section 8 vouchers will frequently end up in housing just as distressed or worse, with less access to supportive services and farther from jobs. d.. Promises made by PHA to residents during the planning process regarding supportive services and right to return that the PHA is not able to fulfill once the redevelopment is completed. e.. Net loss of the number of Public Housing units. f.. Impact on low income families on the wait lists, who have no say and will have to stay on the wait lists for longer as a result of the net loss in Public Housing. g.. Net drain on non-HUD public funding resources that could otherwise have been used to expand the stock of very low and extremely low income housing in the area. h.. Increased gentrification in the neighborhood as a result of the project, displacing low income residents in the surrounding neighborhood. The City of Seattle, acting as "Responsible Entity" [RE] for the Seattle Housing Authority, wrote the EA and FONSI for the Rainier Vista project. The co-plaintiffs claimed that the EA and FONSI were deficient, generally because they did not fully consider the factors listed above, and specifically - in successful appeal of initial denial of preliminary injunction - because: 1.. The EA does not properly incorporate the data it purports to rely upon; is contradicted by the data it purports to rely upon; and fails to provide a convincing statement to explain its finding that the demolition of 481 units of Public Housing and redevelopment of a mixed income community would have no significant impact on the human environment. 2.. Socioeconomic impacts that are directly related to the demolition of housing are legally cognizable effects that must be assessed under NEPA, but were not adequately considered by the EA. 3.. The adequate assessment of environmental justice issues, specifically the disproportionate adverse impacts on racial minorities and low income people, is a mandatory condition precedent for the demolition and redevelopment of public housing under the Hope VI Grant Program. [ The above is excerpted and abstracted from a co-plaintiff letter summarizing the case to the US magistrate judge who agreed to act as settlement mediator.] The history of this case was straightforward. [Apologies for this paragraph in advance. I am no legal specialist.] Appeals were made to HUD and the City, within the timelines allowed after the EA and RROF were completed. The EA was revised in response to the RROF appeal, but not substantially according to the co-plaintiffs. The co-plaintiffs then filed suit against HUD, the City and the Seattle Housing Authority claiming that than adequate environmental review had not been conducted. The plaintiffs then filed suit against the City, HUD, and SHA to enjoin demolition pending an adequate environmental review. The US District Court denied the co-plaintiffs' request for preliminary injunction, but also denied SHA's motion for summary judgment. The co-plaintiffs appealed denial of the preliminary injunction to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The district court then granted them a temporary injunction, which stopped demolition and put the project on hold until the lawsuit was to be heard. After the housing authority's subsequent motion for reconsideration was thrown out, all parties agreed to enter into a mediated settlement process. Again, see Carolee Colter's letter for a summary of the concessions won by the residents, FORV and SDC. So what's to be learned from all of this? The main thing is that it's possible to raise NEPA concerns on a HOPE VI project, and that there's a straightforward way to do so. The case did not go to trial, so no great formal legal precedent was established. What happened is that the co-plaintiffs extracted meaningful concessions, something that couldn't have happened without using the NEPA environmental review process. Other advocacy groups concerned about the impacts of HOPE VI projects in their communities may be able to do more with this process. It's been said by a local writer that HOPE VI is "less heinous" in Seattle than elsewhere.... One reason - perhaps the main reason - for why the first request for preliminary injunction was denied was that the plaintiffs didn't adequately dispute SHA's claim that the buildings at Rainier Vista were "severely distressed". This is probably correct. According to the definition of severe distress in the HOPE VI SuperNOFA [Notice Of Funding Availability] for 1999, one can reasonably argue that the buildings at Rainer Vista do not even begin to meet HUD's criteria for severe distress. This should have been added to the co-plaintiffs' original complaint. There are probably a number of HOPE VI projects around the country for which one could make a similar argument. Relevant regulations, for those interested in pursuing this: [CFR means Code of Federal Regulations.] 24 CFR Part 58 is the key regulation concerning the Environmental Review process for HOPE VI projects. 24 CFR Part 50 should also be studied for environmental review criteria. The Federal Register will have the relevant SuperNOFA language. For 1999, the year of the Rainier Vista HOPE VI application, the SuperNOFA is in FR Volume 64, Feb 26, 1999. - John McLaren __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 5 Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 07:30:41 -0800 (PST) From: Grant Subject: Rainier Vista (Seattle) settlement --- Wayne Sherwood wrote: To lists: I received the following announcement today (December 24, 2002) from John Fox of the Seattle Displacement Coalition. As always when I transmit announcements from other groups, I cannot guarantee the accuracy of the content. Wayne Sherwood ======= Lawsuit Blocking Rainier Vista Demolition Settled - Citizens Win Major Concessions! "SHA Policy That Would Have Excluded Low Income Seniors from 1000 Senior Housing Bond Units is Suspended! Neighborhood and Resident Concerns Also Addressed!" for immediate release - see below for contacts: Friends of Rainier Vista, and the Seattle Displacement Coalition, and two residents from the Rainier Vista Public Housing Community today signed a binding agreement in federal court with the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA), City of Seattle and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) bringing to an end a lawsuit that recently halted SHA's federally-funding HOPE VI redevelopment of the Rainier Vista Garden Community. According to the plaintiffs, as a result of "significant concessions" offered to the plaintiffs, the injunction granted recently by the federal courts blocking SHA's HOPE VI Redevelopment Project will be lifted. SHA's demolition of the existing 481 housing units may now proceed as early as this Thursday but only under terms of this settlement assuring significant levels of added mitigation for neighbors, tenants, and housing advocates. In a legally binding settlement filed with the federal courts, Plaintiffs have won significant concessions including Very low income tenants living on site at Rainier Vista won assurances that they will have the right to return to homes of comparable quality and size in the redevelopment, that rents in the on-site and off-site replacement housing will be held to no more than 30% of tenant income, that units will be targeted to families with household income of no more than 30% of median income, and that the density will be limited to 1010 units, and that a minimum of 310 of the new units would be public housing units serving very low income families. While SHA made some of these above commitments earlier when they were incorporated into the Rainier Vista Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) sbetween the city and SHA (signed October 2001). But, advocates and residents say that Rainier Vista MOA was not truly enforceable. As was the case with the Holly Park HOPE VI project, every time SHA wanted the City Council to amend that MOA reducing SHA's requirements and obligation to replace housing, the City Council readily amended the agreement. Now, under this settlement signed today, it truly binds SHA and city, and all plaintiffs now can aggressively enforce in federal court all mitigation requirements In what is perhaps the most unique feature of this agreement, the Displacement Coalition secures from SHA, a binding commitment to suspend for at least another nine months (Sept. 30, 2003) - all changes in rents, how they fill vacancies, and all other policy changes on units created under the Senior Housing Bond Program (SSHP). SHA was slated on January 21st to raise rents above very low income thresholds and deny access to poor seniors on all 1000 units even though this program was intended for this group when drawn up and approved by voters in 1981. The axe will not fall on low in seniors on January 21st now thanks to this settlement and we and seniors now have time a come up with alternatives that will save this program for the poorest in our city. SHA has also committed to working with seniors, the Coalition, and the City to come up with alternatives that will permanent guarantee access to this low income group. Plaintiffs also secured a commitment from SHA to set-up a citizen advisory group that will have formal authority to make recommendations on all development/demolition/ plans affecting 500 public housing units at Yesler Terrace - that last public housing project not yet destroyed or "HOPE VI-ed" by SHA, located just E. of downtown. Plaintiffs also won provisions to enforce mitigations for impacts of construction on the neighborhood, to replace certain mature trees slated for destruction with large trees instead of small saplings, to study traffic volumes and plan mitigations at key intersections, and to create a Citizen Review Committee with representatives of neighbors, Rainier Vista residents, developers and the local business community. The City will also pay all plaintiff's attorney's fees. For more information contact John Fox, Seattle Displacement Coalition, 632-0668, jvf4119@zipcon.net Carolee Colter, Friends of Rainier Vista, 723-4040, caroleecolter@hotmail.com Houng Tran, NW Justice Project representing tenants on site, 464-1519 > __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 6 Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 07:31:16 -0800 (PST) From: Grant Subject: Seattle P-I article on Rainier Vista Settlement --- Wayne Sherwood wrote: > SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/101473_rainier25.shtml Rainier Vista moves ahead with assurances for poor tenants Wednesday, December 25, 2002 By PHUONG CAT LE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER Work on the controversial Rainier Vista redevelopment project will resume this week after the Seattle Housing Authority and residents reached an agreement yesterday offering key concessions for the project's poor tenants. U.S. District Judge John Coughenour temporarily stopped demolition three weeks ago so that a lawsuit by tenants and housing advocates could be heard in court. Tenants and neighbors fought to stop the redevelopment plan, which got a $35 million federal HOPE VI grant to demolish 481 public housing units in favor of a mixed-income community. They worried that the new housing project would displace poor tenants in favor of people with higher incomes, leaving the former without places to live. The two sides entered federal mediation on Thursday. After four intense days, they emerged with an agreement that moves the project forward in exchange for, among other promises, allowing all tenants who lived at the old Rainier Vista to return to the redeveloped community. "I am extremely pleased to settle this lawsuit," Harry Thomas, the housing authority's executive director, said yesterday. "This allows us to invest all of our energy and funding into making this the best neighborhood possible for the residents of Rainier Vista and the surrounding Rainier Valley community." Residents won assurances yesterday that the housing authority would give priority at the new Rainier Vista to the city's poorest residents, or those who make below 30 percent median income (in 2002, that's $23,350 for a family of four). "I don't think anybody really wanted this fight," said Carolee Colter, a representative of Friends of Rainier Vista who lives east of the housing project. "We took it into our own hands to hold SHA accountable. The whole lawsuit has succeeded in doing that." And neighbors won assurances that the agency and the city of Seattle would work to preserve and replace as many trees on the site as possible and install traffic-calming measures as it begins construction on the new 1,010-unit community. In another victory for low-income renters, the authority said it would hold off raising rents on its senior housing program until the end of September. The agency had planned to raise rents for new residents from $210 to $390 a month starting next month. That concession wasn't directly related to the Rainier Vista development but had been fought for by the Seattle Displacement Coalition, one of the parties that sued the housing authority. Two residents, the neighborhood group Friends of Rainier Vista and the Seattle Displacement Coalition filed a lawsuit July 19 to stop the project after the city granted the housing authority the right to rezone the development. They argue that the city did not take account of how the redevelopment would dislocate residents and lead to the loss of trees and changes in traffic patterns. Some have taken federally subsidized vouchers and found housing elsewhere in the city. Coughenour dismissed the lawsuit yesterday, and demolition of the World War II-era duplexes in South Seattle will proceed tomorrow. The three-week delay in demolition cost the agency between $50,000 and $100,000, spokeswoman Virginia Felton said. The housing authority, an independent public entity, had worried that a continued delay would force it to push back construction and cost it upwards of $3.5 million. Under yesterday's agreement, the Seattle Housing Authority also agreed to: Give all tenants who lived at Rainier Vista in August 1999, when the federal HOPE VI award was granted, the right to return to live in the new development. Keep rent at 30 percent of median income. Limit the maximum number of units at 1,010. Create a citizen review panel to work with the housing authority. Conduct a study of whether it's financially possible to replace all the 481 units of the old housing at the new project. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- P-I reporter Phuong Cat Le can be reached at 206-903-0370 or phuongle@seattlepi.com > __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 7 Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 07:28:28 -0800 (PST) From: Grant Subject: Wash Post article on federal programs for the poor --- Wayne Sherwood wrote: >From Wayne: please note that the figures about HOPE VI in the following article are wrong. The article claims that this amount of money has been spent and that these numbers of units have been built. They must have got numbers from HUD on what has been appropriated and "planned." HUD's latest reports show that as of 9/30/2002, only $2 billion of the $5.5 billion in HOPE VI money appropriated to date had been spent (about 36%), and only 21,000 housing units had been "built or rehabilitated", including 15,600 units of public housing. Wayne Sherwood =================== Bush Seeks to Recast Federal Ties to the Poor States Would Gain Control Over Services; Funds for Some Programs Would Be Cut By Amy Goldstein and Jonathan Weisman Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, February 9, 2003; Page A01 President Bush has embarked on a far-reaching campaign to transform the federal government's relationship with the nation's poor, seeking to tip control over social services to the states, reduce the funding of some programs, and require more proof that low-income people are eligible for public help. The $2.23 trillion budget that Bush proposed to Congress last week would loosen federal standards and hand states vast new authority, if they want it, over housing subsidies, unemployment benefits, health insurance, and a preschool program for children from disadvantaged families, which is known as Head Start. It would also make outright cuts in some poverty programs, such as a reduction by a fourth in the amount the government devoted last year to "community services" grants for dispossessed neighborhoods. At the same time, the president is seeking nearly $1.5 trillion in tax cuts that would largely benefit the wealthy while potentially squeezing social spending for years to come. White House officials contend that such cuts would ultimately help the poor more than direct government aid because they are supposed to spur faster economic growth, which would raise wages and pull more people into the workforce. In effect, they say, pro-investment tax policy is Bush's boldest anti-poverty program. "Small changes in long-term growth have very large effects on our standards of living," said R. Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers. "Once you realize that, everything else is secondary." Affecting many federal agencies, the changes Bush wants to make in anti-poverty efforts reveal a bold aspect of his vision of government that he seldom discusses publicly. The proposals were not among the positions he staked out during the 2000 presidential campaign. Aside from a plan to redesign the health insurance program, Medicaid, administration officials have drawn scant attention this year to their policies for addressing poverty as they released a budget that concentrates on defeating terrorism and building the economy. The president has not even publicly acknowledged this year's most dramatic tax proposal -- a plan to establish new savings accounts that would allow families to shield tens of thousands of dollars a year from all capital gains, interest and dividend taxation. All of these policies are, in a sense, ideological heirs to previous conservative attempts to spur economic growth through the tax code and to limit the federal role in social welfare -- starting with President Ronald Reagan two decades ago and surging again in the mid-1990s, when congressional Republicans tried to "devolve" many federal responsibilities to the states. Compared with the earlier efforts, Bush's approach is more subtle and less uniform. The most recent major anti-poverty program that was moved away from federal control -- the welfare system -- was converted into a "block grant" for every state in 1996. In contrast, administration officials this year emphasize that each state should have a choice whether to take part in the changes the White House intends for Medicaid and for Head Start. And the administration wants to keep tight federal rules in certain programs for the poor, such as by increasing the number of hours that parents on welfare are required to work. Despite those differences, policy analysts across the ideological spectrum say that the changes imbedded in Bush's budget, if adopted, would be virtually unrivaled in scale and scope. "Just the sheer volume of proposals . . . across an array of low-income programs . . . is breathtaking," said Mark Greenberg, policy director of the Center for Law and Social Policy, a nonprofit group that specializes in family and welfare issues. The changes require approval from Congress. Democrats have indicated that they will try to block several of them, including the plans for Medicaid and Head Start; debate over others has not yet begun. The tax policies are already facing criticism, not only from Democrats, but also from some Republicans who worry that they are too ambitious and too costly. Democrats and many economists argue that the tax plans would spur far less growth than the administration contends, while widening the gap between rich and poor. Senate Democrats last week asked Treasury Secretary John W. Snow whether the tax policies were "trickle-down economics," a reference to the Reagan tax cuts that were derided by critics because of their proponents' assumption that the benefits given to the rich would trickle down to the poor. Snow responded that he prefers to call them "circular" economics. Affluent investors would help business managers, who would then help workers. Worker productivity would then boost investment returns and spur still more investment, he said. Jay Lefkowitz, director of the White House's Domestic Policy Council, said: "The president believes that we are a compassionate society, and we are a society of great wealth, and we should use that wealth to really help people who have been left behind." But, Lefkowitz said in an interview, "[it] is not just a question of money." He said the budget "makes sure those resources are targeted toward proven programs or innovative ways to develop programs that work." For several of the nation's largest social welfare programs, the budget would not cut funding but would restrict the federal responsibility for how they are run and who receives help. This strategy, Lefkowitz said, reflects Bush's belief that states "often . . . are the best able to develop programs that respond to the needs of their constituents," while the federal government must hold states accountable for the results. Some experts on social policy say such a strategy is risky at a time when most states are economically strained. "Offering state block grants in the middle of the most severe state fiscal crisis we've seen in a long time -- with little or no new federal aid -- almost guarantees that states will either fail to take up the option or that they will use the money in inappropriate ways," Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said at a gathering of policy analysts held to assess the budget. Specifically, the most massive switch to state control favored by the administration would involve Medicaid, the 1960s health insurance program that is run jointly by the federal government and the states. The administration wants to unfetter states from virtually all federal rules for about a third of the 44 million people in the program -- people who are enrolled by the states' choice rather than by federal law. For that group, including many children and elderly people, states could drop some benefits, provide varying forms of coverage in different communities, charge patients more for their care, and create waiting lists if they decide not to cover everyone who asks for help. While those "optional" patients would be affected most directly, the administration also wants to make fundamental financial changes that ultimately could affect everyone on Medicaid. States could combine money for Medicaid and a separate insurance program for children, potentially to cover more adults. Most significantly, for the first time, the federal government would stop paying for a share of the care for every patient who is enrolled. Instead, states would get a fixed payment that would be adjusted every year based on changes in the cost of health care -- but not fluctuating, as subsidies do now, depending on the number of patients, according to Dennis Smith, the Department of Health and Human Services' Medicaid director. The prospect has alarmed liberal policy specialists and congressional Democrats. "It's a mind-boggling change," said Cindy Mann, a research professor at Georgetown University who was a health official in the Clinton administration. "It's basically shifting the responsibility to states and capping the federal dollars." Aides to Bush say the Medicaid plan would not be a true block grant because it would be voluntary for states and because their subsidies would change from year to year. The administration, however, is labeling as a block grant a fundamental change proposed in subsidies that currently help about 3 million poor families afford to rent privately owned apartments. The proposal would convert into state grants about three-fourths of the $17 billion in the program, known as Section 8. Administration officials say the shift would enable states to design housing programs best-suited to their residents, such as by allowing more money for rent in high-priced areas and linking housing policies to welfare and other social services. But low-income housing advocates worry that some states are ill-prepared to run housing programs and that others might make changes Congress had rejected -- such as placing time limits on housing assistance or denying assistance to people on welfare who fail to follow a program's rules. Other aspects of federal aid for housing are targeted for cuts and, in a few instances, elimination. The Hope VI program, which spent nearly $5 billion in the past decade to demolish about 115,000 dilapidated public housing units and to build 60,000 dwellings, would not be renewed. Administration officials cite it as an example of programs that can end because they have already fulfilled their intended purpose. The impact of other proposed changes are less immediately evident. Bush is proposing to tighten the process for determining who qualifies for two important forms of government help: the earned-income tax credit (EITC) for the working poor, and free and discounted meals for children in school. In a new part of the budget that attempts to rate different parts of the government, the EITC is deemed "ineffective," the lowest rating, on the grounds that the Internal Revenue Service believes that 27 percent to 32 percent of the people who got the credits in 1999 were not truly eligible for them. Among other changes, the administration proposes to postpone refunds to families it believes are particularly likely to misstate their income or make mistakes. Similarly, the administration wants to weed out children who improperly receive school lunch subsidies. Barry Sackin, a vice president of the American School Food Service Association, said that he, too, thinks only eligible students should receive free meals, but that some of the methods the administration is contemplating would cause "collateral damage," mistakenly denying help to children who should get it. > __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/