Last week, Monica Phils got the same answer most people now get when they call the Charlotte Housing Authority(CHA) seeking Section 8 vouchers.
She said she was told by the operator that the agency would no longer be giving them out. That may be puzzling to some, since the agency received an additional $2.8 million from HUD two months ago to boost its voucher program and, many thought, to fund rent vouchers for some of the 2,000 or so people who remain on its waiting lists, which CHA is currently updating and revising.
CHA stopped giving out new vouchers earlier this year because it wasn’t given enough money from the federal government to fund all the vouchers it was allocated. In August, the agency’s chief operating officer, Charles Woodyard, said CHA would begin issuing new vouchers within a month, after it straightened out its waiting list.
Now it appears that federal restrictions on the way the money can be used will prevent issuance of any new vouchers. Woodyard said Friday that with the exception of a few vouchers that had been promised by the agency in deals with other housing agencies, the $2.8 million can only be used to add to the rental assistance already received by the 3,100 people in the Charlotte area who currently hold vouchers.
According to the federal restrictions on the money, it must be used to disperse current voucher holders geographically into nicer or more affluent areas by increasing the amount of rental assistance they receive. The increase will allow them to rent property at 120 percent of what the federal government considers to be the market value rate. On average, the authority has found, market value rent in Charlotte is higher than what the federal government considers market value elsewhere.
Before the $2.8 million arrived, the authority was paying an average of $534 a month toward the total rent bill of every voucher recipient. A new average was not available at deadline.
This article appears in Nov 10-16, 2001.
