THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 20, 1996 TAG: 9608200343
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 86 lines
The city wants to give people with higher incomes a better chance to live in its public housing units, both to help offset cutbacks in federal funding and to encourage other people to get off welfare.
The proposed change in priority guidelines comes with the approach of national and state welfare reform. Those reforms would cut off funds to some residents after two years of welfare. In addition, federal housing money available to Norfolk has already shrunk by $1 million this year.
Encouraging people with relatively higher incomes to move into public units by raising their priority on waiting lists - and charging them more in rent - would help offset cutbacks, according to the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority.
The authority also says drawing more working poor could serve as a model to other residents who have come to rely on welfare as their sole source of income.
Having a more economically diverse population would ``increase the sense of mobility . . . (and) inspire folks to get a job through connections'' with those who are already working, said Ray Strutton, assistant executive director for the authority's housing operations.
The plan, which is open for written comment until Sept. 6, allows half of vacated units to go to people who have jobs, have college degrees,have participated in job training programs or are enrolled in such learning programs - in that order.
Right now, first choice goes to people who have been displaced, live in substandard housing, are homeless or pay more than half their household incomes in rent.
Leaders of public housing residents' organizations want to know more before they give the plan a seal of approval.
``We don't know enough about it yet,'' said Martha Bond, president of the Norfolk Residents Organization, which represents the city's eight public housing neighborhoods. The group hopes to meet this week to discuss the proposal, she said.
One of the unanswered questions, Strutton said, is how many people at the lowest income levels would be affected by the proposal.
There are waiting lists for Norfolk's 4,000 public housing units and for its 1,921 Section 8 homes, which are privately owned and subsidized under a voucher system. Though some 4,000 people are waiting for Section 8 homes, the public housing list is short, and new applications will be sought in October, Strutton said.
``With welfare reform, a potential time bomb is waiting to explode,'' Strutton said, because the housing authority would lose income from those who would be dropped from the welfare rolls. ``For example, a family with its sole source of income from welfare - two years and it's cut off.''
Under the proposed housing authority plan, applicants would still have to meet income guidelines that determine they are at a ``low'' or ``very low'' income level. A family of four is classified ``low income'' if its annual income totals no more than $33,700; it is considered ``very low income'' at $21,050.
Most public housing residents earn far less. Norfolk public housing households and people on the waiting lists average a yearly income of $6,000, and most are single mothers with two or three children, according to Strutton.
Norfolk's public housing residents now pay an average of $135 monthly, with some households paying as little as the minimum rent charge of $25 and others as much as $400. Rent is based on a formula laid down by Congress in the 1960s that prohibits housing authorities from charging renters more than 30 percent of total household income.
Some other Hampton Roads cities have already rewritten their selection criteria, acting on a 2-year-old federal law that allows housing authorities nationwide to develop local preferences for half of applicants.
That law expires Sept. 30. A permanent version of the measure, now pending in Congress, would allow local housing authorities to set criteria for all cases.
Chesapeake, with 467 public housing units, rewrote its rules about a year ago to give preference up to half the time to city residents or those employed in the city, students and veterans or their surviving spouses.
Virginia Beach has no public housing, but officials rewrote the preferences for 600 Section 8 units about a year ago, identifying overcrowding and domestic violence as local criteria. Thousands of people are on a waiting list, according to the city's Department of Housing and Neighborhood Preservation.
Portsmouth revised its criteria about a year and a half ago, but details were not available this week.
Suffolk hasn't, as yet, put new guidelines in place for its 466 public housing units and 1,200 Section 8 dwellings.
KEYWORDS: NORFOLK PUBLIC HOUSING FEDERAL FUNDING by CNB