WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will cut public housing assistance rates in 14 Maryland counties and Baltimore City in the fiscal year that begins Friday.
The new “fair market rents,” unveiled Tuesday, would cut the allowable Section 8 housing voucher for a two-bedroom apartment in Allegany County by $100 a month, for example, the biggest decrease in the state. Low-income families in Garrett County will see the second-largest decrease, $82.
Worcester County, meanwhile, will see allowable rents rise $71 a month, followed by Wicomico, which had a $46 increase.
But Ruth Crystal said that in those counties that will see a decrease in voucher rates, the change is “going to hurt all over.”
Crystal and other advocates said the cuts will reduce options for families receiving Section 8 vouchers, who earn 50 percent of the state’s median income or less.
Those families can stay in low-rent areas where their voucher will cover all the rent, but which often have fewer job opportunities, substandard housing, high crime rates, and lower-performing schools. Or they move to housing in better neighborhoods, paying the difference between their voucher and their rents out of incomes that are typically below the poverty line.
“People will not have the options the rest of us have to move into other communities. They will be segregated into economic ghettos,” said Ruth Crystal, who runs a consulting firm that works with housing advocates to create programs for low-income individuals.
If fair market rents were comparable to the actual housing costs in a region, families could move outside of high crime, low-income areas, she said, but the new rates will force poor families to be concentrated in those areas.
A HUD spokeswoman said Wednesday that the voucher rates can be changed if surveys find that they do not reflect regional housing costs.
Donna White, the spokeswoman, said HUD has to release the new rates on Oct. 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year, but it is still conducting random telephone surveys to determine whether the rates are in step with local renting conditions.
The department said it has completed 24 surveys in cities across the nation and hopes to do 29 more, some of which will start in October.
The department also will not enforce the 2005 housing rates in areas that are still being surveyed if local officials choose to keep the 2004 rates until the new survey is completed, according to HUD.
The fair market rate is designed to cover rents for 40 percent of the housing units in a given area, based on regular surveys. It is also the maximum rent that landlords can charge for Section 8 housing in a region.
Communities that feel the rates are unfair can apply for an exception, in which case their FMRs would be reviewed and changed.
White also noted that HUD takes public feedback into account. When the 2005 rates were first released on Aug. 6, HUD proposed grouping high-rent metropolitan areas in with cheaper rural areas, based on area definitions released by the Office of Management and Budget. As a result, the rates in rural areas increased significantly and those in urban ones dropped.
After it received hundreds of calls from housing advocates and industry agents, HUD decided not to use the new boundaries, White said.
“We took these comments to heart and made this change,” White said.
-30- CNS 09-29-04