On the densely packed island of Manhattan, it can be difficult for housing to remain affordable. Some buildings, like Morningside Apartments on 109th Street, have to fight to avoid selling out to market prices.
For tenants who participate in the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program, which contributes public funds to low-income residents seeking privately owned rental housing, the once-gradual decline in affordability has been aggravated by the current recession. Buildings such as Morningside, that take in Section 8 participants, are feeling the pressure.
“I live here with my husband, who only just got off the wait list,” said Margaret Martinez, a resident of Morningside for two years. “This is my first time in a Section 8 building, and the rent is lower. We have no plans of moving, but if the building leaves Section 8, I don’t know if we could afford it.”
Since its inception in 1937, the Section 8 program has evolved along with the city. Most notably, vouchers were added in 1983—this introduced the concept of the tenant-based voucher, which allows holders to seek housing options in any private-sector apartment that accepts them.
Today, Section 8 is at a crossroads, and the future is uncertain. “There are no longer Section 8 apartments being created, and many project-based [buildings] are becoming tenant-based,” said Tom Waters, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society, an organization that aims to fight poverty. This conversion makes Section 8 complexes less available to residents and can sometimes be detrimental to those living in public housing.
Waters also noted that the dearth of universally affordable apartments has exacerbated the problem. “The best way to shorten the waiting list is to build more affordable housing units, but not many of those being built are targeted at really low-income tenants because the government subsidy is not enough to cover the costs of providing the apartment. It’s not serving the people in acute need,” he explained.
Project-based Section 8 buildings reaching the end of their 20-year contracts are sometimes susceptible to transitioning out of project-based Section 8 vouchers, should landlords choose to charge market-rate rents to new higher-income residents.
Morningside Apartments preserved nearly 400 affordable apartments when its landlord decided to renew the Section 8 contract—five other buildings followed suit. Morningside, owned by Tahl-Propp Equities and managed by Manhattan North Management, signed on to work with the program for five more years.
“We were very happy to renew the contract,” Joseph Tahl, president of Tahl-Propp Equities, said. “We have 16 different project-based Section 8 properties, all in Harlem, and we’ve renewed the contracts on all of them. Some landlords have an incentive to leave when HUD [the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] tries to cut corners, and does not give rents for the renewal contract that are market-rate.”
“Renewing the contract was a good thing, because tenants weren’t prepared to leave Section 8. Otherwise, the effect of leaving would be tenants unable to afford market rate rents,” Darrell Cox, the superintendent of Morningside Apartments since 1982, said. “Now that there’s a renewed contract, tenants are taking a more vested interest in the building. They’re more vocal with their neighbors.”
Yet Section 8’s annual reviews of program participants can present another set of challenges to residents. “When tenants are re-screened, they can be disqualified from the program,” said Mary Kolar, a Section 8 organizer for resident-rights advocacy group Tenants and Neighbors. “In the transition from project-based to tenant-based, a lot of people are disqualified if the conditions don’t match.”
A Section 8 tenant who must leave a project-based unit often faces difficulties in the sometimes laborious and risky process of finding a landlord who will accept residents into the program. “The city has to administer the Section 8 program on a budget,” Melvin Christian, housing chair of Community Board 10, said. “Some landlords just don’t want to accept Section 8 tenants. It’s their right,” Christian added.
“People think they can go anywhere in the world with vouchers, and they don’t realize that landlords are not obligated to accept them,” said Alease Mckelvey, a tenant of Morningside Apartments and member of the building’s tenant organization.
McKelvey noted that even in buildings like Morningside, which have renewed their housing contracts, “those five years will end really quickly, so we need to stay focused. We need to fight. We want comfort and affordability for our kids, a home for senior citizens who have nowhere else to go.”
Jimmy Berlin, a resident whose apartment has been passed down through his family for years, said, “The economy isn’t doing well, so they really need to keep Section 8.”
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