State protests cut in housing subsidy for poor, disabled

As many as 2,000 elderly, disabled, or low-income families statewide could lose their housing subsidies and possibly their homes on June 1 if changes in a federal vouchers program are not adjusted, affordable housing advocates and state officials said yesterday.

The federal government cut the state's allocation for federal Section 8 housing vouchers by $3.15 million for the current fiscal year just two weeks ago, Governor Mitt Romney said in a letter yesterday to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The cut resulted from a new interpretation of language in the federal budget, the governor wrote.

Meeting that budget cut will mean cutting off Section 8 benefits to people who are already receiving housing vouchers, Romney wrote, and because notice has to be given, the participants would be cut off as of June 1 for the state to meet the $3.15 million figure by the June 30 end of the fiscal year.

State housing officials will hold a hearing Friday to decide how to determine who will lose their subsidies.

Housing advocates said this kind of cut has never happened before in the history of Section 8 funding in Massachusetts. Aaron Gornstein, executive director of the Citizens' Housing and Planning Association, said about 2,000 families in Massachusetts could lose their vouchers unless HUD rethinks its decision.

Julia Kehoe, executive director of the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership, estimated that the budget cuts could force 1,000 of the organization's clients off the books if a solution isn't found. The partnership works with clients in 6,500 Section 8 residences in Greater Boston, of which about 60 percent are families and roughly 40 percent are people who are elderly or disabled.

"This is the first time in the 30-year history of the program that any agency has had to even consider terminating or doing anything to anyone's subsidy," she said.

At a news conference also attended by Romney, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino said the US Department of Housing and Urban Development "has walked away from us on housing. HUD is not a partner anymore when it comes to affordability. . . . For them to pull back the Section 8 certificates, it's where this [Bush] administration wants to go when it comes to housing. They talk about it, but they don't deliver."

Also at that news conference, a new affordable housing program sponsored by Citizens Bank was announced. The bank launched a $200 million low-interest loan program designed to help nonprofit developers build new housing in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Thomas Hollister, Citizens president, said the program will help create up to 1,500 units of new housing in the four states.

Romney called the federal government's budget cut a "crisis" and said the Commonwealth has sent letters to the state's congressional delegation and to Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, asking the federal department to fix the problem.

"This is going to require a real flexing of the muscle of our delegation," Romney said. "It's essential that we don't have people being tossed out of their homes. I don't want to describe what would happen if Congress doesn't act or if the administration doesn't act. I don't want to think about that."

But Michael Liu, assistant secretary for public and American Indian housing for the federal housing agency, said HUD is reading the law exactly the way Congress intended.

"Those who say that we're not implementing the law the way it's intended need to look further at what the law actually says," Liu said.

He also said that a quick review of the state Department of Housing and Community Development, which oversees the Section 8 program in Massachusetts, showed that it has issued 885 more vouchers than allowed, which he said may be contributing to the budget crunch.

Philip Hailer, spokesman for the state Department of Housing and Community Development, said the budget problem was strictly a federal issue in terms of funding. "Given the short notice of this funding gap from the federal government, the state is doing everything it possibly can to minimize the impact of this shortfall," he said.

At a separate news conference held yesterday by the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership, Farrah Bruny said she has used federal housing vouchers to help pay part of her rent after taking custody of her brothers and sisters three years ago. Bruny said she doesn't know what she'll do if she loses her voucher as of June 1.

"I kind of feel now like, `What's next?' " she said.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.