Page 10
News
Street Roots • June 23-29, 2017
Barbara Ekong, o f Portland's Woodlawn neighborhood, receives a voucher to pay most o f her rent, thanks to a new pilot project, building on the
one created by the Northwest Pilot Project. Without the voucher, E kong said, "I would probably be out on the street. "
BY A M A N D A W ALDROUPE
STAFF WRITER
fter Carolyn Lambert, 64, had a
stroke last year, she knew she would
need help keeping a roof over her
A
head.
Her only income is Social Security
Insurance, which leaves her with $11 after
she pays her rent.
Family members often helped her with
food, prescriptions or other basic expenses,
but after her stroke, Lambert was hit with
additional medical costs.
The day after she returned home from
the hospital, she called Northwest Pilot
Project, a Portland social service agency
that serves low-income elderly people.
As Lambert explained her situation, the
caseworker told Lambert she was eligible
for a new program Northwest Pilot
Project was testing.
The program gives seniors and people
on fixed incomes, such as Social Security
Disability Insurance, a perm anent voucher
to help pay their rent.
Vouchers are typically used in the federal
government’s Section 8 and housing choice
programs, to subsidize the rent of a
qualifying person so that they only pay 30
percent of their income toward their
housing. A person is considered to be living
in affordable housing if they spend no more
than 30 percent of their income on rent.
It’s one of the federal government’s
biggest housing programs to help low-
income individuals and families afford
housing.
The pilot project spearheaded by
Northwest Pilot Project and the region’s
housing authority Home Forward, however,
used funding from a foundation, the Meyer
Memorial Trust, rather than the federal
government.
“I didn’t believe it,” Lambert said. “It took
me a little while to believe that it was true.”
VOUCHER POWER
New pilot project will test locally funded
housing vouchers in the face o f rising rents
"I
b e lie v e It* It
me a little w h ile
I® b e lie v e that It was
t^ae» ¡¡si?« It was w onder-
Sal to s o t m o v e /8
CAROLYN LASBEBT,
W H O R E C E IV E S A V O U C H E R
T H A T P A Y S T W O -T H IR D S O F
HER RENT
PH O TO BY A M A N D A W A LD R O U PE
Lambert joined the program. The
voucher now pays two-thirds of her rent; she
pays the other third.
“You let your breath out,” Lambert said.
But can local government-funded
vouchers perform a similar function?
A new pilot project, building on the one
created by the Northwest Pilot Project, will
test that concept in the next year.
This new pilot project, funded with
$375,000 from the Joint Office of Homeless
Services, will provide vouchers to 50 people
on fixed incomes who live in housing
affordable to people who earn 60 percent of
the area median family income, or $43,980
for a family of four. The vouchers will be
disbursed later this year.
There is little question that giving
vouchers to impoverished people to pay a
portion of their rent is effective.
The larger question is whether it can end
homelessness and displacement at a low
cost and, if so, if local government can afford
to increase the program.
pproximately 18,000 Multnomah County
residents receive disability checks
through the federal government’s Social
Security disability program.
The maximum amount a person can
receive each month is $735. Annual cost-of-
living adjustments in the last seven years,
according to federal data, are less than 2
percent each year. A 0.3 percent increase
was made in 2017. Low-income seniors who
rely solely on Social Security Insurance as
their monthly income, like Lambert, have
similar incomes that are low and fixed.
A person receiving Social Security
Disability Insurance can afford to rent a unit
priced at $221 a month, according to “Out
of Reach,” an annual report from National
Low Income Housing Coalition released
earlier this month.
The report ranks Oregon as 18th in the
nation and shows that a person must make
$19.78 an hour, working full-time for the
entire year to afford average apartment rent.
What a person on disability can
A
reasonably afford is well below the average
rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the
city, which is now over $1,100 a month.*
It’s another statistic among many that
confirms it is impossible for someone who
relies solely upon a Social Security disability
or insurance check to afford an apartment in
the Portland area.
“Their fixed incomes create very
significant challenges for them to find rental
housing,” Marc John, the director of the
Joint Office of Homeless Services, said.
The biggest problem - which locally,
vouchers may be able to solve - is that the
fixed amount of a person’s disability or
insurance check is unchanging.
“That’s not a temporary circumstance,”
John said, adding that the gap between their
income and their rent will persist.
“If we want to help them stay off the
street,” he said, “we have to find a way to
sustain the rental assistance.”
The voucher pilot program is the
brainchild of Bobby Weinstock, a housing
advocate with Northwest Pilot Project. So
strong is his advocacy for vouchers that
Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury
jokingly refers to the pilot project as “the
Bobby Weinstock voucher.”
For years, Weinstock has advocated for
increasing the amount of affordable housing
in the Portland region. Since the 1990s,
Northwest Pilot Project has published an
inventory of low-income affordable housing
in the inner city, showing a gradual loss of
affordable housing.
According to the most recent report,
Multnomah County needs to build 23,585
housing units affordable to the lowest
income renters in order to meet demand.
Weinstock became convinced vouchers
could play a larger role in reducing
homelessness and displacement after he
See VOUCHER, page 11