New York – City and State Must Help Families With Section 8 Vouchers

New York – The hundred or so demonstrators who recently descended on the Broadway headquarters of the New York City Housing Authority were desperately trying to call public attention to the 2,600 families whose Section 8 rent vouchers were canceled when the program ran out of money last December.

People who had already moved out of homeless shelters, found apartments and presented valid vouchers to landlords – critical steps out of dependency – were told: sorry, the voucher’s no good.

More than 27 have since moved back into shelters, and more are sure to follow.

Their plight shines a spotlight on the need for city and state lawmakers to prop up a proven, vital way of alleviating New York’s record level of homelessness.

Federally funded Section 8 vouchers – currently used by 101,000 New York City residents – provide subsidies directly to landlords, allowing very low-income renters to move out of homeless shelters and other institutions.

It’s not just a matter of public generosity. Subsidizing a family is much cheaper than the cost of a bed in a city shelter, jail or hospital – places the very poor tend to end up.

Every few months, the News and other papers carry the story of homeless people being housed in hotels at the exorbitant cost of $100 a night, or $3,000 a month.

Such arrangements don’t serve anybody well (except, perhaps, the hotel operators). The city shells out too much, the residents are still homeless, and taxpayers are rightly disgusted by the waste.

New York has long used Section 8 vouchers as a smarter, cheaper alternative to the welfare hotels: Each voucher, on average, provides a rent subsidy of $800 a month – pricey, but far less than the $3,000 a month paid for the shelters.

We don’t just toss people out on the street. Section 17 of the New York State Constitution, approved by voters in 1938, specifies that “the aid, care and support of the needy are public concerns and shall be provided by the state and by such of its subdivisions, and in such manner and by such means, as the Legislature may from time to time determine.”

The courts interpret that as meaning New York must help the very poor find housing – including disabled veterans, victims fleeing domestic violence and foster children who have reached maturity and must move out of foster homes or orphanages.

That legal duty means Albany and City Hall must stop ignoring people like Marissa Dawson, one of the demonstrators.

“I am facing homelessness next month if something is not done,” Dawson said in a written statement to NYCHA. Dawson, who is asthmatic and a mother of two, says she spent five months in a shelter last year, then found an apartment and planned to pay with Section 8.

But hers was among the canceled vouchers. Without the subsidy, her landlord is demanding she quit her apartment by month’s end – tomorrow.

After which, she could well end up back in a homeless shelter.

“We’re still aggressively pursing options,” NYCHA spokeswoman Sheila Stainback told me. The agency recently received an injection of $26 million in federal aid but is still staring down the barrel of a $19 million deficit and trying to get help from an already cash-strapped state government.

The fate of 2,600 families seem like a sad but inevitable footnote to the story of a city and state facing multibillion-dollar deficits.

It’s not. Shoring up the Section 8 program must be a top priority for Mayor Bloomberg, the City Council and the state Legislature.

Depression-era New Yorkers enshrined a duty of help for the poor in the Constitution to remind us that letting vast numbers plunge though the social safety net is not an option for the Empire State.