Saturday, May 11, 2013

Cut in rental assistance threatens South Shore families

By Chris Burrell

More than 1,000 low-income families south of Boston will lose state rental assistance in the coming year and face becoming homeless.

Some recipients will see rental assistance cut as soon as July, and many families are panicking that they will be forced back into state-funded shelters or motels, said Carolyn Sheppard, housing programs director at Quincy Community Action Programs.

“This is going to jeopardize everything,” said Michele Spencer, a part-time cashier at Wal-Mart who rents a two-bedroom apartment in Weymouth with assistance from the state program.

She lives there with her husband and 13-year-old son and is taking courses at Quincy College in medical billing, hoping to double her wages with a hospital job. Spencer just learned a month ago that her assistance would end July 30.

Statewide, more than 5,000 previously homeless families are getting portions of their rent through the state’s HomeBASE program, which was started in 2011 as a way to get families with very low incomes out of shelters and motels and into stable housing for a temporary period.

The program was initially designed to give families rental support for three years, during which they would strive to get better-paying jobs and be able to afford market-rate rents or qualify for more permanent housing support such as rental vouchers or public housing. But the assistance was later cut back to two years.

“HomeBASE was intended as a short-term assistance program,” Aaron Gornstein, undersecretary for the Department of Housing and Community Development, said Thursday. “Many families successfully transitioned off the program, and some are coming up on the end of their time limit. …We’re trying to achieve a successful outcome for these families.”

Leaders of local nonprofits working with these families are lobbying state legislators to restore $35 million in funding to keep the HomeBASE program alive and extend the assistance to families for another year.

“We’re asking for the Legislature to give the housing department the tools they need to protect these families and keep them stably housed,” said Christopher Norris, director of the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership, which also serves Quincy and neighboring towns. “They have housing, and they’re putting roots down. They are recovering. The last thing they need is to be thrown back into a shelter.”

The Boston housing partnership released a report Wednesday that criticized the HomeBASE program for being unrealistic.

“It was shortsighted to believe that a majority of families who were homeless, making $815 a month, and facing numerous other barriers would be able to dramatically increase their economic self-sufficiency in just a short period of time,” the report stated.

Norris also pointed to simple math: If these families are housed in motels, it will cost the state $120 million a year. Extending the HomeBASE program another year would cost $88 million, he said.

“It’s daunting, the task of transitioning these families, about several hundred in Plymouth County,” said Carl Nagy-Koechlin, director of South Shore Housing Development Corp., based in Kingston. “The point is we’ve got to find ways to make sure there’s a roof over people’s heads.”

Faced with the prospect of going back into a motel, Michele Spencer is scared.

“It’s horrifying and depressing,” she said.

In 2010, Spencer and her family lived for four months in a Woburn motel. She would drive her son to his school in Quincy every weekday.

With HomeBASE for almost two years, Spencer’s family has paid $855 a month toward their monthly rent of $1,450 for a two-bedroom apartment. But a few months ago, illness forced her husband to quit his job as a school bus driver.

Relying on her wages from Wal-Mart, they pay $167 a month toward the rent.

Spencer is hoping state legislators can restore the HomeBASE funding and give her another year to finish her coursework at Quincy College and land a hospital billing job.

Two state senators in the region – Brian A. Joyce, D-Milton, and Thomas P. Kennedy, D-Brockton – say they plan to push for the HomeBASE funding after they see the budget proposal from the Ways and Means Committee Tuesday night.

“It’s cheaper than motels and better than a shelter,” Kennedy said Friday. “If you can preserve a family in a normal housing setting, everyone benefits: the landlords and the fabric of neighborhood. And shelters don’t get overloads. And there’s emotional effect it spares on the families.”