The Middletown Journal has been following this story since it was first reported in October, and will continue to inform our readers of future developments.
Section 8 vouchers
Here’s how many Section 8 vouchers the city’s housing authority controls compared to others in the area, and the jurisdiction’s population:
Middletown: 1,662 vouchers, 48,694 population
Butler County: 1,111 vouchers, 368,130 population
Warren County: 448 vouchers, 203,129 population
Cincinnati: 11,266 vouchers, 296,943 population
Dayton: 3,955 vouchers, 141,527 population
Source: City of Middletown Section 8 Analysis October 2012
Voucher increase
In 1999, the city had 774 Section 8 vouchers, which is 120 than being proposed the city cut down to. Here’s how the city acquired 888 more vouchers from 1999 to 2005:
Dec. 1, 1999: awarded 75 mainstream vouchers for non-elderly disabled
May 1, 2000: awarded 50 family unification vouchers for families where a lack of housing would allow separation with the children.
Sept. 1, 2000: awarded 55 fair share vouchers.
Nov. 1, 2000: awarded 200 vouchers in certain developments for non-elderly disabled.
Oct. 1, 2001: awarded 200 vouchers in certain developments for non-elderly disabled.
Jan. 1, 2003: awarded 200 vouchers in certain developments for non-elderly disabled.
Oct. 1, 2005: awarded 108 tenant protection vouchers for families in Chatham Village.
Source: City of Middletown Section 8 Analysis June 2010
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has given Middletown three choices concerning its proposal to eliminate more than 1,000 Section 8 vouchers: fill the available vouchers, transfer the program to Butler County or face legal action.
Middletown officials sent HUD a 142-page proposal in October outlining the city’s plan to get rid of 1,008 Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers through attrition over the next three to five years. The proposal was in response to HUD’s request for a corrective action plan to address the fact that Middletown was filling the number of housing vouchers required. The city needed to have 95 percent of its 1,662 vouchers filled, but only had 1,424 filled as of August.
In a two-page letter sent to city officials on Dec. 18, Shawn Sweet, the director of HUD’s Cleveland Hub Office of Public Housing, wrote that filling the available vouchers “would forestall the need to explore the contentious legal issues that will inevitably arise should the city proceed” with trying to eliminate them.
Sweet also suggested that if Middletown doesn’t want to fill the vouchers, the city might be better off turning its program over to the Butler County Metropolitan Housing Authority. Middletown is one of a handful of Ohio cities that operates its own housing authority.
“As you may be aware, responsibility for administering Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers assistance in Ohio has been vested almost exclusively in each county’s metropolitan housing authority…,” Sweet wrote. “The city’s frustrations suggest the Middletown community would be better served by the prevailing model.”
Sweet said the BMHA “would seem to be in a superior position” to serve participating families concerning all housing options available in the region. He added that HUD has already had “preliminary discussions” with BMHA, which “has expressed a willingness to assume responsibility for the city’s current (Section 8 voucher) allocation.”
Officials with the BMHA could not be reached for comment.
A response to HUD’s letter is due Jan. 31 and most City Council members have said they will wait for recommendations on how to respond from city administrators. Councilman A.J. Smith, however, said Friday that the city should “back off” or risk losing HUD funding, including the $1 million Section 108 loan Middletown received on behalf of Cincinnati State Middletown.
Middletown Community Revitalization Director Doug Adkins, who authored the city’s proposal to HUD, said in October that he doesn’t believe the city’s plan violates any of the federal housing agency’s regulations. He said in order for Middletown to lose any HUD funding, the agency would have to first find that a regulation violation had been committed and that the city refused to cooperate to regain compliance.
City Manager Judy Gilleland and Adkins will present options at Tuesday’s council meeting, but a “more robust” discussion will happen at the Middletown Public Housing Authority meeting on Jan. 22, before council’s business meeting, according to emails from Gilleland to council members. Gilleland and Adkins declined comment until after Tuesday’s presentation.
Many council members said they were not surprised by the strong HUD response.
“We knew this wasn’t going to be easy,” said Councilwoman Ann Mort. “We had expected to negotiate, which is what we’re looking for. We have far more (vouchers) than other places in the county and we’ve been saying this for a long time.”
Councilman Joe Mulligan said he was “disappointed that they didn’t recognize so many of the concerns that Doug Adkins and his department laid out in the report.”
“I don’t think the three options that they gave will help us with our efforts to re-balance the economic makeup of our housing,” Mulligan said.
The letter said Sweet and the agency “disagree(s) with the argument that eliminating this affordable housing resource for needy Middletown families will somehow benefit the city’s economic prospects.”
“[T]his perception by the city cannot be used to justify departures from statutory, regulatory and other clearly established policy requirements,” Sweet wrote. “We would be gravely concerned in that regard if the city were to permit its utilization rate to precipitously fall as would be the case if vouchers are not reissued when families exit the program.”
Adkins said in October the goals of the program aren’t being achieved in a city that has seen a rise in poverty, decline in population and a housing stock with more than 3,000 dilapidated homes. The city has about 500 Section 8 landlords with about 1,400 Section 8 properties.
According to the proposal, the 1,662 Section 8 vouchers equals 49.8 percent of all subsidized housing in Middletown and 14.3 percent of all available housing in the city. The goal is to reduce all subsidize housing — which includes programs offered by the Butler Metro Public Housing Agency, HUD directly and the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit — to 10 percent of all available housing in the city.
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