July 29, 2004
By Alexander Dworkowitz, Hartford Advocate

Celia Collazo and her daughter Shakira. Six-year-old Shakira Collazo never has to worry about waking up alone. Three of her four sisters share her room, packed in a pair of bunkbeds. Shakira has nowhere else to go.

Her father earns an income of roughly $28,000 a year before taxes, working 16-hour shifts as a truck driver, and the salary covers the $400 monthly rent for their Frog Hollow apartment.

Celia Collazo and her daughter Shakira

Shakira's mother, Celia, takes care of the five girls, the youngest of whom shares her parents' bed. The eldest daughter, 15, often sleeps on a makeshift porch near the emergency exit during the summers, where she keeps a stereo.

"She sometimes needs privacy," Celia Collazo, 32, says.

The Collazos, of course, want to move to a larger apartment. But with the limited income and seven mouths to feed, paying $800 a month for a three-bedroom is simply too much. They've applied for assistance, a Section 8 housing voucher, to help them pay for a new place, and the federal government has determined that they do in fact deserve assistance. But they are not getting the money, anyway.

The Collazos are not being denied the help due to some bureaucratic loophole. Instead, they are on the Section 8 waiting list, a list that includes millions of Americans and thousands of Hartford residents. They have been on the list for two years, and it is not uncommon for people to wait as many as five years for the funds. Housing advocates are concerned that recent changes to the Section 8 system, as well as the potential for $1.6 billion in federal cuts to the program proposed by President George W. Bush, will make the waits even longer and slash aid to hundreds more in Hartford.

In order to get by, the Collazos have had to cut corners by choosing a smaller apartment than they need. A new study suggests many of their neighbors are in a similar predicament.

Researchers with Making Connections in Hartford, an initiative with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, analyzed income, benefits and spending statistics in Frog Hollow, where 42 percent of the residents live below the poverty line. They reached a simple conclusion: What the average Frog Hollow resident is earning is lower than what the average Frog Hollow resident should be spending on food, clothing, shelter and transportation.
Only in receiving both Section 8 vouchers and child-care benefits can families pay for what they need and save a little money for their future.

"Families without public benefits have to be very creative and make some very difficult choices in order to stay afloat," says Irene Jay Liu, one of the researchers.

The researchers analyzed the example of a single mother in Frog Hollow raising two kids. On average, such a mother earns $14,802 annually, or $1,154 a month. That woman would qualify for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (welfare) and the state's health insurance program (HUSKY), but may very well not receive Section 8 and Care 4 Kids, the state child-care subsidy, because of the long waiting list for both.
If the mother chose to put her kids in day care while she went to work, the expenses for child care could be as high as $844 a month. With the cost of food, rent, transportation (including a higher car insurance premium than in suburbia) and other necessities taken into account, the mother could be short as much as $1,000 a month.

The average Frog Hollow family, of course, does not have a monthly debt of $1,000. Many are likely saving money as the Collazos do, by living in an apartment that is too small. Single parents may save money by having neighbors take care of their kids, rather than spending money on child care. Still, the researchers say debt is a common way of life for Hartford's poor.

"There is probably a significant number of people in Hartford who are living in debt or are living week to week, paycheck to paycheck," Liu says. But if that same family headed by a single mother was to receive Section 8 and child-care benefits, the family would be able to save money toward purchasing a home and end its dependence on housing subsidies, the study concludes.

Still, the prospect of quickly getting Section 8 is low. Two of the three contractors that supply Section 8 to Hartford residents currently have waiting lists. Those providers, Imagineers and J. D'Amelia and Associates, estimate that about 7,000 families are waiting for the housing vouchers in the Hartford region. The waitlists are closed, so how many other families are waiting for an chance just to get their names on the list is anyone's guess.

Luz Santana, an activist with the Hartford nonprofit Vecinos Unidos, says some people waiting for Section 8 slip into homelessness, choosing to live with friends for several months in order to move up on the waitlist.

"Becoming homeless, it gives you an edge," Santana says. "It gives you a priority." It's a bleak scenario, and one that advocates for the poor fear is about to get worse. In April, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced changes to the Section 8 program. Since the program's inception in 1974, the federal government has guaranteed the funding of a set number of Section 8 units. For example, Hartford's Imagineers, a Section 8 provider, pays for 5,000 units every year, and the government promises to fully reimburse the company no matter how much the units cost.

That promise is now broken. Under the new rules, HUD is taking the cost of the vouchers in 2003 and increasing the funding every year based on inflation. It sounds reasonable enough, but the change leaves a potential for a shortfall in Section 8 funds.

How much a person receives with a Section 8 voucher depends on two factors: rent and income. A recipient is typically required to pay 30 percent of their household's monthly income to rent. A recipient earning $1,000 a month, for example, would have to spend $300 on renting a $700 apartment, and the Section 8 provider would cover the remaining $400. But if rents increase and a household's income stays the same, the provider has to contribute more. If the landlord hiked the rent up $100, that extra money would have to come from the provider, not the recipient.

Given a hot real estate market and a slow economy, that is exactly what is happening, housing advocates say. With Section 8 providers facing higher expenses and a stable income, they are slashing costs. One way of cutting costs is by simply requiring families to pay more, asking them to contribute 40 percent of their income.

But providers say that families on Section 8 are barely getting by as it is, and asking them for more money is too much of a burden. So many across the country are simply cutting the number of vouchers, meaning for the first time in the program's history, deserving Section 8 recipients are getting kicked out of the program.

"The changes they are putting through are really more about saving money, not really about good policy," says Ken Schultz, director of Imagineers. Jerry Brown, a HUD spokesman, says the change is designed to keep Section 8's rapidly increasing costs in line.

"I think all of HUD's moves in Section 8 are aimed at one goal, and that's to make the program more effective, efficient and flexible," he says. Brown notes that communities in which rent costs are increasing faster than inflation can appeal HUD's funding decisions.

So far, Hartford residents are not about to lose their vouchers, Schultz says. Instead, his company is likely to tap into its rainy-day fund while calling for some tenants to pay more money. But if President Bush's proposed $1.6 billion cut to the Section 8 program passes through Congress, 500 Hartford residents could lose their subsidies, Schultz says. It's a situation that would leave families like the Collazos fighting for a smaller piece of the pie and facing an even longer wait.