San Diego gets OK to control public housing

By Lori Weisberg
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

September 14, 2007

Decades of federally subsidized public housing likely will end in San Diego after the U.S. housing department decided this week to let the city's Housing Commission divorce itself from the program.

The changeover would place the city's 151 rental complexes entirely under the control of the commission while giving it the financial freedom to expand the number of affordable housing units for low-income households.

The transition away from public housing, however, will not affect the more than 1,300 low-income households that would continue to have their rents subsidized either in commission-owned complexes scattered throughout the city or in rental units of their own choosing.

The city still must secure approval for 1,366 vouchers needed to subsidize the rents of people living in public housing. San Diego's 1,366 public housing units are occupied by a little more than 4,000 individuals.

If the vouchers are awarded, San Diego's would be one of only a few housing agencies in the country that have made the break from federal control. Only two other housing authorities – one in Georgia, the other in the Northwest – have left the program, according to officials of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The push to move away from conventional public housing comes at a time when federal funding has steadily diminished, hamstringing the housing agency's ability to properly maintain its rental complexes in neighborhoods from San Ysidro to Carmel Valley.

Most recently, the commission, like similar agencies nationwide, has been getting just 84 percent of the funds needed to operate its public housing complexes; it expects its allotment to fall even further.

“I'm pretty excited about the financial stability we'll get and that public housing won't bankrupt the Housing Authority,” said Elizabeth Morris, the commission's chief executive officer. “To do that and at the same time add affordable housing to our inventory and serve the same number of extremely low-income families, what could be better?”

Morris said she's hoping the city will learn in the next month or two whether its request for the vouchers will be granted. She said she knows of no other competition for the special funds allocated for rental vouchers when public housing is phased out.

Although no other agencies in the country have requests pending to leave the federal program, a number of authorities have inquired about the possibility, said Orlando Cabrera, HUD's assistant secretary for public housing and Indian affairs.

HUD gave its approval to San Diego, he said, because “it made its case that it's a tool they think will help their community. Their motivations would be less of an issue than the fact they have 151 properties that would not serve the folks in San Diego as well as vouchers would in the private marketplace.”

In making its case to HUD, the commission argued that its plan would create additional housing opportunities beyond those for the tenants in public housing now being served.

As tenants moved out and used their vouchers for housing in the private market, the commission said it could replace those renters with a wider range of low-income households earning up to 80 percent of the area's median income, or $56,150 for a family of four. Most public-housing tenants earn less than half that amount.

Where San Diego now receives on average of $450 a month per public housing unit, including the rent paid by tenants, the city could realize between $603 and $1,601 a month, depending on the location, size of the unit, and income level of the renters, according to the commission.

Current residents who choose to stay, however, would continue to pay 30 percent of their income toward rent. Housing officials point out that the city would also be able to borrow against its public housing complexes, valued at more than $124 million, to build or purchase at least 350 housing units affordable to both low-and middle-income families.

“My concern at first was that I want to make sure we're not losing affordable housing,” said San Diego City Councilwoman Toni Atkins. “I feel more comfortable now. But I don't want public housing residents to suffer, so the commission has to present a plan as to how these transitions will occur and whether we'll get the vouchers.”

Before presenting its plan to HUD, local housing officials met several times with residents of public housing to explain the proposal and reassure them that they would be able to stay.

Although San Diego is one of the first major U.S. cities to restructure its public housing program, it was one of the last to build such housing. Where many large cities began erecting massive, tenement-style projects in the 1930s and 1940s, San Diego's first public housing complex didn't open until the early 1980s. By then, policy-makers had shifted from building massive high-rise apartment complexes to low-rise developments, a concept adopted here.

“I think the history of public housing has made it eminently clear we're better off with mixed-income developments than highly dense, very low-income communities,” said San Diego affordable housing activist Richard Lawrence