1-03USHousingFunds

SLASH IN U.S. HOUSING FUNDS

Reeling from a quarter-billion-dollar shortfall, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to cut the money it sends to public housing authorities by as much as 30 percent, a reduction that could mean layoffs, delayed repairs, and the shuttering of units in Boston as well as other cities.

Boston Housing Authority officials said the severity of the cut, which would be about $13 million, is larger than any in recent memory and would probably force administrative layoffs, reductions in security guards and other contract workers, and a scaling back of services for the roughly 10,000 federally funded units of public housing in the city.

''A number like this is almost inconceivable,'' BHA administrator Sandra Henriquez said. ''We're having to think about `Do I pay the utilities?' and `Do I make repairs?' and `How many people do I cut?' We are not talking about a reorganization. We're talking about thinking very hard about what kinds of things we can no longer provide.''

HUD officials, who blamed the short-fall on years of shoddy accounting in their agency, said they may be able to restore funding to normal levels next year. And some BHA officials hold out hope the cut may not be as severe as currently projected. But Boston is grappling now with its own budget problems, a growing population of homeless, and a shortage of affordable housing. Mayor Thomas M. Menino has pushed measures from rent control to a three-decker purchase plan in attempts to relieve the demand for affordable units. His efforts to refurbish 1,100 vacant BHA housing units will now be delayed, officials said.

It is ''absolutely unprecedented,'' said Sunia Zaterman, executive director of the group. The largest previous cut, Zaterman said, was 11 percent.

''I'm still in shock,'' she said, adding that authorities will ''try to do everything they can to mitigate the disruption of services, but at this magnitude of a cut, that's going to be virtually impossible.''

HUD… officials hope that the subsidy will return to a more typical level next year, but Henriquez worries that ''people will say, `If folks did without X this year, they can do without X next year.'''

BHA relies on the HUD subsidy to cover 60 percent of the cost of running its 10,000 federally funded units, collecting the remainder of the money in rent from tenants who are assessed for about one-third of their incomes. A 30 percent cut in the HUD subsidy would deprive Boston of about $13 million, BHA officials say. The BHA also faces a 7 percent cut in state money, which helps pay for an additional 2,500 units.

Henriquez said the $13 million comes on top of about $30 million in other budget hits the BHA has absorbed over the past seven years. In December 2001, the federal government scrapped the Public Housing Drug Elimination Program, forcing the BHA to fire more than a dozen youth workers and scrap some services paid for under the program. Community groups and the city have taken over some of the program's costs.

The BHA was forced to come up with funds to cover security at the developments that was provided under that program, and some now see security likely to be hit by the latest cut. Security has been a concern for some elderly BHA residents.

Dan Wuenschel of the Cambridge Housing Authority said the projected cut would be ''a disaster'' for his agency, subtracting almost $2 million from an operating budget of $11 million. Wuenschel noted that total includes utility payments, oil for heating, and basic services such as elevator maintenance and trash removal.

''There's no question that a cut of this magnitude will affect those very basic services,'' Wuenschel said. ''This is insanity.''

BHA officials say that instead of closing the shortfall with the cut, HUD should ask the White House and Congress to help it cover its past mistakes. Public housing authorities around the country plan to lobby their representatives in Washington to push for that solution, Zaterman said.

But Henriquez said she isn't optimistic.

''What I'm hearing is there's no appetite in the Republican Congress to turn this around,'' she said. ''It will take nothing short of the president deeming this an emergency and telling people to fix it, is what I'm hearing.''

-Abridged from The Boston Globe, 1/8/03 by Scott S. Greenberger