Emily Near

dc politics & housing policy. opinions my own.

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@AshleySchapitl I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mount a robust defense of DCHA. Disagreeing with your proposed solution isn’t the same as saying that the Bowser Admin or Housing Authority are doing a good job.

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@Classic07012405 I hesitate to say that there’s any one objective experience when it comes to housing folks w/vouchers - that sentiment is why we have a discrimination issue. But yes, this is definitely a problem across DC bc landlords who do this often don’t keep up their buildings either, ime

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

Underlying this article is a basic misunderstanding of how the voucher program actually works, the history of the payment standard, and a hostility toward voucherholders that harkens back to 1990's "welfare queen" fear mongering.
https://t.co/XGKxo5GhlN

[Ashley Schapitl @AshleySchapitl]

As the Council thinks about spending tax dollars more efficiently in our current budget context, here’s one place to start. The city could help far more residents with housing if it had a reasonable payment standard. https://t.co/abhUWrvkO3

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@stanveuger @AlexandriaHoff @AshleySchapitl Lowering the caps will make it harder for people to place vouchers - not bc that’s what’s paid, but bc it will limit the scope of units available. Esp for families who need those high bedroom counts. And esp if we take it down to 110% FMR.

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@stanveuger @AlexandriaHoff @AshleySchapitl Good luck finding it! My biggest issue is the assertion in the article that cutting those caps will inherently save DC money. It won’t. If we want to run these programs more efficiently, there are other ways to do it.

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@mattyglesias @AshleySchapitl If the question is whether that displacement is acceptable or not, I doubt we will agree. But that gets to questions of how to make housing more affordable when the cost of building is so high. And that’s really beyond the scope of this conversation.

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@mattyglesias @AshleySchapitl I address this in the thread - discrimination is a huge issue. It’s why the higher payment standard was originally established in 2014. It is easier for market rate tenants to find housing. But market rents are high, and low (and moderate) income people are being priced out.

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@stanveuger @AlexandriaHoff @AshleySchapitl if the broader public now thinks DCHA regularly pays $3600 for studio apartments, and demands policymakers change the cap, there’s only one group of people who will be unduly hurt by this: low-income tenants that rely on these programs. And that will still not save DC any money.

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@stanveuger @AlexandriaHoff @AshleySchapitl While we can agree that the program can be run more efficiently, I do not believe changing the caps will do anything at all. The headline is attention grabbing and clearly has done its job, but…

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@AshleySchapitl @stanveuger There a ton of skepticism around it! It is a deeply flawed system. Months of delay just for a tenant to be denied bc the rent is too high isn’t a functional process for anyone. But the cap isn’t the issue, and changing it won’t cut the cost of the program.

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@AshleySchapitl Yes, and it was implemented three years and two directors ago. There’s a lot to fix at DCHA but taking a sledgehammer to rent caps that are immaterial won’t be a silver bullet that saves DC gov’t money!

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@AshleySchapitl @stanveuger This article came out before the rent reasonableness standard was implemented and may have been part of the thing that actually made it happen. Also this is one small part of a much bigger expose about issues in the voucher program: https://t.co/YO7AVWN5WG

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@stanveuger And I don’t think it’s fair to say that nonpayment is a “real risk” - esp when DCHA is also notoriously bad at making it straightforward for tenants to report loss of income and adjust rents accordingly.

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@stanveuger My assessment is that it isn’t something I can just answer because that delta differs wildly depending on what building a voucher is placed in! I’ve seen buildings where it’s huge bc a landlord won’t take care of the basics, others where it’s nonexistent bc margins are so tight.

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@AshleySchapitl I think it’s valuable to look at! But it has to be in the context of their broader housing systems - like how effective their PHA is at managing their local and fed programs, whether they’ve opened their waitlist in the last decade, how they manage affordable housing stock, etc

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@AshleySchapitl I mean DCHA is paying above market bc it’s the only way to get folks housed, but likely far under the caps talked about in the article. So materially, I don’t think the cap matters that much, but program administration sure does.

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@stanveuger But claiming that voucher tenants are especially costly to house is, I think, problematic at best and racist/classist at worst. Dealing with DCHA certainly doesn’t make it easy given the delays and lack of transparency around lease ups though!

[Emily Near @emilyneardc]

@stanveuger To actually see what kinds of rents are considered by DCHA, check out https://t.co/4WziSqyifi which is run by the agency and used to determine reasonableness. As to whether the rent collected is pure profit really depends on the operating costs of the building.