By Cleo Brown

Although housing is a basic need of life, Helen, a college- educated mother of five, became homeless in 1993 after she divorced her husband of thirteen years and lost custody of their children. 

Compounding Helen’s descent into homelessness was the presence of a debilitating mental illness, which had, at its core, a fear of fire and, consequently, a fear of living indoors.  Helen remained homeless until 2004 when she was both helped by expert psychiatric care, counseling, and medications as well as by a low income housing development which accepted her as a client although Helen believed that she would never be able to live in housing again.  Helen, who has now been in permanent housing for five years, has reestablished a relationship with her family and children and has begun to reclaim the threads of her life including a return to work.

      According to The National Low Income Housing Coalition, there are currently 745,000 homeless people in The United States.  This Coalition projects that unless something is done to house the burgeoning numbers of newly unemployed and displaced homeowners that there will be 800,000 new homeless people including children, seniors and veterans by the end of the year 2009.  The current recession afloat in the United States, with its ever increasing unemployment rates and glut of fore closers in the housing market, is not the first time in United States’ History when the availability of low income housing has been necessary for the survival of many United States’ Citizens. 

There are currently 8.5 percent of people unemployed in the United States with 694,000 people having become newly unemployed during March of 2009.  Similarly, from thirty to forty percent of 600,000 bank owned homes will be fore closed on this year.  During the Depression  the U.S. Housing Act of 1937 was created to address the nation’s housing crises by creating a federal housing assistance program.  The 1937 Act then expanded during the decade of the 70′s when the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 was created to usher in The Section 8 Program.

      In the Section 8 Program, thirty percent of one’s income is paid for rent while the balance is paid with Federal Funds.  For instance, if Helen has an income of $760.00 per month she would be expected to pay $253.00 a month for rent while the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) would pay the remainder of a $1,600.00 a month apartment, wherever she may live in the United States, with Federal Funds. Currently, the Section 8 Program is a voucher program. 
 

Initially Section 8 had three subprograms (New Construction, Substantial Rehabilitation, and Existing Housing Certificate Programs) with a fourth, The Moderate Rehabilitation Program, added in 1978; the voucher program added in 1983; and the Project-based Certificate Program added in 1991.  The Section 8 Voucher Reform Act of 2007 was added in 2008. 

      Most low-income housing in the United States is under the jurisdiction of HUD and is termed Public Housing.  Public Housing can be found throughout the United States and is meant to house, in a “safe and decent manner” low income families, the elderly, and persons with disabilities.  There are, currently, 7.1 million people living in Federal Housing with 260,000 people in line for housing aid in New York City alone. 

According to low income housing providers Community Access and Common Ground, there is a new group of low-income housing eligible client, however, to be found in the servicemen returning home from their tours of duties overseas.  There are currently 250,000 veterans living on the streets or in homeless shelters on a nightly basis.  Often, these men return home from Iraq and from Afghanistan to find their housing gone.  Parolees, or persons recently released from jail and from prison are also, often, amongst the ranks of the homeless and the low-income.  There has been a trend away from, however, renting to parolees or ex-convicts in public housing developments.

      Common Ground, on the other hand, a nonprofit organization, has created at least two-thousand units of permanent and transitional housing for homeless and single adults since 1990.  According to Wikipedia, “Common Ground deliberately seeks out…people who have spent years on the streets and cycling in and out of jail.”  Common Ground is a provider of supportive housing to the low income whose costs are less than in a homeless shelter, jail cell, and /or hospital room.  For instance, while it costs New York State $32,400.00 a year to maintain a prisoner and New York City $59,900.00 to maintain a prisoner for one year; it also cost $1,000.00 per day in 1995 and $1,400.00 per day in 2007 to house Helen on a psychiatric unit in a County Hospital.

      For the most part, the populations in such facilities are heterogeneous.  Men and women of various ages, sexual orientations, races, incomes, and level of disabilities live together trying to achieve some semblance of a “community” according to Common Ground founder named Rosanne Haggerty.  Ms. Haggerty states: “This is about creating a small town, rather than just a building…It’s about a real mixed society, working with many different people.”

      While one must apply for Public Housing by submitting a written application to HUD, organizations like Community Access and Common Ground are unique in that canvasses the streets during the early morning hours to persuade those who live on the streets to seek permanent housing. 

 Common Ground, therefore, has been successful in partially eradicating homelessness in the United States.  Consequently, there are facilities not only in Connecticut, New York, and California but they have also formed Partnerships with low income housing dispensers in New Orleans, Louisiana, Washington D.C., and  Adelaide, Australia. In Adelaide, Australia, there is a high incidence of homelessness amongst Australia’s Aboriginal Population.  Common Ground Adelaide plans to open five sites between 2006 and 2010 with its goal to reduce homelessness in Southern Australia by fifty percent.

      Public Housing, Section 8 Vouchers, and the low-income is not easy to access.  Frequently, the application process for public housing and section 8 vouchers, as is currently the case in Oakland, California is closed for years because the waiting list is so long.  During the difficult economic times before us, therefore, low-income housing will be in even greater demand than before to stave off the rash of homelessness and to rescue people, like Helen, from a life of homelessness on the streets.  For, in the words of Rosanne Haggerty, housing is more than “putting a roof over a head.”  The ability to be housed in today’s society is survival. 

Cleo Brown is a new editor to the blog Hip-Hop Republican.com, she is a moderate Republican who works as as The Dean of Student Affairs in a GED Preparation Program in Chelsea. Cleo has a Master’s Degree in Contemporary African-American History from The University of California at Davis. Cleo has also published several poems and is a featured artists in The International Poetry Library’s Who’s Who in Poetry.

celainebrown111@yahoo.com