About 200 Little Rock residents who were looking for places to live using housing authority vouchers were put back on the waiting list last week because the agency got too many responses to a call for those on the list to start looking for a home.
"We had an enormous response to a call for those on the waiting list to start looking [for housing]," said Marshall Nash, a special adviser to the board of commissioners for the Metropolitan Housing Alliance.
The agency has 2,296 total vouchers available, and 2,022 were leased as of Nov. 15, Jeannie Owens, the director of the housing choice voucher program, told commissioners at their November meeting. There were 274 available.
People who had already found a place to stay and filled out their Request for Tenancy Approval paperwork will still get housing, but those who hadn't started looking yet or hadn't found a place are back on the waiting list, Nash said.
Applicants who received notices could get a voucher next year, but may have to wait until 2020, depending on federal funding next year.
"There is a huge need for adequate and affordable housing, and we are out here trying to meet that need," Nash said. "Sometimes you have to deliver news that you don't want to deliver."
Kenyon Lowe, an agency board member, said he started getting calls about the notices on Thanksgiving, but didn't have the full details on what happened.
Two other board members said they got emails about the situation Monday night and Tuesday morning but declined to comment further.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development gives every housing authority that has a Section 8 program a set amount of money each year for vouchers.
The housing agency's 2018 budget set the total operating income at about $14.6 million from several sources including interest, rent income and Housing Assistance Payments fees. The financial report for October showed that the income so far this year is just over $11.3 million.
Section 8 participants pay 30 percent of their incomes to their landlords and the rest of the rent is covered by the housing authority's federal funds.
At the last board meeting, Owens told commissioners that she needed to hire at least one more housing specialist to help run the program. There are two open positions, but a hiring freeze is in place, she said.
The housing notices were sent to people on the waiting list during a time of transition for the agency. About two weeks ago, the former executive director, Rodney Forte, resigned.
He left the agency at the start of November, and Nash is filling the role temporarily.
In 2016, the agency spent more money than it had on housing vouchers and received $596,187 in set-aside shortfall money to cover the deficit, according to a report from HUD's Quality Assurance Division.
The report recommended that the Little Rock agency "closely monitor their HCV [Housing Choice Voucher] utilization to avoid being a shortfall in the future."
Lowe said he thinks the agency should "eat that cost" and pay for the vouchers for those who got notices despite any financial loss.
"They signed up and got on the waiting list," Lowe said. "Why should they be punished because of an erroneous error that the agency made? I don't believe in throwing people out in the streets ... and that's essentially what we're doing."
Metro on 11/28/2018