Pittsburgh’s housing authority is attempting to overhaul a Section 8 voucher program beset by problems of delayed payments and blamed for displacement of housing-insecure households.
Aiding this effort are millions in federal aid, an academic study into part of the Section 8 program, a cadre of new employees and two new board members.
While tools are in place for the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh [HACP] to address an atrophied program meant to help stabilize housing for those in need, former agency employees warn that without improved management, the Section 8 program will continue to struggle to address displacement. It has alienated landlords with slow — or no — payments.
The housing authority’s director said the agency is well on its way to completely revamping the program by the end of the year.
“Everything is going the right direction. We’re OK but we’re not there yet. We’re progressively moving toward our goal,” said HACP Executive Director Caster Binion.
Under Section 8, households with vouchers pay 30% of income toward rent and utilities, with the balance covered by the authority.
“People talk bad about us but we provide housing for lots of people,” Binion said. The authority provides around 5,117 households totaling 11,534 people with active rent vouchers. Another 1,428 households are on a waiting list for vouchers.
The authority, he said, has been reaching out to landlords and working on staffing problems.
Turnover has been a problem for the authority’s Section 8 department.
As of May 31, the housing authority had 34 employees in the Section 8 department, of whom seven had been hired this year, and eight the year before, including a new director. Binion said that the department was almost completely done training new staff, through a four-part system that focuses on small cohorts.
With these new employees, Binion said that since January, the authority has provided 394 households with apartments through the Section 8 program.
Target set for better service
For years housing advocates have questioned how HACP runs its voucher program. Those concerns intensified after a series of recent developments.
- A former agency board member, Tammy Thompson, resigned and blew the whistle on mismanagement and disorganization in the voucher program.
- A former staff member filed a complaint against the authority to the Pennsylvania Department of State, calling the authority’s handling of vouchers “gross negligence.” (The state responded that it had no jurisdiction.)
- A local nonprofit housing agency, Rising Tide Partners, urged the authority’s leadership to pay years worth of overdue Section 8 payments on behalf of their tenants in a letter addressed to HACP that was shared with PublicSource. Talks between the authority and the nonprofit are ongoing and some of the overdue payments have been made, according to Rising Tide Project Manager Nathan Van Patter.
Since then, HACP leaders have promised to use increased federal funding of $4.6 million to improve their capacity to respond to problems with the Section 8 program, with the board chair setting a target of better service for all parties involved before year’s end.
The recent increase in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD] funds bring the authority’s allocation for its Housing Choice Voucher program up to $60.5 million for 2023.
“We’re going to rectify this problem. Our goal is within six months,” said Valerie McDonald-Roberts, HACP’s board chair.
In June, Mayor Ed Gainey appointed city Chief of Staff Jake Wheatley and activist Jala Rucker to the housing authority’s board of directors. Wheatley declined to comment, and Rucker did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Former employee: High caseloads bring burnout
Former HACP occupancy specialist Nina Bush remembers a two-week period during which she was juggling 70 applications for housing assistance.
“That’s 70 families with their own extenuating circumstances, sending me personal info,” she said. “We weren’t able to give the proper care. That’s why it’s so hard to get housing applications processed. We’re overworked, and there’s only so much you can do when you’re burnt out.”
Bush worked for HACP between 2020 and 2021.
“We were understaffed, always high staff turnover,” Bush said.
Her experience was echoed by 11 others who either declined to be named or wrote critiques of the agency and could not be reached for interviews.
Bush said people’s applications would often not get attention in time.
“If we had smaller caseloads, there wouldn’t be so many people slipping through cracks,” she said. “Sometimes we would have applications that are five years old and we’re only now getting to it so their address probably changed.”
Binion responded that, at the authority, “People are enjoying their jobs. There’s always some that don’t, but that’s life.”
Landlords want to be partners, not disposable resources
A Penn State University study looking at aspects of HACP’s Section 8 voucher program may also spur change.
Selena Ortiz, an associate professor, and Andy Fenelon, an assistant professor, conducted a three-year survey, starting in 2020, and analysis into the authority’s mobility vouchers part of Section 8. Mobility vouchers are designed to help families with Section 8 vouchers to move to neighborhoods with lower levels of poverty and, presumably, more opportunity.
Landlord interest in vouchers meant to support household mobility “is not particularly high, very similar to the low level of interest in housing choice vouchers,” Ortiz said in an interview. “Most landlords cited the difficulty in working with HACP.”
Ortiz noted that most of the landlords in the Pittsburgh rental space are small landlords that own fewer than 20 units.
“A lot of them don’t have the resources or ability to endure delays in payments and processes,” said Ortiz. “It weakens their enthusiasm in the program.”
She said landlords “don’t feel like they’re a partner. They just feel like they’re a means to an end for the housing authority.” And they heard from some landlords that they want to collaborate on addressing housing affordability issues in the city.
Ortiz and Fenelon presented some of their findings to HACP leadership, including Binion.
The authority has also been talking directly to landlords, recently hearing from about 75 landlords through four meetings, Binion said. From those meetings, the authority has restarted an advisory council made up of landlords. The advisory council, meant to help attract and retain landlords to the voucher program, had become defunct during the pandemic-related shutdown in 2020.
John Petrack, the executive vice president of the Realtors Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh, said he hadn’t heard of the advisory council’s formation but lauded the effort. The association advocates on behalf of real estate consumers and in protection of private property rights.
“I think that’s a great idea,” said Petrack, adding that landlords generally don’t have a problem with tenants using Section 8.
“The biggest issue relative to the Section 8 program was the housing authority’s leases and the restrictions they put on property owners,” he said. “And lots of times that’s why they wouldn’t accept Section 8 tenants, because of the program itself.”
Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.
