Resident Participation in Federally Subsidized Housing
May 6, 2009
By Linda Couch, Deputy Director, National Low Income Housing Coalition
Based on their own experiences of living in subsidized housing, residents bring to the table unique and important ideas about how developments should be managed, how HUD and local public housing agencies (PHAs) should be run, and perspectives about how established and emerging policies impact their needs and desires for the future. Resident participation in all aspects of the operation of housing management is critical to the long-term success of federal housing programs.
Program Summary
HUD has three major rental programs that collectively provide rental subsidies to approximately 4.5 million households nationwide. These programs are the public housing program, HUD-assisted multifamily rental programs, and the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program. Each of these programs has its own set of challenges and opportunities related to resident participation.
Public Housing Residents
There are a number of HUD programs and policies that help support the participation of all public housing residents.
PHA plan process and formation of Rresident Advisory Boards. Opportunity for resident participation can be found in the annual and five-year planning process in which most PHAs are required to engage. Resident Advisory Boards (RABs) were created in 1998 by the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act (QHWRA).
QHWRA delegated significant decisions regarding the administration and upkeep of the public housing stock from HUD to local PHAs. The RABs were created in QHWRA to ensure public housing residents and voucher assisted households can actively and effectively participate in the PHA plan process (for more information see chapter on the PHA Plan). RABs consist of residents who are elected to represent the population served by the housing agency. By law, housing agencies must provide RABs with reasonable resources to enable them to function effectively and independently of the housing agency.
Right to organize regulations. The Code of Federal Regulations guarantees residents the right to organize a resident council to represent their interests, defines what constitutes a duly-elected (or democratically established) resident organization, and defines HUD’s obligation, along with housing agencies, to support resident participation activities through training and other activities. This rule, referred to as Part 964 of Title 24 of the Code of Federal Regulations (24 CFR Part 964), includes the right to participate in: improvements and modernizing; new programs and services; new plans, policies, and procedures; and all aspects of public housing operation. Included in 24 CFR Part 964 is the right to organize and elect a resident council to advocate on behalf of residents.
Funding for resident participation. Most PHAs are required to include in their annual operating budget an amount totaling $25 per occupied unit per year to fund resident participation. The funding may be used to support training, resident organizing and other activities. PHAs are required to pass these funds through to resident councils to enable them to design site-based programs and activities.
Resident commissioners. The law also mandates that every PHA, with a few exceptions, have at least one person assisted by the agency (either a public housing resident or voucher holder) on its governing board. HUD’s rule governing the appointment of resident commissioners states that residents on boards should be treated no differently than non-residents.
Resident Opportunities and Self Sufficiency (ROSS) program. HUD’s Resident Opportunities and Self Sufficiency Program (ROSS) is designed to link public housing residents with supportive services, resident empowerment activities and other assistance in becoming self-sufficient. Grants under the ROSS program can be made to PHAs, resident management associations, resident councils, resident organizations, intermediary resident organizations and other nonprofit entities operating as associations or networks that administer programs that benefit resident organizations. A multitude of initiatives for residents can be part of such grants. ROSS funds are appropriated annually by Congress; HUD then issues a Notice of Funding Availability for eligible applicants to compete for the grants. In FY09, the ROSS program was funded at $40 million, down from a historic high of $55 million in FY04.
Residents in Privately Owned, HUD-Assisted Multifamily Housing (with Project-based Rental Assistance)
Despite an unprecedented level of tenant organizing in privately owned, HUD-assisted housing over the past 15 years, most HUD tenants remain unorganized and unaware of the rights, opportunities and policies that affect them. In other instances, when tenants have attempted to organize and assert their rights they have been met with resistance by owners and their management agents. It is important to know that tenants do have avenues through which they can affect the policies and rules that regulate their housing.
Tenants’ right to organize. There are regulations in place which require owners to recognize tenant unions or organizing committees that meet regularly, are democratic and are completely independent of owners and management agents. These regulations recognize the right of tenants to leaflet, door-knock, post notices and convene meetings without management present and without prior notice to or permission from management.
Residents also can invite outside organizers to assist them. HUD-funded organizers have the right to go into a building without a tenant invitation to help residents organize.
In addition:
HUD has published a brochure which clarifies that tenants have the right to organize free of management harassment or retaliation. This brochure must be distributed annually to all HUD tenants.
HUD’s Model Lease, which is applicable to all HUD tenants, explicitly refers to the Right to Organize regulations.
The Management Agent Handbook requires that owners recognize tenant unions and specifies management practices that would violate tenants’ rights and potentially create liability for HUD-imposed sanctions.
The Civil Monetary Penalties regulation allows HUD to assess fines on owners or management agents for egregious violations of tenants’ right to organize.
Over the years, Congress and HUD have also expanded the formal process for tenant participation in decisions affecting HUD housing.
Owners are now required to provide a one-year notice to tenants of their decisions on whether or not to renew an expiring project-based Section 8 contract. In addition, owners are required to provide a notice to tenants between five and nine months prior to a decision to prepay a HUD-subsidized mortgage.
Tenants of properties with HUD-insured mortgages subject to HUD rent regulation are to be notified by owners of their intent to increase rents 60 days before the rent increase is to go into effect and are allowed to comment on the proposal to the owner and HUD.
When owners choose to go into HUD’s Mark-to-Market program, HUD’s contract agency is also required to notify tenants prior to a first and second tenant meeting to allow tenants to comment on the owner’s plans to rehabilitate the building and change the financing.
Tenants in buildings owned by HUD or under HUD foreclosure are to be notified by HUD of pending auctions or sales of their buildings, enabling tenants to submit purchase offers as a nonprofit or limited-equity cooperative or to support purchase by others.
Funding for resident participation. For several years, Congress provided funds to help tenants organize, primarily to understand and influence the future of their homes when the Section 8 contract expires. Before the $10 million in authorized funds were fully utilized, HUD suspended the Outreach and Training Grant (OTAG) and Intermediary Technical Assistance Grant (ITAG) programs, established in 1994, due to administrative and accounting problems. These three-year grants went to locally based tenant organizing projects or nonprofit organizations to “organize the unorganized” tenants at the city or state level.
Voucher Holders
There are approximately two million households that receive tenant-based assistance through the Housing Choice Voucher Program.
Organizing residents in Section 8. Section 8 voucher holders are among the most difficult residents to organize because the nature of the voucher program is such that households receiving this type of subsidy (renting in the private market) are less likely to be in direct proximity or contact with each other. At the local level, voucher participants play a key role in the formation of policies. PHAs make many policy determinations affecting voucher holders such as the priority given to homeless individuals, families fleeing domestic violence, working families and those with limited English-speaking capability, as well as resident preferences, admissions criteria, the amount of time that a voucher holder will have to search for a unit, minimum rents, homeownership program development and similar priorities and policies.
Rules about RABs (see the public housing section above) also apply to voucher holders. As such, voucher holders can play an integral role in setting the agenda for local PHAs. Indeed, it is the advent of the PHA planning process and the requirement that voucher holders be included on RABs that offers an excellent platform from which to organize voucher holders to have a voice.
What Advocates Need to Know Now
The number of PHAs that must complete PHA Plans has been substantially reduced by Congress. Furthermore, in 2008, HUD used its administrative powers to dramatically weaken the usefulness of the PHA Plan for residents and other community members.
Similarly, resources for tenants in HUD-assisted tenants to organize to protect their rights and their housing have decreased in recent years with the loss of remaining funds in the OTAG and ITAG programs. The 111th Congress could be the right time not only to protect existing resident participation tools and resources, but to expand them.
Major HUD-assisted housing legislation is expected in the 111th Congress (for more information see chapter on Project-Based Assistance). These bills will be an opportunity to achieve capacity building resources for tenants in projects with expiring HUD-assisted contracts. Tenants can help HUD save affordable housing developments if they are given the right tools.
Advocates also hope this legislation includes a federal right of first purchase for preservation purchasers of properties. If enacted, private owners ending their participation in a federal affordable housing program would have to offer their properties for sale at fair market value to preservation purchasers. Such purchasers may include tenant organizations but, regardless, the provision would allow for the continued affordability of the apartments.
What to Say to Legislators
Members of Congress should be urged to:
Fund the public housing Resident Opportunity and Self Sufficiency (ROSS) program at $55 million in FY10.
Roll back HUD’s administrative weakening of the PHA Plan and Congress’s ‘streamlining’ of the Plan’s requirements for 75% of the nation’s PHAs.
Support resources that allow qualified and independent organizations to provide outreach and training to HUD-assisted housing tenants threatened with the loss of their housing.
Enact a federal first right of purchase for preservation purchasers so that more HUD-assisted homes would be preserved as private owners leave federal housing subsidy programs.
For More Information
National Alliance of HUD Tenants (NAHT) • 617-267-9564 • www.saveourhomes.org
National Housing Law Project • 510-251-9400 • 202-347-8775 • www.nhlp.org
National Low Income Housing Coalition • 202-662-1530 • www.nlihc.org
24 CFR Part 964 Tenant Participation and Tenant Organizing in Public Housing Regulations: http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_05/24cfr964_05.html
