Rent Cap Awaits Guv’s Call

Four-year effort to curb costs for AIDS housing tenants now down to one man

Published: Thursday, May 13, 2010 1:46 PM CDT

BY PAUL SCHINDLER 

The budget woes facing the state and the city have thrown a particularly bright light on the fiscal implications of any new legislation, but aggressive lobbying by the Bloomberg administration pressing the governor to veto the measure — backed up by the New York Post editorial page — has created particular concern among advocates.

Under current state law, the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance mandates that HASA clients receiving public income support are allowed to keep only $344 above what their rent is pegged at — which means less than $12 a day to cover all their other expenses. AIDS groups, including the New York City AIDS Housing Network (NYCAHN), Housing Works, and Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), along with out gay Senator Thomas K. Duane and out lesbian Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, both Lower Manhattan Democrats, have been fighting to overturn this income restriction since 2006.

According to NYCAHN, the bill, if enacted, would offer relief to more than11,000 New Yorkers living with AIDS who receive either Veterans Benefits from the federal Veterans Administration or SSI or SSD from the US Social Security Administration. When this controversy first arose, Gay City News confirmed with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development that renters receiving federal housing assistance — such as Section 8 vouchers — cannot be charged rents above the 30 percent income threshold.

Advocates have pointed to many instances where HASA clients have paid as much as 75 percent of their monthly income in rent; they argue that the resulting homelessness has imposed a greater fiscal burden on the state than simply changing the law would.

A memorandum from the Bloomberg administration lays out the case against the legislation based on cost, precedent, and the availability of other HASA monetary entitlements that mitigate the grim picture spelled out by advocates. Noting the billions of dollars in deficits facing the city and state in upcoming years, the memo estimates that the annual cost of the legislation would be $31 million, half of which would be borne by the city. The Bloomberg administration argues that the limited money HASA clients on public assistance are allowed to keep can be supplemented by a special allowance of $193 per month for nutrition and transportation needs and about $200 in food stamps. That safety net, the administration maintains, has kept annual evictions to fewer than 75.

 

Just as important to the city, it would seem, is what it sees as “an expensive precedent” in this legislation. “No other population in receipt of public assistance in private housing has their rent contribution capped at 30 percent of household income,” the memo argues. Though the city has income-based housing programs, the administration maintains this would be the first one “based solely on medical diagnosis.”

A study by Shubert Botein Policy Associates challenges a wide array of assumptions made in the city’s fiscal analysis of the legislation. The most pointed criticisms that study made are that the administration’s figures “do not purport to estimate savings from the proposed rent cap”; use a definition of evictions that significantly undercount how many people actually lose their homes; and fail to adequately characterize the duration and costs of the resulting stays such HASA clients face in expensive, city-funded single room occupancy (SRO) facilities.

Duane — who made a dramatically impassioned speech on the Senate floor last summer when the legislation was first passed there — takes particular exception to the city characterizing the proposed rental cap as something unprecedented and exceptional. A medical diagnosis, he noted, was precisely the basis on which HASA’s housing program was first created more than 20 years ago during the Koch administration. Any HASA client must demonstrate income eligibility in seeking public rental assistance. And, Duane argues, as with every federal housing assistance program, all other city and state “enhanced rental assistance programs” cap rent at 30 percent of income.

In dueling with the mayor, Duane and Glick have the solid support of the City Council, which by a 49-0 vote last fall endorsed the rent cap legislation. In a May 6 letter to the governor, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, an out lesbian Chelsea Democrat, joined by three of her colleagues, urged Paterson to sign the legislation, noting much the same points Duane makes regarding how common rent cap guidelines are in housing assistance programs, how important stable housing is for those living with HIV, and the fact that the administration’s analysis fails to take account of the fiscal impact of HASA clients losing their homes. Acknowledging the fiscal strains faced by the city and the state, Quinn argued that the current economic troubles make a “fair and equitable housing policy” that much more important.

The current worry over how the governor might proceed on this legislation is ironic, given that officials in both his administration and that of his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, have long engaged advocates on solving a problem inherited from the Pataki era. In January, when the Assembly passed the bill, Glick told Gay City News that Paterson had twice “promised” to sign the measure. James Lister, a HASA client who works for NYCAHN, said the governor made a similar pledge to him in December at a Brooklyn World AIDS Day event.

For now, the governor’s spokesman, Morgan Hook, will say only that the bill has not yet arrived on Paterson’s desk, but when it does, it will be reviewed by counsel and input will be sought from all concerned “stakeholders.” The Assembly is expected to send the measure to the governor late this week or early next.