National Housing Law Project Housing Law Bulletin

Perspectives on the Future of Legal Services Housing Advocacy

by Barbara Sard¹

Which well-known housing advocate recently said, in discussing the implications of the recent repeal of the AFDC program:

The absence of cash assistance, whether because of lower benefits, time limits, or sanctions tied to tough work requirements, may be most felt in housing, with increased eviction and moving, more doubling up and crowded conditions, and more violence-prone relationships.

Stumped? None other than Mary Jo Bane, Assistant Secretary of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, until she resigned in protest at President Clinton's signing of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA).²

From the perspective of Legal Services housing attorneys, what seems so noteworthy about this remark is that one of the nation's leading experts on welfare policy recognizes that the fundamental changes wrought by welfare "reform" are expected to surface, at least in significant part, as housing consequences. As a result, there may be a greater increase in the requests for services for representation in evictions or in gaining access to subsidized housing than directly regarding changes in welfare benefits or eligibility. This is indeed a perspective foreign to overly specialized Legal Services programs, where welfare reform is seen as a welfare issue, to which housing issues are at most a side issue. Now, perhaps more than ever before, Legal Services attorneys and other advocates need to emerge from the topical specializations in which they have been immersed. Combatting the widespread repercussions expected in the face of the new welfare legislation demands a common, united strategy. It also demands a creative approach that recognizes and incorporates the connections between welfare, housing and other aspects of poor people's lives.

As a long-time welfare attorney who has concentrated on homelessness and housing issues for the last eight years, I believe that the recent and upcoming federal and state transformations in welfare policy for families with children will have far more profound and far-reaching consequences for our clients' lives than any of the recent or anticipated changes in federal housing policy. Thus, housing advocates need to be cognizant of the welfare changes in thinking through priorities and strategies in housing advocacy. This broader perspective could help advocates craft new housing initiatives to offset some of the harm many families are likely to suffer as a result of welfare reform. These initiatives may even provide affected families with opportunities for positive change in their lives. In other words, housing and welfare issues are more intertwined now than they have ever been. Effective advocacy in each area requires an understanding and mindfulness of the other. Here are some key facts and issues for us to think about.

The most obvious way in which housing advocates must take account of welfare changes is that most federally subsidized tenants who are not elderly or disabled single persons or couples are recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) - now Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) - benefits:

• Approximately 62 percent of families in public housing,
• 55 percent of families receiving tenant-based Section 8 assistance, and
• 30 percent of families receiving project-based Section 8 subsidies.³

On the other hand, only about a fourth of AFDC recipients participate in subsidized housing programs and now have a cushion to protect them from declining or unstable incomes. Their rents are based on income and adjusted so that they rarely have to pay more than 30 percent of their income for rent and utilities.

As housing lawyers who represent tenants and groups concerned with subsidized housing programs, we are really income maintenance advocates - although neither we nor our welfare advocate colleagues are likely to recognize this. A primary function of these housing programs (the primary function in the case of tenant-based Section 8) is to provide support for inadequate incomes - whether welfare grants or wages - in the form of housing at reduced or no cost to the recipient. Through the federal housing budget this country currently spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually to make up for the inadequacy of AFDC grants and, in most areas, low-wage jobs, to provide incomes sufficient for families to pay the operating costs of their housing. A recipient of federal housing assistance receives nearly twice the in-kind subsidy per year as the average family with children receives in Medicaid benefits!

Not only have housing attorneys functioned as income maintenance advocates, but we have skills that our welfare colleagues will have increasing need of in the coming years. Housing lawyers who have represented public housing and Section 8 tenants have learned how to advocate for legal rights in "limited entitlement" programs - programs in which only some, but not all, who meet the eligibility rules can actually receive benefits. In the face of the Congress' dismissal of the "entitlement" concept in the PRWORA, the legal precedents established in housing cases, concerning both applicants and tenants rights, should provide a linchpin to efforts to continue basic constitutional due process for TANF applicants and recipients.

Housing advocates also bring contacts with new allies and the knowledge of newly important programs to upcoming state and local efforts to deal with welfare reform and its consequences. Housing agencies and community-based housing providers are aware of the great extent to which their tenants have relied on AFDC. In addition, a significant number of disabled children are likely to be adversely impacted by other changes wrought by the PRWORA and SSI. Housing agencies share an interest in aiding families to maximize their incomes through decent jobs and education and training programs, and minimizing the punitive aspects of state programs, because most of the current federal housing programs fail to guarantee that reductions in tenant rent payments will be made up by increased federal subsidies. As such, PHAs and housing providers are potential allies of housing and welfare advocates. The former entities' influence and credibility can have an impact on the vast array of discretionary decisions that states and some local governments will be making in the next several years as they design their TANF programs.

The time limits and work requirements imposed on families by the PRWORA and its state variations will require the rethinking of basic tenets of low-income housing policy advocacy. These new imperatives also suggest that certain housing issues deserve greater attention than ever before. For example, the desirability of "income mix" in public or project-based assisted housing has become an accepted principle. It is perceived as a means of encouraging work among welfare-receiving tenants and their children, despite the ongoing dissent from many public housing tenants and their representatives. Such passive means of promoting work through "environmental" changes, however, have now been overtaken in one quick step by the far-reaching work requirements of the PRWORA. Not only is there no time for gradual changes in tenant profiles through the admissions process to work their purported encouragement, but also the stick of welfare sanctions is likely to have a far more direct effect on tenants accepting employment, if jobs are available. Furthermore, there is now a moral imperative to the frequently expressed tenant view that income mix should be achieved by assisting current tenants to obtain employment, rather than through changes in admissions preferences. Without jobs and training to obtain better paying jobs, tenants, as well as their housing providers, will face destitution. But it does not seem that housing policy-makers or providers have yet recognized the sea change that welfare reform means for this basic tenet of current housing policy.

On the other hand, low-income housing advocates should look again at their opposition to granting admissions preference to applicants who are employed. Ours is a world where increasing numbers of very poor families work, at least intermittently, and desperately need the stability and income support that subsidized housing provides. Given this reality, advocacy may be better directed to ensuring that any employment-related admissions preferences also recognize those households with partial attachment to the labor market. Such preferences should also recognize people who are actively participating in educational or other programs to enhance their employability or to meet welfare system-imposed work requirements (i.e., community service).

As with the issue of income mix, another troublesome matter for housing advocates that, I submit, needs to be rethought in light of welfare changes is whether scarce housing dollars from the HUD budget should be used for services to promote job readiness and employment. This issue will play out in many ways on the local, state and national levels. For example, Community Development Block Grant funds may be used for economic development activities and a wide variety of job-related services, yet they are also a key source of housing funding, and perhaps the only stable source in coming years. Public housing redevelopment (and demolition) projects funded through HOPE VI may also provide residents funding to meet a variety of service needs. The questions to be asked are what kinds of services the residents and PHAs should choose, or whether scarce funds should go for replacement housing to serve additional families. Should HUD be using its budget authority to fund welfare reform-oriented demonstration programs, as it has been doing, such as Jobs Plus, Bridges to Work, and the Moving to Work Demonstration? When such programs are available, should local advocates urge housing authorities to apply for them? There is no obviously "correct" answer to either of these questions, as poor families need both housing and jobs. More knowledge of likely results and alternatives is required.

Among the housing-related issues that require further advocacy efforts in light of the welfare debacle are those that may enhance employment opportunities for welfare recipients. Are recipients of federal housing funds meeting their legal obligations to offer employment opportunities to tenants and nearby community residents under Section 3 of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1968? Regardless of any legal obligation, could housing and homeless providers do more to provide employment to welfare recipients, as well as to better utilize their contracts to create additional job opportunities?

More than 300,000 AFDC/TANF-recipient families have tenant-based Section 8 subsidies, which in most cases can now be used to move to any geographic area within their state or even throughout the entire country (assuming qualifying housing at the right price can be found). There is a common pattern of greater job availability outside the central cities where a disproportion of welfare families are located. In light of this, should housing agencies (or others) be urged to try to make families aware of their mobility options, and to familiarize them with the jobs, schools and community services that moving may make available to them if they were to choose to move? Studies have found that moving to areas of cities or suburbs closer to jobs significantly enhances employment and wages, as well as educational success for children. Even if no new subsidies are available for such mobility programs, families who currently have the possibility of making affordable moves should be made aware of their options and advised how a move might help them meet the work requirements they are facing.

The mobility issue highlights a fundamental difference in the concept of poverty that often animates welfare and housing advocates. Housing advocates think about place, about community - about how people relate to each other across physical space. Even if not sophisticated practitioners of community economic development, they more or less intuitively understand that jobs, like people and housing, are also in a place. They recognize that there will be severe problems if the two are not reasonably close together in terms of distance and ease of available transportation. Connecting people and jobs geographically goes beyond reducing skill and other personal barriers. Income advocates, on the other hand - and I speak as someone whose understanding of poverty was shaped by an income approach - tend to think of poor people as members of family networks independent of place, as if education or training programs alone could solve their employment problems.

Neither an individualistic nor a community-oriented approach alone is sufficient to develop adequate, comprehensive policy or advocacy solutions, although each approach has much to offer the other. We, as housing and welfare advocates, must work together for the sake of our clients.

Beyond the primary issue of the impact of welfare reform on housing programs and policy advocacy, the similar trends of declining federal expenditures and devolution of policy-making authority to the state and local level have profound implications for housing advocacy. The Consolidated Plan process requires states and larger cities or consortia of towns to develop five-year plans and annual action plans for use of federal HOME, CDBG, McKinney Act (homeless) and HOPWA (housing for people with AIDS) funds. Up to now, the Consolidated Plan has probably been, at most, a minor focus of Legal Services housing advocacy. It probably should play a greater role in the future. Already, it is the Consolidated Plan, with its identification of housing needs, that forms the only legal restriction (in addition to fair housing) on PHA choices regarding admissions preferences for its public housing and Section 8 programs. The Fair Housing Impediments component of the Consolidated Plan, which each jurisdiction is now required to complete, could be an important advocacy tool, particularly as fair housing laws remain among the most powerful legal rights that poor people continue to possess. As new funds dry up for housing programs that have traditionally served poor people, advocates for poor tenants and those without adequate housing will increasingly have to look to the decision-making process that allocates funds for the programs most likely to continue to be funded, such as HOME and CDBG.

Similarly, as federal constraints on PHA activities are further reduced, PHAs will have far more discretion over policies with substantial importance for poor tenants and applicants. These policies will affect their security as tenants, what rent they will pay if they become employed, and whether they or others like them will have any likelihood of obtaining subsidized housing. Representing tenant and applicant groups takes on ever greater importance as PHAs alter their leases and implement a broad range of new administrative policies. There may be no legal handles after the fact to alter any such policy choices.

The devolution of responsibility for providing additional affordable housing opportunities makes it all the more imperative to develop other sources of funding, such as state housing trust funds, linkage programs tied to downtown or other development, inclusionary zoning, and the Community Reinvestment Act. Some of us have worked on these issues; many have not, and do not yet have basic familiarity with them sufficient to gauge their value under local circumstances. In addition, for those programs that have the best chance of continuing, such as the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and HOME, we need to look again at any successful efforts in using such programs to house the very poor, and not just those households earning wages above what former welfare recipients are likely to be able to obtain.

The declining number of households receiving housing assistance requires us to rethink other basic principles as well. Housing advocates have always been committed to an adequate level of housing assistance for those fortunate enough to receive it, despite the fact that only a minority of needy households were lucky enough to do so. As the prospects look ever dimmer of achieving the goal envisioned by Congress in 1949 (which may be explicitly repealed his year) of an adequate home in a suitable living environment for every American family, it seems essential for us to think again about ensuring adequacy for a minority versus some housing assistance for more. This is not only a question of equity, with all the controversies that such an issue entails, but possibly also a question of political survival for housing programs, as the number of those with an interest in maintaining the programs continually shrinks.

Representatives of Legal Services-eligible clients have always fought hard to maximize the proportion of housing units or subsidies allocated to the lowest income groups (and especially to ensure that scarce resources were awarded too those with the most urgent housing needs). Such targeting toward the bottom, however, may be politically counterproductive in the new environment. Recent history teaches us that programs that do not serve - or that are not perceived to serve - the working class, as opposed to the dependent poor, are far less likely to survive in times of scarcity. However, even this "lesson" should not require a wholesale identity change to programs serving primarily those earning more than 50 percent of median income, as housing trade groups are now advocating.

Finally, beyond principles and advocacy strategies, we need to be part of efforts to develop new programs, and to identify existing programs that work. In housing, as in many other areas of public policy, programmatic approaches need to be redesigned and information sharing increased. The major crisis of housing affordability in this country will continue regardless of whether millions of families succeed in making the transition from welfare to work. We must continue to address the continuing need for programs to meet the housing affordability gap for low-wage workers. But we also need to devise, in conjunction with others, programmatic approaches other than those currently in disfavor. We in Legal Services have too rarely paid attention to issues of program design, generally advocating for the short-run best interests of particular clients rather than being concerned about program credibility or long-term costs. We can no longer afford this luxury. It is all too apparent that a central reason why housing programs enjoy so little political support is that the programs themselves - as well as their recipients - are disfavored, as being inefficient in design and inept in execution. The programs resulting from devolution must be better than those of the past despite the greater odds. We must spread the word about the effective programs that are created - not only within the world of housing providers, who of course need to know about models to follow - but also in the larger world of opinion-makers.

For those of us in Legal Services, the enormous challenge - and indeed the excitement, if we can get beyond feeling totally overwhelmed - is to bring the same new perspective to the individual cases knocking down our doors as we need to bring to the "big" issues. In this framework, we need not only reevaluate and strengthen the connections between our areas of work. We must also consider how the work that we do will inform the larger public of the suffering caused by recent shifts in social policy. Tenants being evicted, households already homeless, and victims of domestic violence can no longer be viewed - by us or the public - as individualized legal problems. These cases are already occurring in far more volume than we can hope to respond to individually, and their numbers can only be expected to increase as a result of the profound social disruptions created by the new welfare policies. The connection between the changes in housing assistance and welfare and the anticipated increase in suffering must be made more visible as a necessary predicate to more long-term solutions.

As the vital spheres for development of public policies affecting our clients shift increasingly to the state and local level, the links we and our colleagues have developed over the years will be pivotal in planning and executing effective advocacy strategies. We need to forge a network, a communication vehicle, that will allow us to share ideas about programs and strategies that work, in the same way that the pioneers in Legal Services figured out decades ago how to share litigation ideas and pleadings. We have some models to draw on, such as the Legal Services Homelessness Task Force, which for some years drew advocates together from across the country to share locally focused approaches in ways that others could effectively adapt to the circumstances of their own communities. The challenges facing us and our clients are huge, but inaction and paralysis cannot be allowed to take hold. Our clients' efforts to forge a more decent life for themselves and their families continue. We must redouble our efforts and realize our own potential for making a valuable contribution to their struggle.

Some of the participants at the January LALSHAC meeting, to whom this speech was delivered, have organized a new LALSHAC working group, the Housing Plus Network. If you wish to be added to the Network, please contact Barbara Sard by mail (Greater Boston Legal Services, 197 Friend Street, Boston, MA 02114), fax ((617) 371-1222) or, preferably, by e-mail (Sard@GBLS.org) with your name, mailing and e-mail addresses and phone and fax numbers. (So far, most communications have been by fax.) The Network is planning to hold a conference in conjunction with the NLADA Substantive Law conference in Berkeley on July 24-26, 1997. The conference will develop in greater depth many of the issues addressed in this speech and help give advocates the tools they need to work more effectively in the "new" housing world.

¹Barbara Sard is currently the Senior Managing Attorney of the Housing Unit of Greater Boston Legal Services. The Housing Unit is a 10-attorney, three-paralegal unit that works on a broad range of housing issues, including access to emergency shelter for homeless families, eviction defense, public housing admissions and occupancy policies, as well as housing preservation and redevelopment efforts in public, subsidized and private housing. Since June 1996, Greater Boston Legal Services has received no federal funds from the Legal Services Corporation. This article is based on remarks delivered by Ms. Sard to the Loose Association of Legal Services Advocates and Clients (LALSHAC) conference held on January 26, 1997, in Washington, D.C.

²Mary Jo Bane, Welfare as We Might Know It, 30 AM. PROSPECT 47, 50 (Jan./Feb. 1997).

³Sandra J. Newman and Ann B. Schnare, Last in Line: Housing Assistance for Households with Children, 4 HOUS. POL'Y DEBATE 417, Table 3 (1993). These data are drawn from the 1989 American Housing Survey.

⁴In 1993, nearly 30 percent of AFDC families receiving subsidized housing had been receiving AFDC benefits without interruption for more than five years. Sandra J. Newman, The Implications of Current Welfare Reform Proposals for the Housing Assistance System, 22 FORDHAM URB. L.J. 1231, 1237 (1995). These data are drawn from the AFDC-QC [Quality Control] sample for 1993.