National Housing Law Project Housing Law Bulletin

This is the first of two articles that will examine the plans that the PHAs have put together to secure HUD’s approval to participate in the demonstration. This article focusses on what the plans offer to help families make the transition to work. It will analyze what the plans propose regarding the range of activities from peer support, needs assessment, education and training, assistance with non-employment needs, and job search and placement. It will then describe supportive services for employed residents that the PHA will provide or secure in order to make the transition to work feasible and permanent. This will be followed by an examination of funding sources the PHAs propose to tap to make their plans operational and the partnerships with other institutions that will play a role in the residents’ transition to work. The article will end with an analysis of the PHAs’ proposed policies for selecting the tenants who will be allowed to participate in these welfare-to-work activities.

The second article, to be published in a subsequent Bulletin, will analyze other policies of the plans, including new rent, admission and termination policies, and program activities that go beyond the welfare changes. Before we get to the plans’ descriptions, however, we should explain a little more about the demonstration program itself.

Moving-to-Work Demonstration

Congress’ goal in establishing the demonstration was to allow PHAs to test different approaches to providing housing assistance that would serve several purposes. The one most relevant here is to find approaches that provide incentives to families with children whose household head is working, looking for a job or participating in programs to prepare for work. The other goals to be tested by the new approaches are reducing the government’s costs and increasing low-income families’ housing choices.

To achieve these purposes, Congress authorized HUD to select 30 PHAs for participation. Those PHAs would be authorized to combine their public housing operating subsidy and modernization funds and their certificate and voucher funds into a single housing assistance pool and to use that pool fungibly and free from most of the restrictions of the United States Housing Act. The demonstration does not include any extra funding for the selected PHAs, but it does allow them to keep the savings achieved from their redesigned programs and to dedicate them to accomplishing their planned strategies.³ The freedom from the federal rules is also intended to allow the PHAs to operate a housing assistance program that will be more effective in achieving the ultimate goals. Congress and HUD also contemplated that the PHAs would collaborate with other agencies, especially those involved with the new welfare programs, to accomplish the mutual goals of moving families from welfare to work.

The PHAs’ power to deviate from the normal federal rules is not absolute. The appropriations act specifies two provisions of the Housing Act with which the PHAs must comply: Section 12, which imposes David-Bacon wage rates, and Section 18, which regulates demolitions and sales of projects.⁴ The PHAs may not decrease the number of families that they serve, and the sizes of the families served must be comparable.⁵ The families served must have low incomes, as is true under the normal programs, and 75 percent of them must have very low incomes.⁶ Each PHA is also required to adopt a "reasonable rent policy" that must be designed to encourage employment, for example, by excluding all or some of a family’s earned income from the rent calculation.⁷ The housing assisted by the PHAs must meet HUD’s housing quality standards.⁸ Finally, the PHAs are not exempted from complying with other federal laws, such as the Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.⁹

To make sure that existing commitments are not disregarded, HUD set out several additional requirements in its notice inviting PHAs to apply. The PHAs may not combine and make unavailable any of their funds that are needed to meet existing contractual obligations to third-party providers, for example, current Housing Assistance Payments contracts with Section 8 landlords, to make portability payments to other housing authorities, or to meet specific purposes to which specially awarded funds were dedicated, such as HOPE VI grants and vouchers for tenants displaced by mortgage prepayments.¹⁰

HUD has selected 30 high-performing PHAs in 18 states to test the ways of delivering housing assistance.¹¹ The PHAs and HUD are now in the process of negotiating the final details of their plans. Once final HUD approval is given, the PHAs will begin to operate their new programs.

Planned Activities

a. Promoting the Transition to Work

On the most generalized level, the process of assisting welfare recipients make the transition from welfare to work is fairly standard. It involves an assessment of the individual’s needs; the development of a plan to secure the education, training and services needed to overcome whatever barriers to adequately paid employment the individual faces; implementation of that plan; and the involvement of some third-party to monitor the individual’s progress and to intervene to help solve any problems that arise either before or after the person secures a job. What does vary is the details, and those variations show up in the plans submitted by these 30 PHAs.

Needs assessment and implementation. First there is the scope of the needs assessment. Does it merely look at which skills the individual needs to secure a job and plan to secure the vocational training needed to develop those skills? Is the assessment of needed skills driven at all by a preliminary analysis of the jobs that are available and the wages and opportunities for advancement that they provide? Does it look further at the individual’s educational background and develop plans not only to fill in the gaps in basic education but also to provide post-secondary education needed to advance to jobs that will ensure permanent financial independence? Does the needs assessment look beyond education and job skills to other factors that impede a person’s chances for financial self-sufficiency, such as domestic violence, alcoholism or drug addiction, children with severe behavioral problems, and criminal records? Do the planned actions include securing services needed to overcome those broader problems?

Next are the questions about how effective implementation of the plans will be. Who is going the perform the needs assessment, develop plans to overcome the barriers, and assist individuals to secure what they need and to resolve the problems as they arise? What special strategies will the PHA use to increase the chances that program participants will receive the full, in-depth, effective assistance that they need from the providers of training and services, instead of falling through the cracks? What special efforts are planned not only to inform tenants about job openings but also to secure for program participants a good shot at getting the jobs? Do the plans focus on job retention as much as on securing the first job?

Reviewing the applications with these questions in mind reveals significantly different approaches by different PHAs. That raises the question whether some of the tenants at some of the PHAs will end up with far less than they need. It also discloses other planned steps that seem highly likely to help hundreds of tenants successfully make the transition.

Bridging the gap between tenants and service providers and employers. Some of the PHAs express the opinion that PHA and welfare department staffs will have less success in motivating tenants to seek and keep jobs than would the tenants’ peers. The premise underlying that argument is that tenants do not particularly trust PHA and welfare department staff and will respond better to their peers whom they perceive as being more sympathetic and more knowledgeable about the challenges they face. Thus, for example, High Point (North Carolina) Housing Authority will set up a program to have tenants who are already employed work with unemployed tenants to motivate them to seek work. Those resident leaders who volunteer will counsel 20 to 25 adults and will get a rent credit that will increase depending on the number of the tenants that they counsel who get jobs. Along the same lines, Cambridge plans to establish an Employment Advisory Council of tenants who will inform other tenants about employment and service opportunities. Seattle will have three resource centers located on site at three developments and a fourth at another conveniently located spot. Those centers will be staffed by public housing tenants, and their functions will include recruiting tenants to participate in the program and providing peer counseling and advocacy for the participants. Possibly responding to a similar concern, Tampa will have a tenant on the multidisciplinary team that will be responsible for assessing the MTW participants’ needs and developing their self-sufficiency plans. Several of the PHAs, including Cambridge, Los Angeles County, Massachusetts DHCD, and Seattle, will have regular peer support meetings and some will require participation. Some of those PHAs — Cambridge, Los Angeles, and Seattle — will have some or all of the MTW participants live in common buildings to facilitate the development of peer support groups.

On-site supportive services. Another fairly obvious point is that there is an advantage to using public housing developments as the sites for the provision of services people will need to make a successful transition. That includes everything from having the case managers located on site to providing space for adult basic education, GED and ESL classes and for vocational training, to locating job placement services on site and providing space for child-care centers and promoting the provision of in-home day care by public housing tenants.

Several of the PHAs — San Antonio and Seattle, for example — propose to make arrangements with welfare departments to have their self-sufficiency case managers work out of office space in the PHA’s developments, as will the PHA’s own FSS case managers in Cambridge and Lawrence (Kansas). It is also common to see PHAs providing classroom space for community colleges and school districts to provide courses in remedial education. Examples are Cambridge, the Delaware State Housing Authority (SHA), High Point, and the Portage (Ohio) Metropolitan Housing Authority which plans to open an additional site. Los Angeles County even has alternative high schools at three of its developments for students who have dropped out of regular high school. There is also a pattern — for example, in Cambridge and Los Angeles — of building computer centers in the developments for purposes as diverse as teaching word processing and other computer skills, training computer technicians, accessing databases of employment opportunities, and helping students with their homework. Providing space for vocational training programs is also common (e.g., at Cambridge, High Point and Portage). Another strategy is to provide office space for people with responsibilities for finding tenants jobs. The Greene (Ohio) Metropolitan Housing Authority will have an on-site representative from a private employment agency at least once a month, and more often if there is enough demand. Los Angeles and Cambridge will have job placement assistance on site and will hold quarterly on-site job fairs for local employers to recruit tenants for employment. Many of the PHAs have long had child care centers at some of their developments — Cambridge, High Point, Lawrence, Los Angeles County, Louisville, and Seattle, for example — and some are planning new ones (Cambridge and High Point) as well as encouraging tenants to become in-home day-care providers.

Case management. One standard component of almost every PHA’s plan is labeled case management. That is the assignment of a person to oversee the progress of the MTW participants in their transition to work. What each PHA means by case management, however, varies widely and what actually will be done will probably vary even more. The potential range of case management functions begins with having the case manager and the person make an assessment of the person’s needs and the barriers to employment he or she faces, including inadequate education, limited English, difficulties at home (such as domestic violence) or personally (like depression or a criminal record), lack of skills needed for the available jobs, absence of child care and inadequate transportation which make securing and keeping a job challenging. Next is the joint development of a plan to overcome those barriers. Then the case manager’s function becomes assisting the person to secure the education, training, and services that are needed to overcome the barriers. As the client implements the plan, the case manager monitors the progress, both to be able to assist in solving any problems that arise and to ensure that the client stays on track. If necessary, the case manager initiates the sanction process, in cases where the client does not meet her responsibilities.

The plans vary significantly in the details provided about what the case managers will be doing and when and where they will do it. The Cambridge plan is filled with details, revealing (1) that the case manager’s responsibilities are holistic, i.e., they focus not only on barriers like inadequate education and training but also personal and domestic problems, such as domestic violence and drug addiction; (2) that the case managers will work on site and will meet with the families in their homes; (3) that they will be responsible for monitoring the client’s progress; and (4) that they will meet with the families weekly in the early stages, and then twice monthly. Louisville states that the case management will be individualized, intensive and integrated, including identifying barriers, planning to remove the barriers, providing services and finding employment, and that each case manager will serve 30 clients. Seattle is participating in a comprehensive effort, called the Seattle Jobs Initiative, which includes a network of 15 employment training and support services providers who will provide the case management for the MTW participants. The majority of the plans, however, provide very few details about what the case managers will be doing. In contrast to Cambridge, the Tampa plan merely states that case managers will monitor progress with the service plan at least at six-month intervals. Likewise, the Greene Metropolitan Housing Authority’s only mention of case management is that the welfare department and PHA staff will meet with the families to confirm that they are complying with their contracts. If that means that the PHA sees case management as solely or primarily an enforcement function, tenants there will receive substantially less assistance than in other places where the focus is more on help than enforcement.

Who does the case management may also be important. Again, there is a wide variety of approaches. Some PHAs will hire their own case managers and have them on staff. Examples include Tampa, Portland (Oregon), Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), Vancouver (Washington), and Cambridge. Other PHAs will contract with other providers to handle the case management, e.g., Greene Metropolitan Housing Authority and Portage MHA, Los Angeles County, and Seattle. In some cases the PHAs will contract with the welfare departments themselves, for example, in Louisville, or, as in San Antonio and Utah, provide on-site space for welfare department case managers specially assigned to MTW participants. Other times, the PHA will just be relying on the welfare department to provide case management for the tenants who are also welfare recipients, as if they were no different from all the other recipients in the welfare department’s program. Delaware State Housing Authority and Lincoln (Nebraska) Housing Authority fall into this category. In those cases, the fate of MTW participants will be in the hands of the ordinary welfare system and will succeed or fail depending upon its quality. That raises the question whether reliance solely on the welfare department is sufficient. The PHAs that do so have certainly foregone the opportunity to provide housing assistance recipients extra attention or extra assurance that they will be adequately served, in addition to the benefits they get from having the housing assistance.

Needs assessment and self-sufficiency plans. It is also fairly standard for the PHAs to have each MTW participant’s needs assessed and to have a plan developed for eliminating any impediments to her success. There are, however, significant variations in the scope of the needs that will be assessed. Some of the PHAs show no indication that they will look at anything beyond the basic, employment-related needs: education, job skills, job readiness, placement, and services like child care and transportation. Others, including Cherokee (Oklahoma), Cambridge, Massachusetts DHCD, and Tampa, will look further and consider impediments like lack of housing, mental and physical health deficiencies, having children with disabilities or behavioral problems, inadequate parenting skills, criminal records, drug addiction or alcohol abuse, and domestic violence. It would seem likely that the PHAs that do not plan for a broader needs assessment and have no plans to overcome these additional impediments will succeed less often, especially with tenants who have been long-term welfare recipients.

As with case management, another concern with needs assessment and planning is who will be doing it. Where PHAs are doing nothing but relying upon whatever services the welfare department provides to its ordinary welfare recipients, there certainly is a risk that the assessments performed and the plans drawn up will not be sufficient to get the job done. That is not to say that PHAs should be using their own staff, or hiring specialists, to do needs assessment and develop self-sufficiency plans. What is needed is some device, such as providing space for case managers assigned especially to MTW participants, to ensure that they get the attention and services that they need.

A similar concern arises with the plans that provide few details on what will be done in the way of needs assessment and self-sufficiency planning. Stevens Point, Utah and Vancouver are examples. If the lack of details is the product of a lack of concern about this part of the plan, again the chances of success will be diminished.

General education. The PHAs’ plans repeatedly acknowledge that inadequate education stands as a major barrier to economic self-sufficiency. Welfare recipients who live in public and assisted housing stay on welfare longer than do welfare recipients generally — five years is their average tenure, compared to three years for the welfare population as a whole.¹² Their educational deficiencies include not only lack of high school degrees, but also weaknesses in reading and writing and basic math. In addition, some do not speak English well or at all. Those deficiencies serve as barriers to steady employment that is essential to staying off welfare, and to earning wages that are sufficient to cover all the expenses of life, including decent housing and medical care. Without addressing those underlying deficiencies, the MTW demonstrations will not enable all participants to develop long-term independence from welfare. Instead, they will move in and out of employment, at low-paying, part-time or short-term jobs.

Even beyond the deficiencies in basic education, finishing high school or getting a GED in many situations is not sufficient for long-term financial self-sufficiency. What is needed is at least a two-year community college degree or in-depth post-secondary school training, if not four-year college degrees, to get the kind of jobs that will make permanent their departure from welfare and from housing and other forms of governmental assistance.

In the welfare programs of many states, the emphasis now is on work first, i.e., providing quick, superficial assistance needed to get the recipients a job, any kind of job, no matter how low the pay or dim the chances for advancement or even long-term job security. The previous emphasis on basic and higher education as a foundation for long-term financial self-sufficiency has most often been abandoned.

Fortunately, that change in philosophy shows up less often in the MTW plans than one might expect. Most of the plans recognize that lack of high school degrees, inability to speak English and poor education are significant barriers to employment. They plan for steps to overcome those types of barriers. Cambridge, Los Angeles County, San Diego, and Seattle have plans to get tenants into ESL and adult literacy classes if they do not speak or read English well enough. At Cambridge, the ESL program is part of the PHA’s on-site Gateway program. Cambridge, Greene and Portage MHAs, and the High Point, Keene, Lincoln, Los Angeles County, San Diego and Seattle housing authorities will ensure that tenants without high school degrees enroll in GED classes and that adult basic education classes are available to tenants who lack adequate basic education. Nonetheless, one wonders how successful some of the efforts will be. For example, the Delaware State Housing Authority will rely on volunteers to provide remedial education.

Some of the MTW plans also recognize that high school education is not enough and that the participants need post-secondary school education and training. Lawrence’s Family Self-Sufficiency program is designed to be like a four-year college degree program. However, that program will focus not on welfare recipients making the initial transition to work, but on already employed tenants seeking advancement. Lincoln and Keene stress two- and four-year degrees. Cambridge not only recognizes the importance of post-secondary school education, but also sees a need for tenants who have completed high school or have GED degrees to gain the skills needed to succeed in community college level courses. Los Angeles County’s campus of learners sites will offer college courses by satellite. Massachusetts’ DHCD program will provide funds to program participants to pay the costs of higher education.

Vocational training. Training designed to equip residents for specific types of jobs is mentioned as a key feature of almost all of the plans. The variety of careers for which vocational training is planned is again quite broad. They include such jobs as home health care, nursing and other health care professions, early childhood development, child care providers, in-home or family day-care providers, computer programmers, computer technicians, word processors, operators of other computer applications, jobs in the area of cooking or culinary arts, paralegals, travel agents, resident managers, property maintenance, landscapers, and non-traditional careers for women. Many times there are mentions of micro-enterprises.

Some of the plans spell out in detail the types of vocational training they plan to make available. Examples are Los Angeles County, Seattle and Cambridge. Most of the others merely make general references to the provision of vocational training, job skills training or similar general terms. The lack of specificity in those plans at the very least leads one to wonder whether those housing authorities have thought about what jobs are available, which ones will lead to advancement and long-term financial self-sufficiency, and what skills those jobs require. In contrast, some PHAs — Seattle, High Point and Louisville, for example — have very consciously planned to determine what good jobs are available and what skills the tenants should be trained in to secure those jobs.

Most of the PHAs are making arrangements with the local community colleges to provide some or all of the vocational training. Some PHAs, like Portage, High Point and Cambridge, are providing space on site for the community college to conduct the training. Los Angeles County provides the property maintenance training as part of its own operations and uses the University of California Cooperative Extension to provide the landscaping training. Birmingham has contracted with the Visiting Nurses Association and the Lutheran Church to train MTW participants as home health aides. Other PHAs plan to rely upon the welfare department or local private industry councils to arrange for or provide the vocational training. As with case management and needs assessment, there is a risk that the MTW participants in those housing authorities will fall through the cracks in the larger bureaucracies or not receive equal attention in comparison to other welfare recipients who may show greater signs of early success. Certainly the fact that some PHAs are going out of their way, by offering training space or contracting for service, to assure training for their tenants leads one to suspect that when those special efforts are not made, public and assisted housing tenants may not secure equal access to the vocational training provided by other entities.

The need for help beyond education and skills training. Many public and assisted housing tenants face barriers to employment that go well beyond lack of information about job openings, a lack of basic education and a need for vocational training. Additional impediments may include such things as poor physical health; mental and emotional illness; having to deal with domestic violence; raising children with severe behavioral problems; lack of parenting skills; claims of child abuse or neglect; juvenile or adult criminal records; drug addiction and alcohol abuse; crushing debt and inadequate incomes to cover basic needs, much less savings for inevitable crises; demands from other family members, including parents and siblings; and coping with new stresses generated by employment. Any effort to move public and assisted housing tenants from welfare to work has to recognize that some of the tenants will need to overcome these additional impediments.

Fortunately, many of the MTW PHAs recognize these additional factors. Los Angeles County, Cambridge and High Point are three that see the whole picture and are planning activities to deal with it. Los Angeles County, for example, has under contract counselors to whom it sends families considered to be "at risk" or, in more extreme cases, "in crisis." Louisville, High Point, Los Angeles County, Cambridge and Greene MHA include plans to deal with drug addiction and alcoholism, although it is unclear in the Greene MHA’s case that its concern is to help the addicts. Its plan merely recites that MTW participants will be required by the state welfare plan to be screened for drug use and alcohol abuse and to enter treatment programs if they want to proceed. In contrast, High Point is working on a program to have "grannies" available to take care of the children of participants in residential drug treatment programs so their parents will not fear that their children will be taken away.

Greene MHA and Keene have plans to provide classes in budgeting and money management, while Keene, Portage and Los Angeles County will offer parent education classes. Several PHAs — Cambridge, Keene, Portage, San Antonio, and San Mateo (California) — will offer "life skills training." This term is so ambiguous that one wonders whether the plans are sufficiently well thought out to address the problems and to offer solutions. Keene is planning to offer family planning workshops; Massachusetts DHCD will have its peer group sessions address the stresses generated by new employment; and High Point and Los Angeles County will use those sessions to motivate participants to seek employment.

It is encouraging that these PHAs are planning to tackle these serious problems and validates the point that it is important to address problems of this nature. However, it is discouraging that most of these PHAs, while recognizing some of the problems, lack comprehensive plans to meet all of the difficulties that some public and assisted housing tenants will encounter. What is more discouraging is that the rest of the PHAs do not even indicate in their plans that these broader impediments to employment exist. In those situations, there will be many tenants who will have their chances for success severely diminished because they face one or more of these challenges and the PHA’s plan will provide nothing to help them.

Assistance in locating jobs. Many of the PHAs that did surveys found that one of the barriers to employment was lack of information about job openings. Almost all of the plans have a component designed to increase the tenants’ chances of finding out about openings and getting the jobs. However, the degree of aggressiveness about challenging this barrier varies quite a bit. A fairly standard element of all of the plans is to refer the tenants to services provided by other agencies that publicize job openings, such as the state employment departments and the welfare department’s jobs programs.

Several of the PHAs, however, plan to do much more to keep their tenants informed about what is available on the market. Keene and Vancouver mention keeping computerized databases of job listings in their computer centers for the tenants to use. Los Angeles County will be keeping a book of job listings in its office that is accessible to the tenants and will be sending all MTW participants monthly job listings. High Point, Los Angeles County and Cambridge will be holding regular job fairs on site for employers to come to the community to recruit for jobs that are available. Greene MHA and Birmingham will have the tenants themselves form job clubs to keep each other informed about openings. Birmingham will also have its FSS coordinator work weekly with the city’s Job Bank.

A few of the PHAs are planning to be much more aggressive in efforts to ensure that their tenants at least get a fair shot at whatever jobs are available. Cambridge, Lincoln, Keene and High Point will have PHA staff specifically assigned to develop good contacts with employment agencies and with hiring officers at companies that have jobs available so they will find out about the openings promptly and be able to send tenants over to apply. In Seattle, that same function of linking the tenants with employers who are hiring for positions they could fill will be performed by the Jobs Broker which is part of the city’s Jobs Initiative in which the PHA is involved. The Jobs Broker is to find employers who hire people with high school degrees or less and place with those employers people coming out of the training programs. High Point and Cambridge also plan to have employment seminars at which they will find out what the employers have available and need and, in turn, inform employers about the availability of MTW participants and their skills. Greene MHA will have a representative from a private employment agency on site at least once a month and more often if there is sufficient demand. PHAs in the smaller cities and rural towns — Lincoln, High Point, Keene and Tulare County (California), for example — are also making contacts with local economic development agencies to get early information about new companies that are moving to local industrial parks. They plan to find out what jobs those companies will create and train their tenants to fill those positions. The contrast between these aggressive efforts and what the less aggressive PHAs are doing raises the question whether MTW participants at the latter PHAs will be less successful than those who are receiving more assistance from their PHAs.

Nearly all of the PHAs recognize that their own operations can create jobs for MTW participants. The range of examples given includes office work; custodial services; landscaping; maintenance work, including plumbing, wiring, heating and air conditioning and appliance repairs, and painting; and construction jobs. Birmingham and Seattle also indicate that they will develop internship programs for participants who need experience on the job before they are ready to move out into the private employment market. Seattle is planning to use funds from the welfare department to pay for those positions. Some of the PHAs, including Cambridge and Louisville, indicate they will be focusing not only on their own employment needs but also on jobs created by their contractors, who are also required by Section 3¹³ to hire public housing tenants. San Mateo mentions seeking jobs from contractors on other jobs funded with grants from HUD, such as Community Development Block Grants, whose recipients also have Section 3 obligations. Cambridge goes beyond Section 3 to try to secure jobs for its tenants from city contractors who have an obligation to look to Cambridge residents as a first source of employees. All seem to recognize, however, that the number of jobs created by public housing funding, other HUD grants and city contracts will be small compared to the number of tenants on welfare who will need employment.

Some programs are not aimed at moving welfare recipients to work. It is important to remember that assisting poor people in making the transition from welfare to work is not the sole purpose of the MTW demonstration and that it is not even one of the required elements. As a result, most of the demonstrations propose plans to test ways of achieving other goals, including expanding low-income people’s housing choices, promoting homeownership and reducing costs. Two of the PHAs’ plans barely involve helping poor people at all to secure and retain employment. The clearest example of this is Minneapolis, where the PHA proposes to use some of its Section 8 funds to subsidize 50 families in buying their own homes. To qualify, the families must have had at least one member employed for at least a year and must have an annual household income of at least $16,000. The PHA pays lip service to the moving-to-work goal when it claims that the possibility of becoming a homeowner in this demonstration will encourage some of its welfare tenants to get jobs, keep them for a year and seek advancement to the $16,000-per-year range. But the fact of the matter is that these 50 slots will be long gone before any of the PHA’s tenants who currently receive welfare qualify for the demonstration homes.

Louisville’s plan has a similar flavor, but should prove more helpful to some welfare recipients. The primary focus of that demonstration is to use public housing operating subsidies and modernization funds from recently demolished units to lease, acquire or develop housing outside the central city and to rent them to current public housing tenants. Those tenants will have to be graduates of the PHA’s Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program or similar programs, be recommended by their case workers, and meet a minimum income requirement. In Louisville, the MTW demonstration is not going to prepare welfare recipients for work or get them jobs. Instead, other efforts will do that, and then MTW will pick up some of the people who have succeeded and take them to the next level, a higher paying job in the suburbs near their new homes.

b. Supportive Services for People Who Have Secured Employment

Beyond education, training, and job placement, people moving to work will have other needs that must be met before they will be able to work. The two additional needs most often mentioned in the plans and in the popular discussions of the welfare-to-work transition are child care and transportation. Beyond that, some of the plans recognize the need for assistance in solving problems that arise after a job is secured, either problems arising on the job or at home. Finally, there are some miscellaneous support services offered under some of the plans.

Child care. Since most of the MTW participants will be single parents with children, child care is the acknowledged single most critical supportive service. Most of the participating PHAs already have child care centers located at some of their developments. Several, including Cambridge and High Point, are planning to open additional centers, and Stevens Point plans to reopen a center that had failed for financial reasons in the past but that might succeed with the welfare department’s child care program. Keene is discussing having the companies that move into the industrial park it is developing open a child care center there.

In addition, a few of the PHAs — Cambridge and High Point, for example — plan to focus efforts on having MTW participants become in-home day care providers. The aim is not only to provide those participants with employment but also to make additional child care available to other tenants who are going to training classes or jobs. The assistance provided includes both education in early childhood development and training in operating the business, as well as start-up capital to make changes in their homes necessary to meet the licensing requirements. Along those same lines, the Portage Housing Authority will require MTW participants in its construction trainee program to provide child care for one other on a rotating basis.

Many other PHAs seem to be relying primarily or exclusively on the welfare departments and their new programs to provide the allowances needed by MTW tenants to purchase child care. The Housing Authority of the Cherokee Nation, the Delaware State Housing Authority, Greene MHA, Lincoln, Minneapolis and Seattle are examples. Two others, Los Angeles County and Massachusetts DHCD, will provide additional stipends for child care, if adequate funds can not be secured from other sources. Stevens Point will take up to $42,000 per year out of its $350,000 annual allocation of Comprehensive grant funds to subsidize its tenant’ child-care co-payment. Nonetheless, the availability of money will not always be enough to make sure that good child care will be available. There also have to be adequately trained providers and facilities at locations that are convenient to the MTW participants. Thus, it may not be enough just to rely upon the welfare departments to handle the child care barriers.

Transportation. The second most often cited need that employed residents have is for reliable transportation to get to their jobs. As the Lawrence PHA’s plan expressed it, unreliable transportation and no transportation at all haunts low income people who are trying to work. Most frequently the plans’ response is to indicate that the PHA, or the welfare department, will be providing stipends or emergency grants to participants to pay for transportation. Birmingham, Delaware SHA, Massachusetts DHCD and San Diego are examples of that approach. San Antonio makes a commitment to meet 100 percent of its participants transportation needs. Los Angeles County will offer bus tokens to the participants. In Lawrence, where there is no public transportation system, the PHA is beginning discussions with the local governments to make arrangements with employers in the local industrial parks to provide transportation to the public housing tenants who will be employed there. In High Point, the PHA will purchase a van to be operated by the Resident Council to provide transportation to participating tenants, for a fee. The revenues will be used for operating expenses and to pay off the cost of the van. Finally, several plans provide emergency funds for car repairs to ensure people that they can get to work.

Job retention activities. One of the conclusions reached in studies of efforts to move people from welfare to work has been that the undertaking cannot end when the person secures a job. Keeping the job is just as important and sometimes as difficult as getting it in the first place. Several of the plans — including those of Birmingham, Cambridge, High Point, Keene, Lawrence, Lincoln, Massachusetts DHCD, San Antonio, and Seattle — at least pay lip service to the importance of job retention activities that will help residents function effectively in the work culture. Some of those go further and spell out specific activities. Cambridge, High Point, Los Angeles County, Massachusetts DHCD and Seattle will have peer support groups in which MTW participants help each other cope with the stresses caused by employment. Keene’s program will have voluntary mentors help participants retain their jobs and require the participants to attend workshops on job retention. Birmingham, Cambridge, High Point, and Lincoln will have funds set aside for grants or loans to participants to deal with emergencies such as car repairs so they can get to work. Those plans that provide no details, do not mention job retention activities and rely solely on the welfare department, raise the possibility that their participants will have less chance of long-term success because of difficulties they encounter once they secure their first job.

Surprisingly, only two of the plans explicitly recognize the importance of housing in job retention. The Massachusetts DHCD plan will have its case managers focus upon helping tenants secure stable housing and resolve difficulties they have with their landlords, because having to move makes it harder to keep a job. In addition, they will help participants use their housing subsidies to find housing nearer the jobs they find, because reducing the distance to work reduces the chances that transportation problems will cause them to lose their jobs. One of their devices to facilitate those moves is to allow the participants to save up to three months of housing subsidies, presumably by paying more of their rent themselves or staying in the homeless shelters longer, to use for security deposits and moving expenses. Louisville’s plan to lease, acquire and build housing in the suburbs near new jobs is also partially premised on the principle that living closer to the places of employment will increase MTW program participants’ chances of keeping their jobs.

Other supportive services. The only other supportive service regularly mentioned in the plans is creation of an emergency fund to assist families who need money quickly for a specific purpose and cannot get it from anywhere else. Examples of eligible expenses are car repairs, other transportation needs, tools, uniforms and other special clothing for particular jobs, tuition, course books and supplies, and child care. Some plans merely indicate that such emergency funds are available under the state’s welfare program. Others, such as Birmingham, Cambridge, High Point, Los Angeles County and Vancouver, indicate that the PHA itself will create the fund and make the loans and grants.

Where Will the Money Come From?

The Moving-to-Work demonstration carries with it no extra funding. Congress’ theory was that the PHAs would be able to combine their public housing operating subsidies and modernization funds and their Section 8 certificate and voucher funds into one flexible pool, use them more efficiently because of the consolidation, and use the generated savings to meet the PHAs’ costs of the running the Welfare-to-Work activities. In addition, by exempting the PHAs from most of the provisions of the federal housing laws, it was thought that they could operate more efficiently and generate more savings to be used to cover their costs. Finally, the PHAs would collaborate with other agencies involved in helping families move from welfare to work with the hope that those agencies would provide, from their own funds, some of the needed services and assistance. It is interesting to analyze what the approved applications plan to do to generate needed funds.

Combining funds. Most of the PHAs plan to invoke the statutory mandate to combine their Section 8 funds with public housing operating and modernization funds. But there are several exceptions. The Tulare and San Mateo HAs receive no operating subsidies for their public housing, and thus will not be combining any of those funds. The Massachusetts DHCD manages only Section 8 and thus will not be combining any public housing funds. The Lawrence HA will not be putting its modernization funds into the pool it is creating from its operating subsidies and Section 8 funds to create a new tenant-based and project-based rental assistance program; the modernization funds are being held back to keep the PHA-owned buildings in good shape. Neither is Lawrence putting in its elderly project’s operating subsidies. The Los Angeles County HA does not appear to be combining any funds in a common pool, except that it plans to use a portion of its Section 8 administrative fees to fund the costs of its FSS program. Portage also is not pooling funds, except for the use of a small amount of modernization funds to produce a Section 8 video and handbook to recruit landlords and to allow its Section 8 FSS coordinator to serve public housing tenants.

Securing additional funds from HUD. Several of the PHAs state that pooling the funds will allow them to operate more efficiently and thus save money. But they do not put a figure on the anticipated savings. What does come through is that alternative ways to save money, packaged as combinations of funds, are in truth more than mere combinations. The one that shows up regularly is pouring into the combined pool more Section 8 funds than ordinarily would be used in a year. Originally, under the Section 8 program, HUD’s contract with the PHAs would promise them more dollars than needed in each of the early years, in order to build a reserve to cover shortfalls in the later years when the gap between the tenants’ contributions and the gross rents would widen because of inflation. Even now, when the contracts are only for one or two years and HUD is no longer building in the reserves, some PHAs are not spending down all of the funds under their contracts, because of slow rent-ups or higher tenant contributions than anticipated. During the past few years, HUD and now Congress have been dipping into the PHAs’ reserves to renew Section 8 contracts as they expire, instead of appropriating additional budget authority.

In the Moving-to-Work plans, some PHAs have come up with a variety of strategies to keep those reserve funds out of the hands of HUD and the Congress. Some, like Seattle, merely make a straightforward request to have their reserves protected from recapture for the duration of the demonstration and available for use in the demonstration. The Minneapolis HA made a slightly more conservative request, i.e., to use some of its Section 8 reserves if it is unable to secure CDBG and foundation funding for its homeownership program. Others, like Cambridge and Lincoln asked that 100 percent of the Section 8 funds provided for in their contracts be released for inclusion in the combined pool without any requirement that they be spent or committed during the year. Lincoln presents another variation as well, i.e., to put $313,000 per year into the pool from one of its Section 8 new construction projects and then hold back only $288,000 for use at that project. The $25,000 difference appears to be part or all of the contracted funds that ordinarily would go each year into the reserve for that project, but now is slated for expenditure in the Moving-to-Work demonstration.

In addition to attempting to protect their reserves, several PHAs asked HUD to waive the requirement that they put a three-month hold on certificates and vouchers that turn over before they are reused. Congress had created that three-month delay in 1996 as a device to reduce the amount spent annually on the certificate and voucher programs. Portland PHA estimates that the three-month delay reduces the amount it may spend on Section 8 by $71,000 a year. It, along with Cambridge, San Mateo and Lincoln, asked that they be granted a waiver of the delay requirement and be allowed to reuse their turnover certificates immediately.

On the public housing side, Cambridge asked that it be exempt from the normal limits on operating reserves that a PHA may hold when its operating subsidy is calculated.¹⁴ Its claim is that sometimes it will have to carry higher reserves to be able to take advantage of development opportunities as they arise. The net result would be that it would get more in operating subsidies than the amount to which it would otherwise be entitled. Another device was proposed by Vancouver: drawing down its allocation of operating subsidy, Modernization money and Section 8 funds at the beginning of the year so that it could earn interest on the funds before spending them.

Louisville presents another device to wring out of HUD funds that it otherwise would be likely or sure to lose if it were not in the demonstration. Louisville is in the process of demolishing 1,311 public housing units and will be replacing only 435 of them. As part of its MTW demonstration, it is asking HUD to put $4.2 million into its combined pool as the operating subsidy and comprehensive grant payments that ordinarily would have come to the PHA had it replaced those units with public housing. Eventually it would use the pool into which those funds would go each year to lease, acquire or build units in partnership with private investors in the Louisville suburbs. In fact, it appears from the application that these operating subsidy and comprehensive grant payments for the unreplaced units would be the sole source of HUD funds for the program it proposes.

Recognizing that Congress has been cutting HUD’s funds, especially public housing funds, in the past few years, several PHAs — Cambridge, Lincoln and Seattle, for example — asked that the amount that they got in Fiscal Year 1997 for operating subsidies, modernization and Section 8 be the minimum amount they receive to put into their combined pool throughout the demonstration. Vancouver asked that its Modernization funds be set at its Fiscal Year 1996 level, with CPI adjustments for inflation. If Congress were to increase the appropriations, these PHAs would want the increase, but they asked HUD to hold them harmless from any decrease in the appropriations for those funds.

Using other HUD funds. Beyond these devices to get extra funding from HUD to which they would otherwise not be entitled, some PHAs are planning to use funds from other HUD grants to supplement their combined funds. Several PHAs will be using their Drug Elimination Program funds to assist with the demonstration. The funds will cover the expenses of job training in Birmingham, a Gateway program and an Unemployment Prevention program at Cambridge, and case management and self-sufficiency planning at Cherokee. High Point will use its Economic Development and Social Services grant to buy the van for the Resident Council’s transportation program, to extend the hours at its child care centers and to assist tenants in becoming in-home child care providers. The Lawrence HA would put money from its HOME-funded tenant-based assistance program into the combined pool. Lincoln would include the funds from two Section 8 New Construction projects that it owns.

Increasing tenants’ rents to generate income. Many of the PHAs will generate extra money to cover their MTW costs by reducing the subsidies to the tenants and using the saved subsidies either to serve more families or to cover the costs of services. Thus, two PHAs — Delaware SHA and Vancouver — would raise the rent-to-income ratio from 30 percent to 35 percent. In addition, Vancouver and Lawrence would eliminate all income exclusions. Delaware SHA will limit the dependent deduction to children born before the client started receiving housing assistance or within 10 months of that time, and Portage will limit the dependent deduction to two children.

Several PHAs would abandon rents based upon income altogether, creating flat rents that either would stay fixed throughout the demonstration or increase gradually to the market rent level. Keene would have all tenants pay 45 percent of the Fair Market Rent in their third and fourth years in the demonstration, and 65 percent of the FMR thereafter. Stevens Point proposes a schedule that ranges from $175 for a one-bedroom unit to $400 for a seven-bedroom unit. Seattle would have flat rents set at four steps in one demonstration project, starting at 20 percent of the market, then 40 percent, then 70 percent and finally at market. In the rest of its MTW program, Seattle would raise rents to 75 percent of market for all tenants who have been at the ceiling rent for two years and then raise them to market levels after two more years. Tulare County would have flat rents for its public housing units, set at a level that would cover its operating costs and a reserve for replacements, and flat subsidies for its Section 8 units.

Massachusetts DHCD plans a similar scheme for its tenant-based program. Each tenant would get a stipend of $458 a month in Worcester or $542 a month in Boston that the family could use for housing and other purposes. No more than $250 a month may be used for housing in Worcester and $400 in Boston. The rest could be used for purchasing education, training and services needed to make the transition to work. The amount available for housing, which would be well below what a welfare recipient would receive under the normal certificate or voucher program, would not vary based upon the tenant’s income or the landlord’s rent. Keene’s Section 8 program would be similar, reducing the Housing Assistance Payment to $300 a month for a two-bedroom unit and $425 for three or four bedrooms for the tenant’s third and fourth years in the program, and to $200 and $300 respectively for years five and six.

Several PHAs would raise their minimum rents substantially, and thus generate extra money for the MTW demonstration. For example, Lawrence would impose minimum rents at 30 or 40 percent of the FMR. It estimates that collecting those rents would generate $150,000 extra rent each year. Lincoln would presume that non-working families were receiving an income equivalent to the minimum wage for 25 hours a week if they have children and 40 hours a week if they do not. Other PHAs provided other reasons for raising minimum rents — as a sanction for not working, for example — but they would have the added effect of generating extra income.

Saving money by eliminating administrative functions. In addition to the savings from combining funds, Congress assumed that PHAs would be able to save funds by deviating from normal housing laws that create administrative costs. Needless to say, many of the PHAs took that as an invitation to simplify their operations. The streamlining device cited most often is the elimination of income recertification, either by converting to flat rents not based upon income or by eliminating recertification for people, such as the elderly, whose incomes rarely change much. Thus, Keene estimates that by eliminating income-based rents in the third year of the tenants’ participation and eliminating the recertification process, one third of its staff will be free to perform other tasks. Stevens Point thinks it could save $20,000 annually by eliminating recertification, and estimates a nationwide savings of $250 to $350 million. Portland expects to reduce the number of interim recertifications each year, and Seattle and Vancouver propose to eliminate recertification for elderly and people with disabilities who are not employed. Utah is considering recertification every two years instead of annually. San Mateo proposes to shift the housing eligibility function to the county welfare department, lessening its administrative costs even more.

Most of the PHAs also plan to merge the certificate and voucher programs in order to save administrative time associated with running two similar, but different, programs. Of course, they are choosing the voucher model which, with its potentially shallower subsidy, will shift costs in many cases onto the tenants and save PHA funds.

Increased rental income as tenants’ incomes increase. The premise of many of the MTW plans is that, as participants leave welfare and secure jobs, their incomes will increase and eventually they will pay more rent to the PHAs. The extra rent will be received under either of two systems. First there are the flat rent schemes which have steps that eventually reach the market or at least are higher than 30 percent of a welfare recipient’s adjusted income. Second, some PHAs retain the normal 30-percent-of-income formula with or without a ceiling rent as a cap. In either case, the rent rises as the tenants’ income rises, either without any limit or until the ceiling rent cap is reached. The extra rental income may be used by the PHAs to cover part of the costs of their MTW activities or to expand their housing assistance programs.

In the normal public housing situation, if the rental income collected from tenants rises, the PHA’s operating subsidy from HUD decreases. Similarly, on the Section 8 side, if the tenants’ contributions increase because they have more income, the excess goes into the PHA’s reserves, unless the PHA anticipates the increase and increases the number of families it serves. In contrast, under the MTW plans, the PHAs consistently ask that their operating subsidies be frozen at not less than the levels they were receiving upon entering the program, and that the Section 8 funds be set at the full amount of the Section 8 contract. In effect, the PHAs are asking that they be exempted from the normal rules that reduce public housing operating subsidies and siphon Section 8 payments into the reserve account as tenants’ incomes and rents increase.

Some PHAs — for example, Cambridge and Seattle — are more explicit, asking that HUD not reduce their operating subsidy and section 8 payments merely because their tenants’ incomes and rents have increased. Those requests are consistent with Congress’s purpose, which was to see whether PHAs could save money by combining funds and providing tenants incentives to make the transition to work. If the PHAs’ efforts succeed, they should be able to retain the fruits of their efforts — the increased rental income — as long as they are used to provide housing assistance to eligible families or to assist them making the transition to work.

Outside funding sources. The PHAs are also looking to other public and private sources of funds to cover their activities that will assist people moving from welfare to work. Birmingham will secure donations from two fast food restaurants and use the money for grants to participants for transportation, child care, car repairs, bus cards, books and supplies. Cambridge will use state education funds for its Gateway program and will seek grants from local foundations. Lincoln plans to use $80,000 in private funds for its FSS program participants. San Antonio will target $200,000 from its JOBS-PLUS demonstration (a small precursor demonstration designed to achieve high employment rates by testing locally based approaches to providing job opportunities for residents) to the MTW demonstration. Seattle’s Jobs Initiative, which is central to the PHA’s MTW services component, is funded by a $7 million grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Collaborations to fill the funding gap and make MTW more successful. In addition to squeezing funds out of their operating subsidies, Section 8 payments and modernization funding and tapping any other sources they can locate, the PHAs propose to piece together the needs assessment, skills training, and job placement activities and related supportive services in their plans through collaborations with local providers. Participants have opted to rely upon several categories of providers. Almost without exception, local and state welfare offices are relied upon principally for case management for TANF-eligible participants. In addition, state and local agencies with responsibility for employment development and job training activities are named collaborators. These include state employment departments, city and county economic development offices, JTPA administrators and Private Industry Councils. For the education and training components of their proposals, PHAs rely extensively upon school districts, local technical and community colleges or the extension offices of larger state universities.

Who Will Be Eligible for the PHA’s Planned MTW Activities?

The final question for this first article is who will be eligible for these Moving-to-Work activities. And the answers vary widely from PHA to PHA. A few PHAs will mandate that all their tenants and accepted applicants participate in the program, with some exemptions for the elderly and people with disabilities. Most, however, take the approach of recruiting volunteers from existing tenants and applicants on the waiting lists. Some PHAs from this latter group plan to make the program’s benefits available to all who volunteer. Others plan to narrow the category of tenants who will be allowed to participate, either by screening volunteers and selecting particular candidates, by making only certain categories of volunteers eligible, or by capping the number of participants. Finally, a few of the PHAs are also planning special programs for existing welfare recipients who need affordable housing but do not yet have housing assistance. Each of these variations is described below.

Mandatory participation. Several PHAs — Keene, Lawrence, Lincoln, and Vancouver — plan to require all their present tenants and Section 8 recipients to participate in the MTW demonstration, with certain exemptions for cases where participation does not make sense. In Lincoln’s and Vancouver’s cases, tenants who are elderly or people with disabilities will not be required to participate. The Lawrence HA will require all tenants to participate unless they are elderly, have a disability that prevents them from working, or fit into one of the state welfare program’s exemption categories, e.g., being a caretaker for a child less than one year old. If the person is not on welfare, there will also be an exemption for those who are enrolled in college full time or working, as long as they work 20 or more hours per week if they are single parents, or 35 hours per week if they are in a two-parent household. San Mateo will make participation mandatory for all new Section 8 participants, other than people who are elderly or disabled, but not for public housing tenants or current Section 8 participants.

In a variation on this mandatory participation approach, the Tampa HA proposes to impose higher, flat rents on tenants who are not exempt from participation and who elect not to participate. Lincoln, which mandates participation, would do essentially the same thing as Tampa, i.e., when calculating rents, it will presume that any non-participating family has income equal to the earnings from 25 hours per week of minimum wage work, for families with children, and 40 hours of such work, for families without children. That presumption will operate even if the family is not working or is working for fewer hours.

Recruiting volunteers. The PHAs that do not mandate participation, which is the majority of the PHAs, have a variety of approaches to selecting the volunteers who will be allowed to participate. At two of the PHAs — Cambridge and Seattle — it appears that all tenants who volunteer will be allowed to participate. Several others, including Greene MHA, Utah, and Birmingham, will require volunteers to sign self-sufficiency contracts in order to get into the demonstration program and to face the possibility of being terminated from the MTW program and, in some cases, from the housing program, if they breach their contracts. Keene will require tenant execution of self-sufficiency contracts with its mandatory program. In Los Angeles, the PHA will limit its program to 50 participants, 25 of whom are employed or in job training and are selected by lottery, and another 25, also selected by lottery, who have no income other than welfare and are not yet in job training. High Point will keep the number of participants down by focusing in the first year upon one development, before expanding to all of its developments in the following years. The Utah consortium will achieve the same result by limiting eligibility to its public housing tenants in the first two years and by not making Section 8 participants eligible until the third year. Other PHAs — Birmingham and Cherokee, for example — will screen volunteers to select as participants only those who are "motivated."

Louisville and Lincoln have a sort of two-tier approach to the demonstration. Lincoln will rely upon the welfare department’s welfare-to-work program to get MTW participants from welfare to their first jobs. Then, those who have succeeded at that and want to advance further will be invited to participate in the PHA’s Family Self-Sufficiency program that will provide them the equivalent of a two- or four-year college degree and the foundation for higher paying jobs. Both groups of people will be participants in the PHA’s MTW demonstration, but the second group will get a better chance to achieve permanent and total independence from government assistance, including housing assistance. Louisville’s approach is similar, but the MTW participants will only be people who are have completed or almost completed the welfare department’s work program and are already employed or ready for employment. They will have to have a minimum income, which has not yet been set, a recommendation from their case manager and an excellent rent-paying and rental history. They will then be accepted into the MTW program and offered housing in the suburbs near to their jobs or better employment opportunities.

Those PHAs that will be recruiting volunteers propose a variety of recruitment devices. As one might expect, several make better housing the primary recruitment incentive. Los Angeles County and Tampa will offer participants who succeed the chance to move out of public housing with Section 8 certificates or vouchers or, in Tampa’s case, the alternative of scattered-site public housing. In Lincoln, where public housing is more attractive than private housing with Section 8, the PHA will offer the chance to move from Section 8 into public housing as the reward for success. Cambridge and Birmingham will offer newly rehabilitated or constructed housing to participants who are motivated to succeed or who have succeeded. Portage will allow participants to move from the worst to the better units in one of its projects as they progress through its program. Vancouver would offer the inducement of transfers to housing located near the tenants’ jobs or child care providers. High Point will offer rent reductions to those who agree to participate and, as noted above, Tampa and Lincoln will impose higher rents on those who do not participate to discourage non-participation. Both Cambridge and Seattle hope that the availability of special services in particular projects will encourage people to apply to live there and to participate.

Special slots for welfare recipients/people receiving no housing assistance. The people who will have the most difficulty making the welfare-to-work transition are welfare recipients who do not have any housing assistance and may not even have a place to live. Recognizing that, several of the PHAs are proposing to set aside some or all of their MTW slots for welfare recipients who have no housing assistance. The best example is Massachusetts DHCD. All 183 slots in its plan are for people who do not have housing assistance. One hundred twenty-two of the slots will be welfare recipients in Worcester County who are enrolled in the welfare department’s welfare-to-work program and who have either recently secured employment or are about to do so. The other 61 slots are for homeless people in Boston who have the skills and motivation to find jobs within several months. They will be provided housing assistance to help them get a place to live so they can secure and retain their jobs. Even with this focus upon welfare recipients as the targeted beneficiaries of the Massachusetts DHCD’s plan, it does appear that the Department will be selecting applicants who are most likely and ready to succeed. That raises the question whether other welfare recipients with as great a need for housing assistance will be left out because they are judged to be not as motivated or as easy to help.

In a similar effort, Seattle proposes to fund 100 special vouchers out of its Section 8 reserves for welfare recipients selected by the welfare department. They must be on a path to secure living wage jobs — ones paying at least $12 per hour — within three years, and housing assistance will be provided to help them achieve their goal. At the end of the three years, the families should be independent of welfare and housing assistance. Again, the focus on welfare recipients who have no housing assistance is worthy of praise. However, the decision to select recipients who are likely to be earning $25,000 per year in three years opens the PHA to the criticism that it is leaving out those who need the most help.

In contrast, the Greene MHA is also developing a special program for 100 welfare recipients who do not yet have housing assistance, with no other selection criteria. They merely must be enrolled in the welfare department’s welfare-to-work program. When they apply for housing, they will get top priority for Section 8 turnover certificates and vouchers and public housing vacancies. The PHA estimates that it will be able to provide applicants with assistance within 30 to 60 days of their application. Similarly, San Mateo will be providing all of its turnover Section 8 assistance, except for a set-aside for people who are elderly or disabled, to welfare recipients or people at risk of moving onto welfare. A slightly different approach is being taken by the Lincoln Housing Authority. It will create a preference for applicants who are enrolled in the welfare-to-work program, but that preference will be equal to the preferences created for applicants who are homeless, victims of domestic violence or employed at least 25 hours a week at a minimum wage job.

Another variation on this approach is being proposed by the Tulare County HA. As with Greene, Seattle, and Massachusetts DHCD, Tulare will set aside rental assistance slots — 300 in the case of Tulare — for welfare recipients who are making the transition to work. In return, the welfare department will grant priority to housing authority tenants for services and training in the welfare department’s welfare-to-work program. In effect, the PHA is trading the housing assistance it can provide for training and services assistance that the welfare department can provide to its tenants. In addition, it will reserve 50 slots in its MTW program for people participating in the job training programs of another agency whose collaboration it has secured for the MTW program. Again, the PHA is trading what it has to offer — housing assistance — to secure what it needs — training and supportive services.

Conclusion

It is encouraging to see that many of the PHAs have thrown themselves wholeheartedly into the effort to assist welfare recipients make the transition to permanent financial independence. That a few of the PHAs have developed a truly comprehensive approach to this effort is extremely encouraging. Although it would be great if all the PHAs were that thorough, one can realistically expect that those that are wholeheartedly involved will learn, both from their own experience and from the examples of their peers, about the gaps in their plans and the ways to fill them.

It was discouraging to see the Minneapolis PHA develop a program that will do nothing to help welfare recipients achieve financial independence. And Louisville’s focus on taking people who have already made it off welfare to a higher level of financial security — while commendable in its own right — is discouraging because it lacks any balancing effort to help people make the initial step off welfare. Similarly, one could have hoped for more attention to the situation of welfare recipients who have no housing assistance, for whom only a few PHAs revealed any concern. And even among those PHAs there was a troubling tendency to focus the efforts upon those who were already employed or about to become employed, instead of on those who were starting out on what could be a long journey.

The next article will complete the analysis of the aspects of the MTW plans that involve moving people from welfare to work by looking at how the PHAs propose to use rent policies both to facilitate the transition and to sanction people who do not succeed. Then it will move on to other aspects of the demonstration, primarily describing the ways PHAs propose to use their freedom from the strictures of the United States Housing Act to run their housing programs in the way they think best.

1. Funds for the research and writing of this article were provided by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, receipt of which we greatly appreciate. The opinions expressed are those of the National Housing Law Project and not the foundations.
2. Sec. 204 of Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 1996, enacted as part of Pub. L. No. 104-134, 104th Cong., 2d Sess., 110 Stat. 1321-281 (Apr. 26, 1996); Notice of Public and Indian Housing/Section 8 Moving to Work Demonstration, 61 Fed. Reg. 66,856 (Dec. 18, 1996).
3. See Pub. L. No. 104-134, § 204(f).
4. See id. §§ 204(c)(3)(C) and (e)(1) and (2).
5. Id. §§ 204(c)(3)(C) and (D).
6. Id. § 204(c)(3)(A).
7. Id. § 204(c)(3)(B).
8. Id. § 204(c)(3)(E).
9. See 61 Fed. Reg. at 66,859.
10. See 61 Fed. Reg. at 66,857.
11. The participating housing authorities are: Alabama:Birmingham Housing Authority; California: Los Angeles County Housing Authority, San Diego Housing Commission, San Mateo Housing Authority, Tulare Housing Authority; Delaware: Delaware State Housing Authority; Florida: Tampa Housing Authority; Kansas: Lawrence Housing Authority; Kentucky: Louisville Housing Authority; Massachusetts: Cambridge Housing Authority, Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development; Minnesota: Minneapolis Housing Authority; Nebraska: Lincoln Housing Authority; New Hampshire: Keene Housing Authority; North Carolina: High Point Housing Authority; Ohio: Greene Metropolitan Housing Authority, Portage Metropolitan Housing Authority; Oklahoma: Housing Authority of the Cherokee Nation; Oregon: Portland Housing Authority; Texas: San Antonio Housing Authority; Utah: The Utah Consortium, which consists of Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, West Valley City, Davis County, Utah County, Provo County, and Ogden City; Washington: Seattle Housing Authority, Vancouver Housing Authority; Wisconsin: Stevens Point Housing Authority. See Moving to Work Demonstration Grantees Finally Named, 27 HOUS. L. BULL. 201 (Dec. 1997).
12. Kingsley, Federal Housing Assistance and Welfare Reform: Uncharted Territory, p. 1 (The Urban Institute, Dec. 1997), citing a paper entitled "The Effects of Welfare Reform on Housing: A National Analysis," presented by Sandra J. Newman and Joseph Harkness at the Policy Research Rountable on the Implications of Welfare Reform for Housing sponsored by the Fannie Mae Foundation and the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies, Baltimore, Maryland, July 22, 1997.
13. 12 U.S.C.A. § 1701u (West Supp. 1998).
14. HUD, however, has repealed the regulation limiting public housing reserves. 61 Fed. Reg. 17,451 (Apr. 19, 1996).