Oregon Allocated 1,582 HUD Emergency Homeless/Domestic Violence/Human Trafficking Vouchers, With 37%/587 Available in 3 County Portland Metro Area

HUD's Emergency Voucher webpage is HERE and includes links to presentations, notes, and webinars. 

The initial overview presentation is HERE. Eligible populations are:

• Homeless; 
• At-risk of homelessness; 
• Fleeing or attempting to flee domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, or human trafficking; and 
• Recently homeless, as determined by the Secretary, and for whom providing rental assistance will prevent the family’s homelessness or having high risk of housing instability.

PHA's have until MONDAY MAY 24th to accept or decline the HUD tentative allocation

The Oregon HUD tentative allocation totals 1.582 vouchers with 582/37% allocated to the three Oregon Portland metro counties. 

The table pasted below shows the allocation by Oregon housing authority. 

Estimated Total New Oregon Rental Assistance Since April 2020: $801 Million.

In recent testimony in the Oregon Legislature the total new funding made available for rental housing since April 2020 was estimated at $801 million (this doesn't include ongoing rental assistance programs). It's not clear if the $12 million+ HUD funding for these vouchers is included in these totals. 

Originally posted on the Oregon Housing Blog. 

First List of 80 MTW Agency Voucher and Public Housing Counts by State, Including This Years MTW Expansion Agencies.

In my prior post I provided counts of Public Housing and Voucher counts by HUD region with a breakout of those counts for the now 80 approved HUD MTW agencies. 

In the 3 page PDF HERE and embedded below I breakout those counts by state. 

The listing starts with Vouchers, then Public Housing, and then the combination of both. 

Columns show MTW subtotals and state MTW percentage rankings. 

I'm confident that this is the first public posting of these counts. I used unit counts from the PHA data found in the HUD Picture of Subsidized Housing annual publication HERE.   

Some observations: 

1. Oregon has the 6th highest percentage of PH units in MTW agencies, the 7th highest percentage of voucher units, and the 6th highest percentage of combined PH and voucher units. Oregon's  combined total of 15,331 MTW units is higher than Ohio's 11,555 combined MTW units AND North Carolina's combined 12,279 MTW units. 
2. Washington has the 2nd highest percentage of PH units in MTW agencies, the 3rd highest percentage of voucher units, and the 3rd highest percentage of combined PH and voucher units. Washington's 33,341 voucher MTW units are slightly higher than the 33,148 MTW voucher units in Texas.
3. California has the largest number of voucher units in MTW agencies at 72,299 units.
4. Pennsylvania has the largest number of public housing units in MTW agencies at 16,145 units.
5. New York, with a combined count of 461,790 public housing and voucher units, has ZERO MTW units. Ditto for Michigan with a combined count of 83,646 public housing and voucher units and ZERO MTW units. 

<

CBPP Housing Materials, Including Projected Vouchers Lost at Housing Authority Level.

CBPP Housing web page is HERE. 

A CBPP Housers' Corner website HERE has an Excel spreadsheet HERE (and embedded below on my MS OneDrive) with housing authority level details on projected vouchers lost because of sequestration from Dec 2012 to Dec 2013. 




Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Estimate, US Lost the Use of 70, 000 Vouchers Because of Sequestration; Oregon Lost 258.

The CBPP has issued a report HERE with state level estimates the loss of the number of vouchers in use from December 2012 to December 2013. Nationally the estimated loss was projected as 70,000.

In a table HERE the report estimates that Oregon had a net loss of the use of 258 vouchers during that time period, a less than 1% reduction. 

Washington state was projected to have lost the use of 1,312 vouchers, a 2.61% reduction. 

An interactive map HERE provides a state by state summary. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Update--Oregon: Variable Impacts Result from Changing Extremely Low Income Definition for the Voucher Program.

Update/Caveat:
I've received feedback that the XLI limits likely will not be allowed to exceed the lesser of the new calculation amount OR the 50% MFI limit.
This seems plausible, but I don't see any specific language in the legislation that provides that additional limitation, other than providing Secretary discretion.
Rather than changing my Excel worksheet calculations, I have added a row alerting the reader that is SUBJECT TO CHANGE once HUD publishes its Notice.
----------------
The 2014 Omnibus Appropriations bill  signed into law contains a provision (Section 238) that changes the voucher definition of Extremely Low Income to the higher of 30% of Median Family Income or the Poverty Limit, adjusted for bedroom size.  
Notes:  

1. This change will ONLY occur AFTER HUD publishes a notice to implement this provision. 
2. Not yet clear to me whether this definition will also be used for public housing or any other HUD subsidy programs.

I have put together an Excel workbook HERE and embedded below with MY calculations of the impact of this change for Oregon; all the user has to do is select the county of interest. 

Two observations:  

1. Eligibility impacts increase as family size income increases. For the Portland metro area for example the new limit does NOT impact 1 or 2 person households but increases eligible income by 14.7% for 4 person households.
2. Impacts vary by area. In Jackson county ALL household sizes see increases in eligible XLI incomes; 5.1% for a 1 person household, but 50.5% for a 4 person household. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog. 

Maryland Consider the Person Housing Choice Campaign Website Opens.

Website, with focus on HUD Housing Vouchers, is HERE. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Oregon HUD Section 8 Vouchers Under Lease Top 33,000.

A quick review of HUD voucher information shows that Unit Months Leased in Oregon exceeded 33,000 in October 2013. 

Snapshot of UML's by Oregon Housing Authority for October 2013 is pasted below: 

HUD's Voucher Mgt System page with complete data can be found HERE. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Home Forward Plans Health Care Outreach to Voucher and Public Housing Tenants.

Kudos to Home Forward for planned health care outreach efforts.  

From the Board packet for their October meeting (Home Forward YTD Board Packets are available in right pane):

Heath Insurance Outreach: We received a grant from the Oregon Health Authority on behalf of Care Oregon to help our residents sign up for health insurance as part of the Affordable Care Act. Rachael Duke, who now stewards all of our supportive housing efforts in addition to her oversight of the Bud Clark Commons, will spearhead these efforts. We will train staff throughout the agency on how to educate our residents on the options now available to them. While we don’t know precise numbers, based on sampling at a few of our sites, we estimate as many as 50% of the 11,000-plus households in our public housing and Housing Choice Voucher programs may not have health insurance

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Victory for OR Housing Alliance and House Speaker Kotek: Housing Voucher Source of Income Bill Passes Senate and Moves to Governor for Signature.

OR H Speaker Kotek

On what appears to be the closing day of the Oregon legislature the Senate passed HB 2639 (final bill version HERE) that removes the ability to deny an application from a prospective tenant based solely on the fact that the tenant has a HUD housing voucher. (The bill had earlier passed the House late last week).

The bill also sets up a Landlord Guarantee program fund to reimburse landlords for damages above and beyond normal wear and tear, with an upper limit of $5,000. 

Under the umbrella of the Oregon Housing Alliance there were multiple groups and individuals who helped make this possible. I trust that the governor will provide public recognition at the signing ceremony for all of the individuals and groups that made this possible. ( I would list them here, but I am afraid I would miss key groups and individuals and would feel terrible about doing so).

I think that what can be said without hesitation is that without the leadership of House Speaker Tina Kotek the bill would not have enlisted the support, and avoided the strong opposition, that made passage possible.  The industry groups that remained neutral on the bill also deserve props.

Let me add my personal congratulations to Speaker Kotek and her hard working staff AND to all the individuals and groups responsible for expanding housing choice for more than 32,000+ housing voucher families.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

BIG Data: 10 Million Pieces of Data For 4 Years of HUD Voucher Data Now Available, Including Moving to Work Data.

It's hard for me to believe but July 4th marks the start of my 7th year in retirement. To celebrate the occasion I put together another BIG data post.

Last June I created and posted an Excel workbook with 3 years of HUD Voucher data from the Voucher Management System. (Prior post HERE).

I have now added CY 2012 data to the prior data to create a single Excel workbook with 4 calendar years of voucher data, HERE with a permanent link added to the right pane as Voucher VMS Data, US and Oregon: CY 2009-CY2012. 

(The Excel file is too large to embed in this post; the HUD source page for VMS data is HERE, and it includes links to a data dictionary as well as the source data).

The Excel file is LARGE at about 60 MB's because, for the US, the data file contains 89 data elements in 112,800+ rows for 2,300+ housing authorities; that's more than 10 million individual pieces of data.

Included in the workbook are pivot tables for both US and Oregon voucher data; the 89 different data fields included in each worksheet are listed vertically in the READ ME worksheet in the workbook.  

Oregon Monthly Summary for December 2009-2012
For Oregon for December of 2009,2010,2011,and 2012. there is also a summary by housing authority of:

• The count of vouchers in use.
• The total cost for housing assistance payments.
• My calculated per unit monthly cost for housing assistance payments.

At the VERY end of this post I have embedded a PDF version of this Oregon specific worksheet; a direct link is HERE.

MTW Field Added
The last worksheet in this workbook is a new worksheet I put together that lists all 35 HUD designated MTW agencies as of June 2013 and their HUD ID's. (4 additional MTW PHA's selected in December 2012 are not included). 

Using this list I added a data field to the four year voucher data showing the MTW status of each agency, so pivot tables can now used to see how MTW agency voucher use compares with other non MTW agencies. 

Note that because voucher funding is fungible with some MTW agencies, the count of vouchers shown in the VMS database may not include all families receiving voucher funded assistance being provided by that housing authority.

I believe this is by far the most extensive set of HUD voucher data that is available to the public. A look at the field names in the READ ME worksheet provides a good idea about the depth and wide variety of the data that can be retrieved using the included Pivot Table worksheets.

Examples of Data Retrievable with Pivot Tables (All comparisons are between December 2011 and December 2012 VMS data):

Oregon

1. Average per unit monthly HAP costs were reduced by 5.5%/$29 a month, from $492 to $463. [A likely cause of this could be a change in payment standards and/or a shift to smaller average bedroom sizes; changes in the quality of data reporting could also play a role].
2. Total reported vouchers in use (excluding mainstream)  increased by 3,344/10.5% from 31,922 to 35,266 .[See important note 3 under "US" below].

US

1. Total reported vouchers in use (excluding mainstream)  increased by 232,971 vouchers/11.1%  from 2,107,656 to 2,340,627 vouchers. 
2. 35 MTW agencies accounted for 12.1% of vouchers in use as of December 2012 (282,383 of 2,340,627 vouchers). [There are more than 2,300 housing authorities who report the use of HUD vouchers]. 
3. There was a substantial increase in vouchers in use reported from June to July 2012. The increase was 8.8%/187,000+ vouchers in one month. CLEARLY their was some unexplained change in reporting that occurred during that period. This was a fiscal year change for many PHA's, but the change in vouchers in use during the same periods during prior fiscal years was much smaller. It is possible that improved reporting from Moving to Work agencies may account for some of the change. (I have pointed out this unexplained significant increase to HUD HQS but did not receive a response by the time of this posting). 

Caveats

1. Changes in the quality of VMS reporting could account for some of the differences in costs and vouchers in use. (See comment 3 under "US" above).
2. The data worksheets are composed of 16 different worksheets I individually imported into one workbook; while I made every effort to avoid errors it is always possible that I made some transposition errors. IF you discover any please let me know and I will post a corrected version of the workbook.
3. Because of timing it is unlikely that this data  incorporates any direct results from sequestration. I would expect to see reductions in reported vouchers in use once sequestration begins to take hold. 

PDF embed of Oregon voucher worksheet, for December of 2009-2012, is below: 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog

MTW Hearing Video.

From House Financial Services Subcommittee yesterday, HERE, and also embedded below (File is large at 185 MB's; hearing was about 1 1/4 hours).


Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

MTW Hearing Testimony From US House Financial Services Subcommittee.

Combined written testimony I put together from PHA's at hearing of US House Financial Services Subcommittee today is HERE; GAO testimony is HERE. (Sigh; why does GAO insist on adding security to their PDF's so they can't be combined with other PDF files?).

Hearing page is HERE; video may appear after completion?

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Oregon Source of Income Voucher Legislation Moves to Full Ways and Means

A work session was held this afternoon before WM Transportation Subcommittee, and HB 2639 as amended was voted out to full WM Committee. The effective date of the legislation would be July 2014.

Some substantive changes were via a 15A version of the bill and a GF annual price tag of $150k is now estimated. (Annual HUD voucher housing assistance payments in Oregon are close to $200 million).
 
Background materials from the hearing are HERE; adopted changes to the prior bill version can be found on pages 6-9.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog 

Housing Works (Central Oregon HA) Get Recognition for Homeownership; Northeastern Oregon HA Deserves Some Love, Too.

Bend Bulletin story HERE says that Housing Works over time has used 19 vouchers for home ownership, part of 150 vouchers used for home ownership statewide.

My data shows that at the end of 2012 8 vouchers were in use for home ownership by Housing Works while 106 were in use for home ownership statewide. (That is from universe of well north of 30,000+ vouchers statewide and 1,300+ in use by Housing Works). 

Northeastern Oregon HA Accounted for Nearly 1/4 of All Oregon Vouchers That Were Used for Home Ownership.
As of the end of 2012 Northeastern Oregon HA led all Oregon housing authorities in the use of vouchers for home ownership with 26 vouchers, out of of a universe of less than 700 vouchers. Remarkably, this  means that Northeastern Oregon HA accounted for nearly 1/4 of all vouchers in Oregon used for home ownership at the end of 2012. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Audio of Housing Voucher Source of Income Ways and Means Hearing from Thursday.

State media website was acting up, but managed to capture audio of most of today's hearing on HB 2639; meeting materials and bill text are available HERE. 

Audio file is on Internet Archive, HERE.

Speaker Kotek is the first speaker.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Cook County Passes Voucher Source of Income Legislation.

Chicago Sun Times story is HERE. (Story reports that Chicago ordinance has been in effect for many years).

Wikipedia says Chicago about 54% of Cook County population, and that the 5.5 million population of Cook County  is larger than 29 states. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Examples of Goodies from HUD Congressional Budget Justification Documents.

Every year HUD posts detailed congressional justifications by program. FY 2014 justifications are HERE.

From the Public Housing Tenant Based Rental Assistance FY 2014 congressional justification document HERE, some examples of the goodies that can be discovered for those willing to comb through the CJ details: 

HUD says 

1. That 107 PHA's have opted out of the voucher program since 2009 because of funding problems, including 13 opting out so far this FY;  6 PHA's have declined VASH vouchers because of funding problems.
2. It anticipates saving $235 million annually via proposed changes to income targeting , the increase in the medical expense exclusion threshold from 3 to 10 percent, and a change in how utility allowances are determined in the case of families who rent units that are larger than the bedroom size of the voucher for which they qualify under the PHA subsidy standards.
3. It wants to eliminate the annual PHA plan requirement

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

In Advance of Fair Housing Month: One Easy Thing HUD Could Do to Promote Fair Housing in LIHTC Program.

HUD publishes an annual database of LIHTC projects placed into service HERE. It includes a data field showing the 2010 Census Tract ID as well as the zip code. (Most recent data dictionary is HERE).

ACS 5 Year poverty data is available at the census tract AND zip code level. 

My prior post HERE has an Excel file that matches up Oregon LIHTC projects with ACS 5 Year poverty rates at the census tract level.   

HUD could do a similar match each year to include the most recent poverty rate (and counts) at the zip code AND census tract level for all LIHTC projects in their database.  This would allow users and researchers to parse out the percentages and counts of LIHTC projects and units in a given locality that are located in areas with high or low poverty rates. 

In addition to assisting in evaluating access to opportunity it would also help evaluate housing choice available to voucher holders who are a key eligible population for LIHTC projects. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.