| Worcester Housing Authority Executive Director Raymond V. Mariano was ready to launch a groundbreaking new public-housing program, after receiving an Aug. 14 approval letter from the Massachusetts office of the Office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). But on Sept. 22, HUD rescinded its approval, saying it had been in error, just as Mariano was ready to send thousands of notification letters to WHA public housing residents.
Mariano, 64, is acknowledged in Worcester as a tenacious and outspoken advocate for those in constant economic instability. He was a popular four-term mayor from 1993 to 2001 in a Plan E form of municipal government, in which the city manager, not the mayor, is the prime mover. He grew up in public housing when it was a temporary stop for returning World War II veterans. But the GI Bill benefits and the robust postwar job market have changed or disappeared, while the economic needs remain. And that’s the problem, says Mariano.
So he developed a program called A Better Life (ABL), which has been funded since 2011 by the Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts (HFCM), receiving a total of $1.8 million in funding from the organization since 2011. The program is now mandatory for those who want to get to the top of the WHA 10-year waiting list, now 12,000 people long, some of whom are currently homeless. The requirement: ABL participants must engage 30 hours a week in work, school or community service. If they don’t meet those goals within three years, they face eviction. Additionally, residency in WHA housing is capped at seven years for able-bodied people under 55.
ABL also includes a rent escrow program; if earnings increase due to employment, rent increases will be set aside for the enrollee’s future use, or in the income disregard program to immediately accelerate debt reduction. This removes a major disincentive to seek employment at higher income levels.
“If you do it right, you can move hundreds of people out of public housing,” Mariano said – leading the way to serve hundreds or thousands more.
About 39 housing agencies around the country have federal approval for programs called Move to Work (MTW) that impose time limits, but they required congressional approval, which can take years. The WHA has not applied for MTW status for the ABL program. “I don’t think Move to Work is necessary for us to do [ABL],” Mariano told Banker & Tradesman. He’s also not looking for more money from the feds; he just wants more flexibility to utilize the money the WHA already has.
A Matter Of Semantics
For its part, HUD said the time limits are the concern. Early last week, Public Affairs Specialist Rhonda Siciliano told Banker & Tradesman that the Massachusetts HUD office would reach out to the WHA to discuss the issue. She said HUD had apologized to Mariano for the rescission and HUD’s apparent failure to read an attachment in the final plan, submitted in July, regarding the time limits in the plan submitted in the August document, but under current federal law, the program could not be approved because of its imposition of time limits.
Mariano contends that Family Self Sufficiency, a WHA program under HUD approval for the past year and a half, imposes far stricter participation criteria than ABL. This program requires recipients to find work within three months, rather than three years. The key difference between FSS and ABL, he said, is the use of the term “work requirement” versus “time limit,” but the result is the same.
HUD’s Siciliano commended the WHA’s handling of the FSS program, and reiterated that HUD’s rescission of the approval for ABL was occasioned by an absence of federal approval as an MTW program.
Jan Yost, president and CEO of the HFCM, said the organization will continue to fund ABL. The organization’s typical funding window extends for five years, from the date of the startup funding.
She notes that the rent escrow component of ABL is a launching pad for economic stability and real financial freedom. “The current system keeps people in place; in public housing, the rent goes up [when income rises],” she said.
In terms of the downstream benefits of ABL, Mariano said the priority is the people. “It’s not our mission to stabilize private housing,” he said. The development of more economically-stable households strengthens the rental market, which in Worcester is in great need of viable tenants. The city’s housing stock of two- and three-family housing needs owner-occupiers, but they in turn need good renters, he said: “It makes a material difference on how they view the property in which they live.”
Email: coneill@thewarrengroup.com
