Posted on: Sunday, May 29, 2005

EDITORIAL
Retooling housing aid can help more families

The federal housing aid program known as Section 8 clearly was not intended to solve the problem of a lack of affordable housing.

It helps, but only insofar as there are landlords willing to rent to subsidized tenants or builders who can make a profit on below-market housing.

What's needed are more innovative programs that make a Section 8-landlord relationship work and more creative use of government initiatives, including tax-credit plans, aimed at encouraging below-market housing.

At the heart of this crisis is a shortage of lower-priced rental units. While recent state legislation may begin to address the issue, it will not provide any immediate relief.

Hawai'i has few safety nets for lower-income renters other than Section 8. And even this net has sizable holes in it that government must fix.

On O'ahu, housing officials are discussing the consolidation of city and state Section 8 programs that serve the island, a move for greater efficiency that makes good sense.

And beyond that merger, government must work creatively to extend the shrinking pool of dollars to more of the working poor, and to encourage the private development of lower-cost units that, even with the inevitable reduced levels of assistance, the most disadvantaged could afford.

On O'ahu, the waiting list of those who want a voucher has grown to an estimated 10,500 people, leading the city to stop taking new applications.

One difficulty is that fewer landlords are willing to accept Section 8 tenants in this white-hot real estate market. Some landlords complain that housing agencies take too long to deliver their subsidy checks. Others say that nobody in government goes to bat for them when there's a problem tenant.

More work must be done to make the program attractive to rental property owners. This is where the city Section 8 office has had some recent success.

For instance, it has assigned special "outreach" specialists to help landlords with problems, putting applicants through more careful scrutiny and working to streamline the way subsidy checks are cut.

Similar efforts must be made statewide.

On O'ahu, the city has placed virtually all of its beneficiaries in homes, while about 500 of the 3,000 who hold rental vouchers from the comparable state program have not yet found housing.

The state already has turned over its Neighbor Island programs to the counties; now the same thing should be done on O'ahu. A unified program would save federal dollars now being spent on duplicate bureaucracies.

Congress also is considering ways to make the program more flexible, allowing housing agencies to reduce the subsidy offered to each individual renter so that more families on the waiting list might get at least partial help. In Hawai'i, with its high cost of living, this might price the units beyond the reach of the most needy renters, pushing more families toward homelessness.

We can't let that happen. More steps should be taken to prod developers toward creative financing for low-income housing projects. A greater use of the low-income tax-credit program, already tapped for projects such as the formerly state-run Palolo housing complex, should be encouraged.

Many are already hovering on the brink of homelessness. Only cooperation between government and private landlords can keep a painful problem from growing worse.