Council's resolve will be tested

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Middletown City Council will apparently make another effort this year to begin reducing the number of Section 8 housing vouchers under the city's purview, but it remains to be seen whether council members will remain committed to that goal.

City Hall seemed to be on that same track last year after council members made a startling discovery: That the city's federal housing assistance program had grown from 767 vouchers in 2000 to 1,662 in 2008, and no one appeared to know — at least in public — how it had happened. We would guess that it's no coincidence that, in roughly the same time span, the city's poverty rate grew from 12 to 22 percent — one of the primary reasons that Forbes.com recently declared Middletown one of the nation's 10 fastest-dying cities.

Middletown has more vouchers than all the rest of Butler County, which has less than 1,000, and thus has "an imbalance" of Section 8 housing vouchers because the decision to acquire more was made "without a conscious conversation with council," City Manager Judy Gilleland told council last year.

The apparent result? Middletown contained 15 percent of Butler County's population in 2007 but is home to 23 percent of the county's poor. And no surprise — it also is home to 56 percent of the county's Section 8 population.

So 2008 was a year of discovery for city leaders as it relates to Middletown's Section 8 program. At least one council member publicly admitted he knew little about the program before discussion about its future were well under way.

Give Gilleland credit for negotiating through these delicate waters. She inherited the 1,600-voucher program and didn't try to assign any blame to her predecessors; instead, she tried to steer council toward making "conscious" choices about the program's future and whether it should stay under the city's control or be turned over to the county's metropolitan housing authority.

In the end, after a laborious process, council members decided not only to retain the city's Section 8 program (one of only two operated by cities in Ohio), but to negotiate a new contract with CONSOC Housing Consultants, the company that has been managing the program for the city — despite numerous criticisms of CONSOC's performance.

And that brings us back to square one — what to do with Section 8.

It now appears that council will attempt to prune the number of vouchers and thus reduce the scope of the program. Gilleland told council's housing subcommittee last week that the city's new contract with CONSOC includes a provision to reduce — through attrition — the number of vouchers by half, from 1,662 to 800. In other words, the city won't be seeking new vouchers and will be selective about replacing them when local vouchers move elsewhere or terminate — in order to return the number to under 1,000.

We expect that council's commitment to this strategy will be tested again soon.

Last year, Gilleland's initial discussion regarding Section 8's future here resulted in a number of tenants attending a subsequent council meeting and providing emotional and compelling testimony about the program's value to them and disputing stereotypes about Section 8 tenants.

Not long after that evening of touching and powerful remarks by tenants, council's focus abruptly shifted from the bloated number of vouchers to who would manage the program in the future. With little comment, council dropped the idea of dropping Section 8.

That was last year. Now that CONSOC has been brought back into the fold, attention is shifting back to the number of vouchers. But it would be surprising if council is not publicly challenged again by residents who rely on the vouchers.

In our estimation, council members are correct to be finally exerting some control over this program, but will they be able to do it in a manner that doesn't appear to create hardships for tenants? And will they be able to resist their impassioned pleas if tenants return to council chambers? Getting this horse back in the barn is going to be a challenge for council members — and a test of their resolve.

I'm told that some of the Section 8 landlords own 50 houses...so that's $50,000 in income a month. I just can't see them going down without a fight.

I agree. I wish the City would make the list of Section 8 landlords public but I don't think they will. How much money do you think these landlords gave to the campaigns of the current council members over the past nine years? Are any of our coucil members involved or connected in any way to the Section 8 program? I just can't believe that we doubled our Section 8 housing and Mr. Kohler had no knowledge of what was going on.

 

I also talked to some people that were at the Mayors speech and they basically stated they were fed up with the, "Middletown is wonderful", "Middletown has a bright future", "We have great trees and wonderful Parks", speech over and over again by the City with nothing being done.  They want results and want to see some action taken, even if some of the actions fail they want to move the City Forward.

 

It is time for more and more Citizens to voice their opinions and use the power of the Ballot Box to rectify the problems that are sitting downtown. 

What FUTURE?
I'm tired of hearing they want our involvement...what a joke!
They really don't want new thoughts or new ways to do business in Middletown.
If they don't clean up the mess from the past they will never be able to deal with the problems of the future.
The power of the ballot box is now our only hope.