| Contents | Foreword | Intro | Findings | Using PO in '06 | Appendix A | Appendix B | Appendix C | Appendix D |
|---|
Key Findings
Priced Out in 2006 Findings
The major findings from the Priced Out in 2006 study
include the following:
• In 2006 – for the first
time – national average rents for both one-bedroom and efficiency units were
more than the entire monthly income of an individual relying solely on SSI
income. As growth in the cost of modest
rental housing continued to outpace cost-of-living increases in SSI payments,
the national average rent for a one-bedroom apartment rose to 113.1 percent of
monthly SSI – up from 109.6 percent in 2004.
Studio/efficiency rents rose above monthly SSI payments for the first
time, topping out at 100.1 percent as a national average compared to 96.1
percent in 2004. (See Table 1 and Table 2.)
• From 2004-2006, people
with disabilities who relied on SSI as their source of income descended further
into poverty. In 2006, the annual income
of a single individual receiving SSI payments was
$7,584 – equal to only 18.2 percent of the national median income for a one-person
household and almost 25 percent below the federal poverty level. (See Table 3.)
• Since the first Priced
Out study was published in 1998, the value of SSI payments relative to
median income has declined precipitously – from 24.4 percent of median income
in 1998 to 18.2 percent in 2006 – while national average rents have
skyrocketed. The national average rent
for a modest one-bedroom unit rose from $462 in 1998 to $715 in 2006 – an
increase of 55 percent.
• Discretionary state SSI
supplements provided by 21 states are not the solution to the housing
affordability problems experienced by people with disabilities living on SSI
payments. The State of
Priced Out in 2006 uses a very simple but compelling methodology to measure the
severity of the housing affordability problems experienced by people with
disabilities in today’s rental housing market.
By comparing HUD Fair Market Rents with the purchasing power of monthly
SSI payments – including state SSI supplements – one can easily determine
whether a single adult receiving SSI can obtain affordable housing in the
current rental housing market.
Unfortunately, the answer to this question is a resounding no in every
single one of the nation’s 2605 distinct metropolitan and non-metropolitan
housing market areas.
SSI and Median Income
The data in Priced Out in 2006 reveals that people with
disabilities receiving SSI also fell further into poverty between 2004 and
2006. Between 2004 and 2006, the median
income of people with disabilities dropped from 18.4 percent to 18.2 percent of
median income – its lowest level ever.
Median income is an important housing policy indicator because
most government housing programs have eligibility requirements that relate to
median income. For example, all
households at or below 50 percent of median income qualify for HUD public
housing units, Housing Choice Vouchers, and HUD Assisted Housing with
project-based Section 8 units. Households at or below 30 percent of median
income are considered extremely low-income under HUD guidelines and receive a
priority under the Housing Choice Voucher program. With incomes at 18.2 percent of median, SSI
recipients are one of the lowest-income groups eligible for federal housing
assistance.
Employment and the “Housing Wage”
It is often said that the answer to the housing affordability gap
for people with disabilities is employment.
National Housing Wage data makes it clear that when people with
disabilities move from the SSI program to employment, many are still likely to
experience housing affordability problems.
The concept of the Housing Wage was developed by the National Low
Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) – a national organization dedicated solely to
ending
In 2006, the NLIHC’s national Housing Wage for a one-bedroom
rental unit was $13.75.5 This
means that a household must earn that amount of money per hour (based on a
forty hour work week) to pay the national average rent for a one-bedroom rental
unit based on HUD’s 2006 Fair Market Rents.
As stated in Out of Reach:
The Federal minimum wage today is $5.15, as it has been since
1997. Comparing the federal minimum wage
to the National Housing Wage is a strong indication that simply working
full-time at “just any job” is not sufficient to provide a person access to
affordable housing today.
-
Out of
Reach (www.nlihc.org)
See Table 4 for a
comparison of SSI and the NLIHC’s One-Bedroom Housing Wage.
Trends Since Priced Out in 1998
Priced Out in 2006 reveals that the housing problems of people with disabilities
receiving SSI have grown substantially worse over the past eight years. Since the
publication of Priced Out in 1998, modest rents for one-bedroom units
have skyrocketed from 69 percent of SSI to 113.1 percent of SSI – an
astonishing 64 percent increase. Rents
for studio/efficiency units increased 71 percent – from 58.5 percent of SSI in
1998 to 100.1 percent of SSI in 2006. (See Figure 2.)
As rents for modest units soared, the income of people with
disabilities receiving SSI dropped substantially compared to median income –
from 24.4 percent of median income in 1998 to 18.2 percent in 2006. This deadly combination of escalating rents
and the declining value of SSI means that the affordable housing crisis
confronting people with disabilities has now reached epic proportions.
These disturbing trends make it clear that the federal government
must act now and must act boldly to reverse housing policies of the past few
years by initiating a significant and sustained increase in the supply of new
rental subsidies targeted to people with disabilities with the lowest
incomes. Even if “the bottom falls out”
of the rental housing market or SSI payments increase significantly – or both –
people with disabilities with the lowest incomes will still not have enough money
to pay for decent housing – even housing produced through other so-called
“affordable” housing programs.
Priced Out of “Affordable” Housing
Programs
Because payment levels are so low, people who rely on SSI are also
priced out of federally financed “affordable” rental units, including those
created through the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. This program is now the federal government’s
major affordable housing financing tool with more than 110,000 units funded
every year through State Housing Finance Agencies. In its basic form, the
program creates units affordable for households with incomes at 50 percent and
60 percent of median income.
People with disabilities living on SSI payments equal to 18.2
percent of median income simply cannot move in to LIHTC-financed “affordable”
units unless they have rent subsidies. A
few progressive states – including
Providing this type of “deep” rental subsidy to ensure
affordability for the lowest-income households has historically been the
responsibility of the federal government.
HUD’s current leadership argues that it is “too expensive” to provide
housing for the poorest Americans and that scarce federal housing subsidy
funding should be directed “more efficiently” to higher-income households who
cost less to serve. It is tragic that when state housing agencies have the
political will to address the nation’s most serious housing crisis, the federal
rent subsidy resources they need to ensure affordability for people with
SSI-level incomes are not available.
TAC/CCD Campaign for 150,000 New Federal
Subsidies
To address this compelling housing crisis that affects our
nation’s most vulnerable citizens, the CCD Housing Task Force and TAC are
calling on the federal government to create 150,000 new federal rental
subsidies targeted to people with disabilities over the next ten years. It has become clear that without a comprehensive, sustained, and
bi-partisan commitment to this issue, appropriations will continue to stagnate
or decline.
Two federal subsidy programs must provide the resources for this
150,000 Unit Campaign:
• The Housing Choice
Voucher program – 100,000 subsidies
• The Section 811
Supportive Housing for Persons with Disabilities program – 50,000 subsidies
These are the only two HUD programs that can provide new permanent
rent subsidies for non-elderly people with disabilities with extremely low
incomes. By making a ten-year commitment
to create 15,000 subsidies each year the federal government can play a
leadership role in helping people with disabilities leave institutions and
other restrictive settings, assuring elderly parents that their adult child
with a disability will have a home after they are no longer able to provide it,
and prevent the tragedy of homelessness among people with disabilities.
TAC and the CCD Housing Task Force believe the goal of 150,000 new
federal rent subsidies is well within reach:
• For the Housing Choice
Voucher program, Congress should return to the extraordinarily successful
bi-partisan policy of the late 1990s and again appropriate 10,000 new vouchers
each year targeted to people with disabilities.
These vouchers are needed because the supply of studio/efficiency and
one-bedroom federally subsidized units for non-elderly adults
with disabilities has declined by 50 percent since “elderly only”
designation policies were approved by Congress in 1992. HUD data indicate that over 500,000 of the
nation’s one million subsidized studio/efficiency and one-bedroom units now
have “elderly only” policies – closing the door to thousands of non-elderly
people with disabilities.
• For the Section 811
Supportive Housing for Persons with Disabilities Program, Congress should adopt
the recommendations of TAC and the CCD Housing Task Force and enact major legislative
reforms in the Section 811 program. By
creating a structured link between the “affordable” units in federal LIHTC
properties and Section 811 project-based rent subsidies, people with
disabilities will have much greater access to high quality new rental units –
including accessible and barrier-free units – produced routinely every year
through this “affordable” housing program.
Modest increases in current Section 811 funding levels accompanied by
these major program improvements will inaugurate a new and promising era in
federal supportive housing policy for people with disabilities.
TAC and the CCD Housing Task Force believe that when the federal
government takes the lead to provide 150,000 new subsidies, many local and
state government housing officials will follow suit and contribute additional
federal resources under their control.
For example, federal HOME funds managed at the state and local level,
and existing Housing Choice Vouchers, could be prioritized for community
integration strategies. Collectively
these efforts could result in an increase in housing opportunities for people
with disabilities far beyond the 150,000 new federal subsidies.
Other Important Federal Policies
In addition to new rental subsidies targeted to people with
disabilities from the Housing Choice Voucher program and Section 811 program,
the CCD Housing Task Force and TAC urge the federal government take affirmative
action on two related policy goals:
• Enact the National Housing Trust Fund Act of
2007, which will expand affordable rental housing opportunities for people with
disabilities by targeting extremely low-income households at or below 30
percent of median income; and
• Achieve the goal of ending chronic
homelessness by expanding the number of new permanent supportive housing units
provided through HUD’s McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance programs.
Cost-Effectiveness
Helping people with serious and long-term disabilities lead stable
and productive lives in the community is not just the right thing to do, it also saves the government money. Numerous studies have documented that
providing decent, safe, affordable and accessible housing and support services
in the community costs much less than paying for a nursing home bed, or an
emergency shelter or a psychiatric hospital stay.6
The federal Medicaid budget continues to grow – driven primarily
by the high cost of institutional care.
HHS programs such as “Money Follows the Person” were created because HHS
officials understand that providing Medicaid services and supports in the
community is a much more cost effective approach than facility-based models of
care. As mentioned earlier, what has
been missing from this policy discussion is how people will pay for the housing
they need.7
Federal officials thus far have elected to ignore this basic math
– which shows that to achieve significant cost savings in programs like
Medicaid, it is necessary to spend a little more money in the HUD budget for
rent subsidies dedicated to people with disabilities. For example, a $5,000 per year Section 811
rent subsidy used by a person with a disability in a LIHTC rental project could
save $10,000-$20,000 or more annually in Medicaid funding for that individual
after taking into consideration the cost of community-based services and
supports.8
Conclusion – Using Priced Out Data to
Make A Difference
Priced Out in 2006 makes it clear that people with disabilities are being left out
and left behind when it comes to national housing policy. Despite the powerful civil rights message
about community inclusion and community integration in the Americans with
Disabilities Act, this law is an empty promise for the lowest-income people
with disabilities as long as they cannot afford decent, safe and affordable
housing in the community. Recent federal
housing policies, extremely low SSI incomes and rising rents have combined to
create the “perfect storm” in terms of the housing crisis experienced by people
with disabilities in today’s rental housing market.
TAC and the CCD Housing Task Force urge all advocates in the
disability community to use the data in Priced Out to support our
campaign to create 150,000 new housing opportunities for people with
disabilities during the next ten years and to advocate with your Congressional
delegation so that these new resources can be provided.
We also urge you to use Priced Out data to convince your
local and state housing officials to adopt a high priority for people with
disabilities with SSI level incomes within their local and state housing
policies. Four mandated federal housing
plans – The Consolidated Plan, the Public Housing Agency Plan, the Continuum of
Care Plan, and the Qualified Allocation Plan – are prepared at the state and
local level and determine how billions of federal housing funds will be
spent. Housing advocates can use Priced
Out in 2006 local and state level data included in Appendix A to positively affect these plans and help
increase affordable housing opportunities for people with disabilities. See “Using Priced Out Information” to learn more about these housing plans.
Using Priced Out in 2006, we
must work together to convince our federal, state and local housing officials
who control valuable rental subsidy resources that the acute housing problems
experienced by people with disabilities with the lowest incomes must be
addressed by a bold commitment to end this crisis. As Eunice Kennedy Shriver writes so
eloquently in the Foreword of this publication, the disability community has
made great strides by working together but we still have much to
accomplish. To achieve the goal of true
community integration for people with disabilities, we must all make affordable
housing our priority!
1 Single
individuals receiving SSI may not have assets that exceed $2,000.
2 Some states provide SSI
supplements for people with specific types of disabilities and/or people with
disabilities residing in certain housing “program” settings such as group homes
or licensed board and care facilities.
Only those state SSI supplements received by all people with
disabilities living in the community are included in the Priced Out in 2006
study analysis.
3
Gold, Steve. “Congratulations Money Follow the Person
Awardees.” Information Bulletin # 188:
www.stevegoldada.com.
4 The 2005 State of the
States in Developmental Disabilities report found that 711,000 adults with
developmental disabilities were still living in the family home where at least
one parent was age 62 years or older.
5 The national one-bedroom
Housing Wage of $13.75 was calculated using national
Fair Market Rent averages and data from the National Low Income Housing
Coalition.
6 For
more information on these studies, see www.tacinc.org/HH/Louisiana.htm.
7 While
HHS has offered housing advice and technical assistance to states with “Money
Follows the Person” grants, most of the housing
resources suggested – such as existing Housing Choice Vouchers or HOME
program funding – either have extremely long waiting lists or only provide
short-term assistance. Federal rules do not permit Medicaid funds to be used
for rental subsidies.
8 While the cost of providing Medicaid-funded community-based
services can vary greatly from person to person, studies have repeatedly found
that the cost of providing housing and supports in the community is
considerably less than the cost of facility-based care.