Subsidized housing: Remember the human factor

Cold winter winds and swirling snow make for cozy and comfortable evenings inside a warm house, maybe with a fireplace roaring and a cuddly animal nearby.

However, for the many people who struggle to afford housing, winter isn’t welcome. The winds are piercing, the snow adding another layer of cold and damp to the discomfort. I think about this every day at work, helping people find and stay in affordable housing. I’m the state manager of Ohio’s performance-based contract administration (PBCA) contract at the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA), part of CGI’s work with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Managing subsidized housing programs can be complicated because there are so many entities involved. I serve as a liaison between HUD, property owners and staff.

Providing benefits to the right people

CGI provides Contract Administration Services for a portfolio of Project Based Rental Assistance (PBRA) properties as part of HUD’s PBCA program. CGI performs PBCA services in six jurisdictions:  the District of Columbia, Florida, New York, northern California, Tennessee and here in Ohio.

Across these regions, our PBCA portfolio includes more than 3,400 properties, which encompasses over 300,000 units of affordable housing for more than 520,000 people.

This past year, CGI paid out almost $4.5 billion in subsidies, conducted over 1,500 onsite property audits, completed more than 3,600 contract renewals and rent adjustments, and handled over 4,500 resident inquiries.

Subsidized housing is always under scrutiny, and our job as CMHA’s contractor includes ensuring we’re in compliance with HUD’s rules. We conduct management and occupancy reviews to ensure people are getting all of the benefits to which they’re entitled, but also to ensure they are eligible for all of the benefits they’re getting.

We serve both sides of the fence in that sense. We make sure the owner-agents and tenants are getting the proper benefits, but also that they’re not getting more than they’re supposed to, that tenants are not receiving federal resources that they are not entitled to.

Every day, we manage a multitude of regulations, policies, and laws. At the end of the day, though, it is rewarding to think about the people we have helped. Many of the tenants are elderly, or handicapped. We have low-income families and single women with children. We also serve resident aliens, legal immigrants who are entitled to benefits.

These are all vulnerable populations, people who would very possibly be homeless if the government didn’t provide these housing subsidies.

Facing limitations

Unlike the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, the PBCA program works with multi-family housing, such as apartment buildings and duplexes. The tenants who live in these settings face a wide range of challenges, including language and literacy barriers, lack of access to common technologies like smart phones and sometimes crippling poverty, even with housing assistance. CGI operates a call center to help residents with health or safety concerns regarding their properties—it’s our job to ensure owners comply with state and federal standards and make repairs quickly when needed.

While HCV benefits follow the residents—meaning they receive the subsidies to apply to their payments—PBCA Housing Assistance Payments (HAP) go to the property owners to offset the shortfall between what the residents pay and market rate for the units.

This means when tenants leave, it’s their responsibility to find another location participating in the program, if that is their goal. The subsidized units in the programs we manage are usually full. Elderly and handicapped individuals occupy a significant percentage of them, and those residents tend to stay in their units year after year.  Younger tenants though, and especially families, are more mobile.

Rewarding work

Even with these challenges that we have to address, this is gratifying work. Part of CGI’s ethos is to make a positive impact on communities. Often that comes in the form of partnerships with area schools and civic organizations, but here we’re doing good as a direct result of our mission.

The overall goal of this program is to assist in providing decent, safe and sanitary housing to those in need. I think it is good to pause now and then and reflect on that.

We work to ensure that people who can’t afford a home have a safe and comfortable place to live. It is gratifying at the end of the day knowing that we've helped somebody, that our contact center helped somebody resolve an issue, or we straightened out an eligibility question so the person can stay in their home. We work with owners to provide long-term contract renewals so that they can stay in the program, keeping their affordable housing units available for potential tenants.

Shelter is one of the most basic human needs. I’m glad I can be a part of ensuring more people have that need met.