Chicago Housing Authority could continue to redirect funds under controversial HUD program extension
As Congress nears the eleventh hour in its 2024 budget negotiations, a long-standing housing initiative up for renewal in the legislation is sparking concern among advocates who say the program keeps thousands of Chicagoans from getting housing assistance every year.
Called Moving to Work, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development program allows CHA and other public housing authorities to use money allocated for housing vouchers and public housing for other purposes, such as providing free meals to seniors and youth and helping residents find jobs.
Set to expire in 2028, the program would be extended another 15 years, through 2043, under a proposal before the Senate Committee on Appropriations, despite objections from housing advocates who say greater oversight is needed for agencies in the program, including CHA.
“Chicago is a very extreme example, but it’s a really important example of a housing authority and how they are using their MTW flexibilities not necessarily to benefit the residents,” said Deborah Thrope, deputy director of the National Housing Law Project.
Established in 1996, Moving to Work is intended to give housing authorities flexibility in how they meet local housing needs and to help residents find work and become self-sufficient. But housing advocates say the agencies end up diverting millions of dollars every year that could be used to get residents off voucher waitlists and build much-needed public housing.
Last year, CHA redirected an estimated $74 million in federal voucher dollars to other uses through the program, keeping more than 6,000 families from getting off the waitlist, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank focused on reducing poverty.
CHA is among the original 39 public housing agencies to adopt Moving to Work. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates more than 55,000 families across those agencies were left without vouchers in 2022 as a result of the program.
While CHA did not comment directly on the center’s findings, CHA CEO Tracey Scott said the agency’s participation in Moving to Work is critical to meeting the city’s housing needs, noting that HUD provides funding for housing but not services to support residents.
“We are talking about people and affecting people’s lives,” said Scott, who is president of the MTW Collaborative, a nonprofit membership organization that advocates for Moving to Work. “MTW is in Chicago’s DNA.”
Of CHA’s $1.2 billion budget for 2022, more than $916 million was composed of Moving to Work funds. The majority, $575.4 million, was used to fund the voucher program, while $159.3 million went toward property and asset management and $53.6 million was spent on capital repairs and improvements. About $76.7 million was spent on personnel and $28.6 million on paying down debt. Another $22.7 million was budgeted for resident services, though additional expenses for those services were built into other parts of the budget, so the actual amount was higher, CHA said.
Since 2020, CHA has used its funding flexibility under Moving to Work to employ around 6,000 youth during the summer, fund over 500 college scholarships for residents, provide more than 580,000 and 170,000 meals for seniors and youth, respectively, and help more than 150 families purchase a home. It has also used the funds to hire service coordinators for 49 senior buildings, support the city’s homeless prevention programs, develop new CHA housing and improve thousands of existing units, according to the agency.
CHA did not provide a detailed breakdown of where the funds go, but said many of the programs are funded through the resident services line item, which has ranged from more than $35 million to more than $41 million per year in recent years.
Thousands wait for vouchers
The Housing Choice Voucher Program, the primary federal housing voucher program, formerly known as Section 8, allows public housing authorities to provide subsidies to low-income residents who find housing in the private market. Most of the vouchers are required to go to families who make no more than 50% of the area median income, which for a family of four in Chicago is $53,900, according to CHA.
Residents with vouchers from CHA pay 30%-40% of their income toward rent and utilities, and CHA covers the rest. But with 25,200 people on the waitlist, it can take years, even decades, to get a voucher.
Brittany King, 33, was offered a voucher in 2015 after a five-year wait but was unable to find a place to live in the time CHA gave her to use the voucher. Now, the disability rights advocate and mother of a 4-year-old has been on the waitlist for another five years.
King lives in Lincoln Park, receiving housing through the Anixter Center, an organization that supports people with disabilities. She pays $194 in monthly rent, which is 30% of her monthly income.
While she appreciates the intent of the Moving to Work program, King said she would prefer all the funding be used toward housing people.
“Scholarships are important, however, housing is a basic necessity,” King said. “The Chicago Housing Authority should stand for housing people, and at this time, it does not seem as though that is the case.”
CHA provides vouchers to 41,000 households — more than 92,000 people — according to its fiscal year 2023 budget book. About 2,400 families leave the voucher program every year, opening up spots for people on the waitlist. Thousands more families end up coming off the waitlist every year for reasons such as no longer being eligible or failing to respond when their name comes up, the agency said.
When CHA last opened the waitlist in 2014 for four weeks, the agency received 280,000 applications, 70,000 of which were approved for the waitlist. CHA said it has other types of voucher and public housing waitlists that are always open.
While CHA said it serves Chicagoans in other ways through the funding deregulation, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found in 2021 that about 800 families received assistance through the alternative programs in Chicago, compared with thousands of families who didn’t receive housing vouchers.
“Generally, the ways that this money is used tends to be things that are less effective at helping the lowest-income families than vouchers are,” said Will Fischer, director of housing policy and research at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
CHA argues it has been able to serve more families, not fewer, over the years because of its participation in Moving to Work. In 2022, the agency served 63,449 families through its public housing and Housing Choice Voucher programs compared with 49,921 in 1999.
Scott also takes issue with criticism from housing advocates that CHA is not building sufficient housing.
According to a HUD document from January 2022, CHA tops the list of public housing authorities with the most capacity to build additional units under the Faircloth Amendment, a federal law that restricts agencies’ ability to own and operate public housing. With more than 19,000 units still to build, CHA is more than 7,000 units higher than the next agency on the list, as of September 2021.
Scott said 3,500 new mixed-income housing units have been built in Chicago since 2019, with 1,700 units currently under construction, something she said can be accomplished because of the agency’s flexibility under its Moving to Work status.
The complaints about the Moving to Work program are not new. The Tribune reported in 2017 on a Center for Tax and Budget Accountability study that showed CHA had paid off all its debt, overfunded its pension plan and stashed away hundreds of millions of dollars in reserves while it failed to rebuild thousands of demolished public housing units, thanks to the flexibility offered through Moving to Work. CHA pushed back against the findings in the report, according to the Tribune article.
Advocates petition Congress
The Housing Justice Network, a group of Chicago-based and national advocacy and legal organizations that work with the National Housing Law Project, sent a letter Aug. 21 to the Senate Committee on Appropriations calling for a negotiation of the Moving to Work contracts to allow for more oversight.
Chicago housing advocates asked Sen. Dick Durbin’s office to propose a budget amendment that would restore language stating the Moving to Work program for the original 39 agencies would last through 2028 until the issue can be discussed further.
Durbin’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Sen. Patty Murray, chair of the committee, and Sen. Susan Collins, a ranking member, also did not respond.
The Moving to Work contracts were last renewed by Congress in 2016, and dozens more public housing authorities have been added to the program since its inception.
Emily Coffey, director of equitable community development and housing at the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, one of the Housing Justice Network members, said HUD has added more guardrails for the dozens of public housing authorities that have joined the program and thinks Congress should allow HUD to do this for the original 39 agencies.
“I think that CHA needs oversight,” Coffey said. “The regulations do exist for a reason.”
Noëlle Porter, director of government affairs for the National Housing Law Project, said it is proving difficult to amend the legislation.
“House Republicans have made it impossible for advocates to engage in good faith negotiations over final aspects of the bill,” Porter said, adding she hopes Congress might be able to make a change in the final days of negotiations.
In an emailed statement Wednesday, a HUD spokesperson said, “As part of our usual policy development process, HUD has and will continue to take into consideration the input of public housing authorities and its stakeholders to ensure the best outcomes for residents as well as housing authorities in the implementation of its public housing programs.”
The MTW Collaborative rejects the idea of the 39 original agencies being subjected to the same restrictions as newer ones, saying those agencies have been “severely” limited in their ability to respond to community needs, according to a May 2023 paper sent to Congress by the collaborative.
The paper cites research from the Urban Institute finding Moving to Work agencies serve more low-income families than agencies not part of the program. After joining, public housing authorities receive significantly more HUD funding, an estimated 11% increase, serving an estimated 10% increase in households, according to the study.
Still, some advocates say they are not convinced the benefits outweigh the negatives. If the contracts are extended, Fischer of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said the patterns he has seen so far would continue.
“It would mean a lot of people who are struggling to afford housing would continue to not get assistance that they could be getting,” he said.
