HOUSING VOUCHERS: Helping the homeless find permanent housing

Apr. 21—TRAVERSE CITY — In a region where the housing vacancy rate is an abysmally low 0.7%, Steven Clark, a homeless man living at Safe Harbor, wryly notes that most landlords probably wouldn't regard him as a desirable tenant.

"I had a housing voucher, but I had to recertify" after the voucher lapsed, he said. "I put 27 applications in, including places I didn't even want to stay."

His voucher lapsed, Clark said, because many landlords are reluctant to rent to someone who's homeless, figuring that a homeless resident isn't going to take good care of a rental property.

"I think it's kind of a stigmatizing kind of thing," he said.

Clark, 54, who said he works at the Cottage Cafe and has been homeless for two years, said he's now going through a recertification process with the assistance of a Goodwill street outreach coordinator, who has helped him navigate a confusing thicket of housing program regulations.

Safe Harbor, which provides seasonal overnight shelter for the homeless in Traverse City, will be closing for the summer on April 30. Most nights this year, the facility reached its capacity of 84 people, who soon will have to find other places to stay.

Clark said he's been told by his coordinator that he's on a waiting list for an opening at Annika Place II, an affordable-housing project on Garfield Road that Woda Cooper Companies is building next to a sister project, Annika Place I.

Woda Cooper has developed multiple apartment buildings that accept project-based housing vouchers, including Annika I and II and Ruth Park Apartments in Traverse City and Brookside Commons in Garfield Township.

Ruth Park and Annika Place I have nine and eight project-based voucher units, respectively. Annika II, which will have 52 one- and two-bedroom apartments, will have 19 apartments set aside as permanent supportive housing for residents like Clark.

Brookside Commons has 26 permanent supportive housing units through the Michigan State Housing Development Authority, according to Craig Patterson, Woda Cooper's senior vice president for development.

"They do help us with our underwriting," Patterson said, noting that affordable-housing vouchers allow developments to break ground in the first place. Low-income vouchers allow people to pay rents that sustain the loan. In turn, he said, higher rents paid by tenants who live in non-voucher units help sustain the overall project.

Housing Choice Voucher Program applications for units in Ruth Park and Annika Place I and II are processed by the Traverse City Housing Commission, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. For Brookside Commons, Patterson said funding was provided by the state housing development authority.

HUD does not fund permanent supportive housing, Patterson said, but the state housing authority does. There are currently no state project-based voucher programs within the city limits, according to Patterson.

Patterson said HUD allocates housing vouchers while the state housing authority oversees federal housing tax credits.

"The one thing I want to distinguish," Patterson said, "is often when I go to a new city and we talk about low- to moderate-income housing, some naysayers . . . will immediately think this is HUD housing. Ruth Park, Annika Place, Annika II — it's not HUD housing. It's not . . . 100 percent-subsidized HUD housing."

Patterson said that when someone who has a project-based housing voucher moves in, they're beholden to the lease.

So, if a new tenant doesn't pay his or her portion of the rent — which amounts to 30 percent of their monthly income — or if they keep drugs in the unit or end up on the sex-offender registry, they'll be evicted, he said.

Ashley Halladay-Schmandt, director of the Northwest Michigan Coalition to End Homelessness, said housing programs in Michigan fall into three categories: Housing Choice vouchers; project-based vouchers funded by the state or federal government; and projects and programming funded by HUD through agencies like the Coalition to End Homelessness.

"It's confusing, and some people kind of use the term 'voucher' interchangeably with the programs that we do that have support services and rental assistance and stuff," she said. "Some people call that a voucher."

Housing Choice and project-based vouchers, Halladay-Schmandt said, provide money for rent.

In contrast, she said, coalition programming, funded by an annual HUD grant of approximately $1.3 million, focuses on permanent supportive housing, rapid re-housing efforts and street outreach, but not on actual rental assistance like the Housing Choice and project-based voucher programs do.

Northwest Michigan Supportive Housing also operates a housing program that includes case management services, Halladay-Schmandt said.

If a member of that program gets evicted, Northwest Michigan Supportive Housing will help the person find new housing, she said.

That program has fewer than 10 people participating and is focused on the chronically homeless.

That differs from the Traverse City Housing Commission, where people in town go if they need help with their rent, according to Deputy Director Alisa Korn.

The Housing Choice Voucher Program has two different funders — HUD and the Michigan housing authority — but they do "exactly the same thing," Korn said.

To obtain a Housing Choice voucher, she said, there are only two places an applicant can go: The TC Housing Commission, which is funded by HUD, or Tip of the Mitt Housing, which is a Michigan housing authority-funded office.

Korn's office distributes Housing Choice vouchers that stay with an applicant for life.

"So, wherever you move, in all 50 states, you can use that voucher," Korn said.

But it also issues project-based vouchers that are attached to the housing unit, not a person.

The value of the voucher differs from county to county, and the value changes every year based on a county's fair-market rent, she said. After applicants complete an application and background check, they are issued vouchers that give them 60 days to find a place to live and sign a lease.

"If they do not find any housing, the voucher does go away," Korn said. "We can't have an infinite number of vouchers out there. It might be two years later and, all of the sudden, 25 people lease-up and I don't have the funding for it."

Once awarded, Korn said, HUD vouchers can only be taken away if the person dies, is in a coma, is found guilty of a serious felony, moves into assisted-living or makes too much money to participate in the program.

Vouchers rotate frequently in Traverse City, she said. Once a voucher becomes available, the next person who's eligible gets pulled off the waitlist.

"It's a constant cycle," Korn said, adding that the wait for HUD Housing Choice vouchers can exceed five years.