Steve Gold

Housing Vouchers for Money Follows the Person - Information Bulletin # 183 

Housing is as one of the most difficult barriers to transition persons from institutions into the community. When your State is developing its Money Follows the Person application, you might consider the following sources of housing subsidies that persons in institutions might use. 

1. Housing Vouchers, aka Section 8 vouchers

There are nearly 64,000 Mainstream Vouchers nationwide that your local Housing Authorities were supposed to issue only to persons with disabilities. Unfortunately, pursuant to a recent Freedom of Information Act request, HUD stated that only 42% were apparently issued to persons with disabilities. What about the 37,120 (58%) not being used by persons with disabilities? 

Morever, HUD's PIH 2005-5 Notice told Housing Authorities that Mainstream vouchers must continue to be issued to disabled persons "upon turnover." That is, not only were these 64,000 vouchers supposed to be initially issued only to persons with disabilities, but when these vouchers were turned in by a person with disability, the voucher was supposed to be reissued only to another person with a disability. By all accounts, this has not happed. Therefore, if your local Housing Authority received Mainstream Vouchers, you should make sure they are being used by persons with disabilities. 

HUD has written that "failure to serve disabled families [with vouchers for persons with disabilities] as required will result in forfeiture of the vouchers." HUD is supposed to be tracking these. It is unclear if HUD has taken any action to implement this. You should telephone your regional HUD offices to determine if HUD has tracked the Mainstream vouchers issued to your local Housing Authority. 

2. Fair Share Vouchers

In addition to the Mainstream vouchers, in FY2000, 2001 and 2002, HUD issued Fair Share Vouchers. These were very competitive and Housing Authorities had to apply for these vouchers. 815 Housing Authorities received these vouchers because they promised to issue 18,556 Fair Share vouchers to persons with disabilities and another 2,821 Fair Share vouchers to persons who were on Medical Assistance Waivers. However, based on numerous reports, Housing Authorities took these Fair Share Vouchers that were awarded only for persons with disabilities and intermingled them with non-disability specific vouchers. 

HUD told Housing Authorities that these Fair Share vouchers had to be initially used only for persons with disabilities and persons on a MA waiver and were to be reissued or "turnovered" only to persons with disabilities and persons on a waiver. By all accounts, this has not happened. 

3. Other Housing Vouchers

In addition, nationwide of the remainder 1.7 million vouchers (i.e., after subtracting the Mainstream and disability only Fair Share Vouchers), about 14% (241,000) were turned over in the past year and issued to persons on a wait list. Another 10% (170,000) were turned over in the last one to two years. Therefore, despite long waiting lists for these non-disability-only vouchers, the list does move. 

States applying for MFP grants should be working with Housing Authorities to use these housing vouchers to transition persons out of institutions. 

4. HOME Investment Partnerships

In FY 2003 and FY 2004, HUD allocated $1.375 billion and $1.423 billion, respectively, in HOME funds. States and local government entities receiving these funds can allocate these for Tenant-Based Rental Assistance, a fancy term for housing vouchers. In FY 2003 and FY 2004, only 2.9% and 3.3%, respectively, were used for housing vouchers. 

States MA offices have a unique opportunity to develop a program that includes HOME's Tenant-Based Rental Assistance dollars. 

Disability Advocates: 

These housing options could be a part of your MFP applications. But even if they are not, these are potential sources to obtain housing for persons who are "unnecessarily institutionalized." 

- Steve Gold, The Disability Odyssey continues.

MFP, Assisted Living and Tenancy Rights. Information Bulletin # 182.

A number of people have asked the question of how, if at all, the Federal Fair Housing Act and States' tenancy laws apply to Money Follows the Person grants. Specifically, the question is if a State receives a MFP grant and uses it for "assisted living," what rights would persons with disabilities have. 

In enacting MFP, Congress mandated that persons move from institutions only to a "qualified residence." Congress defined "qualified residence" as either [1] a home owned/ leased by the person with a disability or by the person's family or [2] an apartment "with an individual lease, with lockable access and egress, and which includes living, sleeping, bathing and cooking areas over which the individual or individual's family has domain and control," or [3] a "residence, in a community-based residential setting, in which no more than 4 unrelated individuals reside." 

Clearly since "assisted living" are not "homes" and are more than 4 persons in the residence, those two prongs of the definition are not relevant because they do not fit into an "assisted living" concept and MFP cannot be used unless the "residence" is a home or only 4 people. 

Let's look at the last definition. Most assisted living entities do not provide "an individual lease" because that would trigger local or state tenancy rights. Therefore, if a State contemplates using MFP to set up "assisted living" programs, each person in the assisted living facility must have an "individual lease," "control" over the apartment, and tenancy rights. 

With tenancy rights, a person with a disability could legally argue s/he has a lease for a specific period of time and does not want to move either out of a specific leased unit because the "assisted living" management wants the person to, nor will the disabled person move into a unit, for example, with more mandatory or intrusive health supports. If the assisted living program loses that control over persons in these units, it loses the fundamental ability to manage the entire program. 

Since most States have criteria which are required in all tenancy leases, including for example the right to appeal tenancy rights to a court and the right to limit a landlord's inspection of the unit, these rights are important to keep in mind when States are writing their MFP grants. 

Besides the routine and basic tenancy rights, persons moving from either ICF-MRs or nursing facilities are by definition people with disabilities. With an "individual lease," the Federal Fair Housing Act's reasonable accommodation and nondiscrimination provisions will also apply. Thus, an "assisted living" landlord could violate the FFHA for refusing to change its "rules, policies, practices or services," to accommodate a person's request. 

Keep tuned as The Disability Odyssey continues. 

- Steve Gold

Back issues of other Information Bulletins are available online at http://www.stevegoldada.com with a searchable Archive at this site divided into different subjects. To contact Steve Gold directly, write to stevegoldada@cs.com or call 215-627-7100. 

Steve Gold, The Disability Odyssey continues

Back issues of other Information Bulletins are available online at http://www.stevegoldada.com