NEW YORK STATE INDEPENDENT LIVING COUNCIL (NYSILC)

The Housing Crisis for Persons with Disabilities
By Robert Davies

There is a huge housing crisis for persons with disabilities, but you haven’t heard about it. It is as quiet as the secrecy that surrounded the institutional placement of persons with disabilities in past decades. Elected officials don’t talk about it. State offices that serve persons with disabilities don’t talk about it. The Governor doesn’t talk about it. But the crisis is here and now and growing.

Over 750,000 New Yorkers with disabilities receive monthly Supplemental Security Income (SSI) from the Social Security Administration. SSI pays for food, shelter and clothing. In New York the monthly SSI payment is $690 for a person living alone. Given the generally accepted figure that 30% of one’s income should be used for housing, a person receiving SSI needs to have a monthly housing expense of $230 per month.

According to a recent study, “Priced out in 2004” by the Technical Assistance Collaborative and the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities, no person receiving SSI in New York State can afford an efficiency or one bedroom apartment. Recipients would have to pay over 118% of their SSI for an efficiency apartment and 137% of their SSI for a one bedroom apartment.

In some cases other subsidies may be available to help, but they are limited to a specific disability and availability due to long or closed waiting lists. Cuts to the federal affordable housing programs and almost level funding for state affordable housing programs have exacerbated the problem.

On top of the lack of affordable housing is the lack of accessible housing. Housing built with Federal assistance is required to provide for accessible units. These units are not built in many cases due to the lack of enforcement of the HUD Section 504 regulations by the federal government, state and local housing agencies and building inspectors.

So where does a person with a disability receiving SSI live? Over 24,000 persons live in nursing homes and want to live elsewhere. These individuals cost the state approximately $100,000 per year, when a simple housing subsidy of $5000 to $10,000 per year would save tens of thousands of Medicaid and private insurance dollars.

Many others are confined to group homes because they would lose $435 a month from the state to help pay for their room and board costs, thus keeping them in a more costly housing situation than they need. A study by the New York State Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities in the early 1990s indicated that about 40% of persons living in their group homes could live in more independent housing, but a housing subsidy would be needed. This again would reduce costs to the taxpayer.

Even more distressing are the numbers of individuals with disabilities living with their aging parents. Tens of thousands of persons in their 40, 50s and even 60s are living with their 70 and 80 year old parents for the lack of affordable and accessible housing. Furthermore there is little data on these persons, so we do not know the actual housing and services needs of these persons. While some state agencies have sophisticated data on housing needs, others have none.

This crisis of affordability for persons with severe low incomes, 18% of area median income for a person receiving SSI, is coupled with the recent real estate boom. The explosion of real estate values not only threatens persons with disabilities, but the persons that work with these individuals. Low and moderate income persons can not longer afford to rent or purchase new homes.

Recent studies and articles by David Muchnick of the New York Housing Council highlight the fact that our beginning teachers, firemen and police officers cannot afford housing, let alone lower wage human service workers.

New York State and its municipalities need a comprehensive plan to address this housing crisis. Housing comes first. Otherwise, there is no stability, no safety, or no place to call home. We can and must do better.

Robert Davies, presently a housing consultant for the New York State Independent Living Council (NYSILC), has been involved in the development of housing for persons with disabilities for 34 years. E-mail: rob@access4me.org, Phone: 518-526-2563.

To get information on the housing crisis for individuals with disabilities, go to www.tacinc.org and view “Priced Out in 2004.”

Housing Trust Fund Background Information

For the past two years the NYSILC Housing Institute has conducted housing forums throughout the state, distributed training materials,given presentations, provided policy feedback, and helped to draft relevant legislation on the topic of housing for New Yorkers with disabilities.

Last year three bills were introduced in both houses of the state legislature and two were passed in the Assembly: funding a registry of accessible apartments for New Yorkers with disabilities and compliance with Section 504 of Federal HUD regulations. As work continues on these two bills, the Housing Institute will look to promote Legislation on visitability and the creation of a Housing Trust Fund for persons with disabilities.

In particular, Housing Trust Funds have emerged as one of the most innovative and promising initiatives in response to this nation’s struggle to address the housing needs of all its citizens. There are currently more then 275 housing trust funds in cities, counties and states throughout the United States. They are providing at least $750 million each and every year to support critical housing needs.

Housing Trust Funds are distinct accounts that receive dedicated sources of public funds to support affordable housing. They are typically established through an ordinance or legislation to create the fund, an administrative structure for overseeing its operation, and regulatory requirements for expenditure of the funds. Once established, trust funds ensure a dedicated, yearly flow of revenue to support housing development. They are not subject to yearly legislative appropriation.

Housing Trust Funds are created to provide accessible and affordable housing to those most in need. Individuals with disabilities who receive SSI are people with the lowest income in the state and are truly most in need of affordable and accessible housing.

The purposes of the proposed trust include: housing counseling services, mortgage foreclosure prevention, security deposits, down payment and closing costs assistance, accessibility modifications, moderate rehabilitation, rental assistance, home finding assistance, new construction/moderate rehabilitation of affordable accessible housing-rental and ownership, staffing and administrative costs to achieve its goals, energy conservation activities, renewable energy, other housing assistance, and appropriate administration expenses.

The Center for Community Change (www.communitychange.org) in Washington is a national leader in the establishment of Housing Trust Funds. Information can be found on their website under “publications.” According to their latest national survey on trust funds, there are 23 states that currently use a housing trust fund with great success.

BEST PRACTICE:
Auburn Passes Local Visitability Ordinance On September 13th, 2005

Auburn became one of the first communities in New York State to enact a visitability ordinance, requiring certain features to be included in new homes built with public funds to make them more accessible to individuals with disabilities. Public funds are any local, state, and/or federal monies used to support new construction.

Guy Consentino, executive director of Options for Independence, a non-profit organization that assists people with disabilities, made a presentation to the Auburn City Council on the Thursday before it passed the ordinance. New construction requirements would include wide passage doorways on the first floor, at least an accessible half-bath on the first floor, at least one accessible entrance, as well as accessible electrical outlets and light switches.

Consentino said that it would cost an average of an additional $150 to new home construction to include the above mentioned features. Implementing these features into homes would be beneficial to persons with disabilities, as well as the aging population. It increases the available accessible housing stock and promotes the ability of community members to visit each other without barriers. “It can keep people in their homes, so they do not end up in costly nursing homes,” Consentino said.

Brad Williams, executive director of NYSILC, echoed Cosentino’s comments by adding, “This practice saves taxpayer dollars, increases quality of life, and supports the most-integrated setting mandate in the 1999 Olmstead U.S. Supreme Court decision.”