Jan 13, 2020 —
The cost of housing can be a huge stress in the North Country. If you only earn minimum wage, there’s not many places you can afford to rent. Housing subsidies through the federal Housing Choice Voucher Program – also known as Section 8 – can be a huge help. If you get a voucher, you only pay about a third of your income toward rent. Without that voucher, it could be closer to 80 or 90 percent. The problem is, the waitlist to get those vouchers can be really long.
In Franklin County, you could wait six months to a year. In Jefferson County, it’s closer to two years. And in St. Lawrence County, the list had been so long, they stopped taking names back in 2018.
However, the county just reopened their list and is taking applicants again.
In the past few months, Chris Nyman has reached out to hundreds of people on St. Lawrence County’s housing wait list:
"We went through, sending out letters, just asking people to verify that they’re still interested in receiving rental assistance," said Nyman, director of the Housing Choice Voucher Program for the county.
Ultimately, he purged about 600 people from the wait list because they’d died or moved, or, he never heard back from them at all.
"Imagine sitting on a waiting list for over a year and then a year from now, we send a letter out to someone and they’ve moved 20 times since they applied here," said Debbie Laundry, Nyman's counterpart in Clinton County.
It's hard for people who are poor to have one consistent place to live, she said.
"We don’t have the means to track people down," said Laundry. "We’ll send out a batch of 30 letters and if we hear back from five people, that’s great."
From there, the people they don’t hear from are taken off the wait list. The people who do respond, come in to the office. Laundry and Nymen talk through their income and give them a housing budget based on certain federal rules from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Even still, it’s hard to find a place to live.
"Like yesterday, I interviewed a family of four, gave them their voucher and I said, ‘okay guys, you’ve got 60 days. You go out and find a place for $700, $750,' which is so ungodly, almost impossible," said Laundry.
"I mean, look in the newspaper. Look on Craig’s List. Rents in this area are at least $800, $900, $1000. I mean, it’s hard to find affordable, decent housing in this area with the budget that we give them."
Laundry says, a lot of the time, families give up and she never hears from them again. She’d like for rents to be lower, of course, and for the federal government to relax their rules a bit.
"I can see you scratching your head.
"'Why does it have to be this way?' We ask ourselves that all the time. It seems like it should be so simple," said Laundry. "It’s frustrating, but we keep plugging along and, you know, do what we can."
Both Laundry and Nymen say, despite the difficulties, they do have a lot of successes with people getting an apartment at a rate that’s easier to afford.
Now that the wait list in St. Lawrence County has been purged, it’s down to about 100 people, meaning if you apply now, it’ll be about a year and half before you get a voucher.
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January 13, 2020 at 12:00PM
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Even if you get federal rental assistance, it's still hard to find a home - North Country Public Radio
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