As they build a new kind of housing development in West Rock, Karen DuBois-Walton and her team want to break an old model of families staying in public-housing for generations.
They celebrated the launching of a new program called “CARES” to accelerate self sufficiency. But first they have to raise the money to pay for it.
Allan Appel Photo
At last week’s monthly Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH) commissioners meeting, former West Rock resident-turned-construction contractor Yul Watley praised the program (full title: Caring About Resident Economic Self-Sufficiency) program and DuBois-Walton, the authority’s executive director. (Watley is pictured presenting DuBois-Walton with a bouquet for championing the program.)
DuBois-Walton and other officials plan to pilot the CARES program at West Rock when they finish rebuilding a new $173 million neighborhood where rundown housing projects have been razed.
Their goal is to reduce the average family’s sojourn in public housing in New Haven from its current 11 years to seven. Public-housing projects like the old West Rock developments were originally envisioned as temporary abodes for families making the transition to middle-class life. They became permanent homes for generations of families.
The $144 million West Rock project is expected to have 494 units of rental and home-ownership housing and open in 2014. It will replace the now demolished Rockview and Brookside apartment complexes.
The heart of the CARES program is introducing term limits in to both public housing and Section 8 programs among the Brookside and Rockview families who will be returning to a rebuilt West Rock Redevelopment project.
If families are not engaged in education, training or otherwise moving themselves along toward self-sufficiency by the end of 72 months, they can remain in public housing, but subsidies will be reduced.
HANH Deputy Director Jimmy Miller explained that, for example, an average family of four with two adults and two kids would receive approximately $200 per month for each of the four people. If the two adults are not gainfully employed or enrolled in training programs, their subsidies would end, and the family have $400 per month less.
He called the money “a stimulus” to induce the adults to move on.
Within the CARES program there is a second pilot program that allows returning West Rock families to opt out of the subsidy in the third year. Instead of monthly subsidies, they can receive an appropriate lump sum equal to the amount of monthly subsidies from the third through the seventh year.
That money would be put into an escrow account. With those funds they will be able to move out of public housing to market rate housing; or they can use the money for other self-sufficiency advancing activities such as buying a car necessary for a job, or as a stake to start a small business.
Such programs have been launched in other housing authorities such as Atlanta and San Bernardino, California, said Miller.
The difference with HANH’s approach is that it would include safety nets. For example, residents who demonstrate disabilities or other problems would be exempted, Miller said.
Currently in mixed-income developments about 50 percent of people are working. The goal is to get that number to 70 percent. The estimated savings to HANH, through people moving out of public housing, would amount to about $89,000 per family or about $1 million.
It all rests on careful and labor-intensive case management, which would be provided through $2.1 million that Miller hopes will come from a federal HOPE VI $14 million grant for the West Rock Redevelopment project. The program also requires the approval of the West Rock Implementation Committee. One of its members, Honda Smith (pictured), was on hand at the HANH board meeting to praise the program and HANH’s work in West Rock in general.
Even though HANH was turned down for its first request for a HOPE VI grant for West Rock in 2008, officials are optimistic about receiving the funding in January. HOPE VI grants helped to transform Elm Haven projects into Monterey Terrace and to create the riverine new-urbanist Q Terrace to replace drug-troubled brick projects. If the grant does not come through, Miller said, the commissioners would be asked to find other funds to advance the project.
“It’s a beautiful program,” Watley said. “Well thought out. It should be in every development.”