Marin’s housing voucher program fails in local poor

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Nathaniel Coleman worked to find housing while on parole.

Born in Marin and raised in Marin City, Coleman has done yard maintenance work for the nonprofit Phoenix Project Marin resource center, which helps him apply for subsidized housing. At the moment, he is homeless and has difficulty sleeping outside due to asthma.

Although he said he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, getting housing assistance proved difficult. He said he was not optimistic about finding accommodation.

“Every time we try to contact the housing authority, no one answers the phone,” Coleman said.

As a new wave of Section 8 emergency housing vouchers for homeless residents arrive in Marin, advocates and current and potential voucher holders say ongoing challenges such as those facing Coleman persist in the city. search for accommodation.

Marin has received 115 emergency vouchers under the American Rescue Plan Act, all reserved for homeless residents, those at high risk of becoming homeless, and those fleeing domestic violence or other violent situations.

Kimberly Carroll, deputy director of the Marin Housing Authority, said the vouchers, distributed since July 1, are only for emergency housing, “specially designed for the homeless and determined to be the most vulnerable,” a- she declared.

The county uses a vulnerability index tool to determine factors such as disability, illness or risks to a person’s life situation. She said the vouchers are not intended for around 700 people on the main waitlist for Section 8 housing vouchers.

Carroll said this means that a person who is not housed but has a shelter, such as a sofa inside a person’s house, is not considered homeless by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, which grants the vouchers. But these residents have to wait to get on the waiting list for a voucher or for social housing. It is open until September.

Phoenix Project Marin director Felecia Gaston said her staff struggled to connect clients to housing, let alone the vouchers. She said some Marin City residents say they feel pressure to leave the area if they cannot access hard-to-obtain vouchers or find affordable housing.

Although the Marin Housing Authority has said that any voucher holder should be considered for available housing and state law side with those holding a voucher, Gaston and other advocates have said the Discrimination continues against voucher holders, while those waiting for vouchers could be on the waiting list for years. .

“It’s a constant sleight of hand,” said Marilyn Bryant, outreach worker, who works with Gaston’s nonprofit Performing Stars of Marin youth organization, of trying to connect people. with vouchers and apartments available.

Bryant said she had customers who waited months to hear from the county about a voucher. Meanwhile, she said, she has seen families from other areas move to Marin City when apartments open up.

“It’s getting worse here in Marin City,” said Bryant, 61, who has been on other people’s couches for five years. “There is no solid help from those affected to deal with this. “

“I can’t afford Marin County,” she said. “I can’t pay the rent, but I pay my way. “

Gaston said that in addition to customers, his group is also feeling the pressure to move people out of the area.

In 2019, Marin City’s demographics were 29% White; 26% Latino; 23% black; 15% other; and 7% Asian, according to a recent study. Gaston said: “The housing authority wants black people to leave Marin City.”

“So you get rid of all the blacks in Marin City to start development.”

But Carroll said if people feel they have to leave Marin City to find public housing, they can stay if they have a voucher and find a vacant position.

However, she acknowledged the low vacancy rate in Marin and said she did not currently know how many available apartments are open in Marin City.

“If I gave someone a housing voucher and they might not be able to find suitable housing… they would have to move out of Marin City,” Carroll said.

“We’re not saying people can’t stay in Marin City,” she said. “Any available unit… would theoretically be available for a holder of section 8.”

Caroline Peattie, executive director of Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California, said that despite laws aimed at preventing discrimination, it continues to happen in Marin County anyway. The organization has conducted several audits in Marin, Sonoma and Solano counties, taking into account whether a person with a voucher is disabled, black or Latino.

In 2001 and 2008, the organization found that holders of good blacks were treated less favorably than whites 33% of the time in Marin County. Separate reports in 2017 and 2019 yielded similar results, carried out before California passed Senate Bill 329, preventing discrimination against people with Section 8 vouchers.

Peattie said the audits reflected “a clear recurring differential treatment or demonstrable discrepancy in information to tenants, such as refusal to rent or negotiate, misrepresentation of availability or the offering of different terms or services at different times. people.

“We found that there was still a widespread refusal to rent to people with housing vouchers,” Peattie said. “We also found that there was a difference in treatment between whites with good guys and blacks with good guys. More than anything, there was a difficulty with people of color who have housing vouchers trying to rent. “

Peattie said that a year after the passage of Senate Bill 329, the organization continues to receive cases of voucher holders being refused by owners or experiencing other forms of discrimination.

“It was exacerbated if this voucher holder was Latinx,” she added.

Peattie said it’s likely people will feel kicked out of Marin City and the county, “if you want a place and you don’t want to lose your voucher, you’re going to look for a place somewhere else.”

She highlighted the history of Marin County segregation, in which federal and state laws prevented black residents and other minority citizens from owning property, which led to generations of wealth inequity. .

Peattie added that while most of the county’s black residents, who make up 3% of the approximately 260,000 population, live in Marin City, “even that population is declining in Marin City.”

“The question is where are people going? Is the black population completely expelled from the region? ” she said.

Leelee Thomas, a county planning official, said the county was evaluating “models of segregation … which the government has implemented in various ways.”

“There are still impacts today even though these policies are no longer legal,” she said.

She said community policies that focus exclusively on single-family housing in predominantly white communities, without allowing more multi-family housing, are “a way to continue these models of segregation.”

Marin County’s lack of ethnic diversity, given the diversity of the wider Bay Area, is “no accident,” Thomas said.

Residents of the Canal de San Rafael neighborhood are also struggling, as many residents might not meet the criteria to get a voucher or find accommodation once they have one.

Omar Carrera, director of Canal Alliance, said “there is real discrimination” against people trying to use their vouchers to find accommodation. He said many people just might not meet HUD’s homelessness criteria for emergency housing vouchers.

“When you think of people on the streets, this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of homelessness,” he said. “Underneath is a huge group of homeless people… who are very vulnerable but don’t necessarily meet HUD criteria.

While acknowledging that cities have made efforts to entice landlords to rent to people with vouchers, Carrera said connecting people to vouchers remains a challenge. He said there were more Latino families “who might be eligible for these vouchers, but might not be able to access them”.

Gaston of Marin City said improving access is key to a still stumbling housing process.

“We have been in contact with the county to provide what we call housing ambassadors to help people fill out these documents,” she said, but people still fall through the cracks.

“They call me every day,” said Bryant. “I get at least two to three people a day.”

“It all goes back to the discrimination in home loans and therefore in homeownership,” Peattie said.

“When you think about how blacks and browns have been excluded from homeownership, it really speaks of wealth,” she said, “and when you look at the people with housing, it will be disproportionately people with disabilities and people of color.

“If you were trying to stay in Marin City but couldn’t even stay in the county, that’s pretty dark,” Peattie said.

Kenya Curry has been living in transitional housing with her three children aged 1-12 since 2017. She said she was unable to get help earning a Section 8 voucher to find housing. Curry worries that she will have to leave Marin City out of the county if she gets a voucher, as there is hardly any vacancy.

“I just don’t feel safe and asked for help getting out,” said Curry, who said she didn’t feel supported by the housing authority.

“A promise was made to me, but no action was taken,” she said. “The information that they should be keeping is not kept and the people who need that information do not have access to it.

“You have six months to fill out this voucher, and if you don’t fill it out, you have to go. “

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