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Landlord disinterest trips housing program

 

 

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: Dec 2, 2007

NEW ORLEANS — The federal housing agency is encountering issues it hadn’t expected in the transfer of a rental assistance program for hurricane victims from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Data problems have kept officials from finding some tenants in the New Orleans area, and some landlords are now opting out of the program.

The transfer, which officially happened Saturday, marks a new phase in the program set to expire in March 2009.

For months, housing advocates and landlord groups wanted HUD to assume oversight of the program, and many believe the program, funded by FEMA but run by HUD, would result in better case management.

But transfer of that management involves volumes of data. HUD says about 6,400 families in New Orleans and neighboring Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes are receiving rental aid through FEMA. Most of the current recipients, displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, are in Texas.

Case managers for the Disaster Housing Assistance Program haven’t been able to locate 1,500 tenants in the New Orleans area, said Kenneth Bibbins, director of a case-management team at Odyssey House.

HUD acknowledged part of the difficulties stemmed from data it received from FEMA. However, “It’s the data we have, and that’s what we’re working with,” HUD spokeswoman Donna White said.

White said 1,246 landlords in New Orleans who were in the FEMA program will continue under HUD but 73 opted out.

Some landlords don’t want to deal with HUD rules that stipulate they cannot put out tenants who cannot pay their portion of the rent. Under the program, aimed at helping tenants become self-sufficient, the subsidy level would begin to decline in March, and tenants would have to pay an increasing portion of the bill until the program ends a year later.

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