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I first started hearing about this issue in Lakewood a few months ago. I called a source at a local housing org last week – she had just gotten off the phone with someone from Lakewood dealing w/ this very issue. Says she gets similar calls every day. https://www.cleveland.com/news/2019/11/closed-doors-lakewood-among-booming-housing-markets-where-low-income-renters-are-pushed-out.html
In the past couple of years, Lakewood's housing market has been booming. Median home prices have hit all-time highs. Rents have been pushed up. One source I talked to said a landlord friend gets offers every day from people wanting to buy their buildings.
Developers are capitalizing on this, buying and renovating buildings and then raising rents. Overall, sources I talked to said, this is good for the community. But it puts low-income residents – and particularly those who use a voucher to pay rent – in a vulnerable position.
Daniel, the voucher recipient I interviewed for this story, stayed in his building after a new property owner came in & told tenants they had to leave. Everyone else left. He told me it ruined a tight-knit community where everyone knew each other & checked in on each other.
One of the most eye-opening conversations I had was with the director of the Lakewood Community Services Center. In the last couple of years, housing has become the No. 1 issue for her org. In <2 years, they've tallied at least 115 displaced residents.
“That’s a lot of displaced, low-income Lakewood residents in a couple years,” she said. “And we don’t see any sign of it slowing down.”
That's why fair-housing advocates believe the most meaningful reform would be countywide source-of-income protections, which would make it illegal to deny a tenant based on how they pay rent.
More on that, and a number of steps CMHA is taking to improve the voucher program, here: https://www.cleveland.com/news/2019/11/closed-doors-cmha-works-to-improve-voucher-program-advocates-push-for-discrimination-protections.html
One thing CMHA has planned is a mobility program that would help voucher households move to low-poverty, high-opportunity neighborhoods. Mobility programs have had some notable successes in other cities.
Baltimore has had a mobility program in place since the early 2000s. @voxdotcom did a great piece on that program last year: https://www.vox.com/the-impact/2018/11/30/18116513/baltimore-the-impact-income-inequality-race-housing-segregation
And the Seattle area just recently tried out a mobility program that had some pretty startling results. The program resulted in a 40 percentage point increase in families moving to higher-opportunity neighborhoods. More on that from @CityLab: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/affordable-housing-assistance-voucher-seattle-neighborhoods/595423/
The goal of programs like this isn't to make families move to certain neighborhoods. It's to give them the *choice* - which is what the voucher program was meant to provide in the first place.
But mobility initiatives and other steps CMHA has planned – such as a more streamlined process for landlords – would be most meaningful combined with SOI protections, local advocates say.
They believe that would have the biggest impact on people such as Brenda, Luretha, and Robert, who were kind enough to share their experiences with me for this story: https://www.cleveland.com/news/2019/11/it-made-me-feel-helpless-voucher-holders-share-stories-of-limited-options-stigma-closed-doors.html
These are just a few stories. A few months ago, I asked readers to get in touch with their experiences using the voucher program. The response was frankly a little overwhelming. I heard from people from all over the county – and from other counties and states.
With all of the changes CMHA is planning to implement in 2020, and advocates preparing to push the city of Cleveland for reform, there will be a lot to follow in the coming months, and I'm sure many more stories to tell.
