REAL ESTATE : Seniors Caught in a Shelter Squeeze as Federal Rent Subsidies Disappear

We’ve heard the yelps of the proverbial double-income-no-kids couple when it comes to housing prices in the county. But they have it easy compared to the area’s 325,000 senior citizens--many on fixed incomes--who are seeing housing subsidies disappear as quickly as rents rise.

That was the message of a special 90-minute public hearing in Newport Beach on Thursday, sponsored by the California Commission on Aging and addressing the housing needs of older Californians.

“The commission’s senior program issues committee has identified this concern as one of the commission’s major issues of 1989,” said Larry Lutz, panel chairman. “There are no easy, inexpensive solutions, but we will never find any solutions if we don’t face the problem.”

A major fear voiced repeatedly during the hearing was over federal Section 8 rent subsidies, which are running out and have not yet been renewed by Congress.

Through the Section 8 program, landlords bring their buildings up to safe and sanitary standards and rent them to low-income tenants. The tenants pay 30% of their income toward rent. The federal government makes up the difference between that amount and fair market rent.

“Given the cost of housing in Orange County, it’s in the building owner’s best interests to let the subsidies lapse and raise rents to what the market can bear,” said Dianne L. Russell, director of the YWCA’s Beyond Shelter Program.

Without subsidized rents and lower-cost housing, the elderly “often have to make a determination between whether they’re going to eat and whether they’re going to have a place to live,” she said.

Other speakers mourned the conversion of mobile-home parks into pricey developments by local builders--changes that adversely affect the elderly, because mobile homes are a major source of lower-cost housing in the county.

What is the solution to the housing crunch for senior citizens? Many pointed to partnerships between the public and private sectors to build more lower-cost housing.