Hurricane Victims Go to Top of Some Public Housing Agency Lists

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, public agencies that help house the poor may face a dilemma: how to help their own needy residents while assisting the victims of the hurricane.

For Gregg Fortner, executive director of the San Francisco Housing Authority, the choice was clear. He offered half of the city’s vacant public housing units to flood victims who have lived in public housing in their hometowns. Soon the city will offer the units to any person displaced by Katrina.

“We’re starting out with 100 units, and if there’s a demand for more, we can make that happen,” said Fortner, who sent New Orleans officials a list of San Francisco landlords willing to rent to Section 8 recipients.

The nation’s public housing authorities -- the agencies that administer public housing and oversee federal housing subsidy programs, including Section 8 of the U.S. Housing Act of 1937 -- are uniquely positioned to help in the effort to move evacuees from shelters into more long-term housing.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson has appealed to mayors and county officials to provide such assistance and is waiving certain regulations to make it easier to help, said Donna White, a HUD spokeswoman.

But local housing authorities have not yet received additional funds to help with evacuees, and HUD has not issued temporary Section 8 housing vouchers, as it did after the Northridge earthquake.

In some cases, aid for a victim of Katrina may create a longer wait for other families, officials said. Local agencies can decide whether to give evacuees preference on waiting lists.

“It’s unfortunate that families that have been on a waiting list may have to wait longer,” White said. The evacuees “are people who don’t have a home and quite often only have the clothes on their backs. We had this catastrophic incident that overshadows everything.”

Los Angeles’ Housing Authority will make 60 vacant units of public housing available and will accept up to 500 Section 8 vouchers from Katrina victims. The assistance is available to those who received Section 8 help or lived in public housing in their hometowns, said authority spokesman Hugo Garcia.

Hurricane victims who use Section 8 vouchers to move to Los Angeles are not expected to affect the agency’s current waiting list, Garcia said, and the agency expects to eventually receive reimbursement from HUD.

But activist Ted Hayes staged a protest Thursday morning in Los Angeles, questioning the decision to help evacuees when, he said, local officials have said for years that they lack the resources to assist the homeless.

“What about all these people who have been on the streets of Los Angeles all these years?” he asked. “Handle that disaster before you handle another one.”

Though local agencies continue to prepare to offer assistance, officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency have put on hold the plan to move large numbers of people to California.

Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, based in Washington, D.C., has called on Congress to allot additional funding for housing the victims.

“This is not a crisis of the Gulf Coast and Louisiana,” she said. “This has become a national housing crisis because we are trying to house people all across the country.”

HUD has also identified nearly 5,000 HUD-owned residences in 11 states that may be used for hurricane victims. Normally such properties, which reverted to HUD ownership after lenders foreclosed, would be sold. Instead, HUD has imposed a moratorium on such sales and is evaluating the properties to determine if they are suitable for Katrina victims.