The state expects to save $5 million by axing the Homelessness Prevention Program, which connects embattled renters to everything from legal advice to one-time emergency payments for rent arrears. HPP providers, under contract from the state, also serve as a gateway to a major rent subsidy for families on public assistance, the Family Eviction Prevention Supplement, or FEPS. Unique to New York City, FEPS helps families that receive welfare to cope with the city’s high rents. In 2008, 6,680 households received eviction prevention services through HPP, the vast majority of which – about 6,000 households – used FEPS to meet their monthly rent.
“This cut is going to blow a hole in what is left of the social safety net,” said Steven Banks, Attorney-in-Chief at the Legal Aid Society. FEPS emerged out of a 1987 Legal Aid Society suit, Jiggetts v. Dowling, which advocated for a higher rental allowance on behalf of welfare recipients. (For previous coverage of the transition from the Jiggetts subsidy to FEPS, see City Limits Weekly #485, May 16, 2005, No More Jiggetts? State Launches Rent Subsidy.) Currently, the monthly rental allowance for a family of four on public assistance is $450; FEPS brings the total to $900.
On the heels of Paterson’s budget announcement, the city’s Department of Homeless Services reported the highest tally of families sleeping in homeless shelters since the city began counting in 1982. If the program that administers FEPS disappears, advocates warn, thousands more could face eviction and end up in the shelter system. “Foreclosures are going up, evictions are up. Why eliminate this program now, when it’s needed most?” asked Christine Roland, director of Housing and Homelessness Prevention at the Queens Community House.
Roland and other HPP providers argue that the cost of rental subsidies—and the programs to administer them— pales by comparison to the cost of municipal shelter. A one-year stay in a services-rich family shelter costs more than $36,000 per family, whereas the annual cost of eviction prevention and the FEPS subsidy is around $6,000.
Holding On
Nancy Maldonado, a single mother of four, is certain her family would have ended up in city shelter if it weren’t for the help she receives from the Citizens Advice Bureau. Her income as a coordinator for a tutoring company doesn’t cover expenses, and FEPS enables her to pay $822.30 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in the Bedford Park area of the Bronx. She still owes rent arrears, however, and a "sanction," or penalty, placed on her public assistance record freezes those back payments, putting her family in danger of eviction once again.
“My children were scared. I had a family meeting to let them know what was happening, so they wouldn’t be surprised if something came up,” Maldonado said last week from a waiting room at a public assistance office, where she had appeared armed with paperwork to fight the sanction. Her HPP caseworker helped prepare her for the meeting, and also gave her letters to present to a housing court judge. “I told her that I didn’t want to become homeless or go to a shelter,” Maldonado said. “Public assistance is not helping. They do things in error. If [my caseworker] hadn’t been there to provide the HPP letters, I’d probably be homeless.”
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FEPS funding, which comes from federal, state, and city streams, is unaffected by state budget cuts. But most applications are processed by HPP caseworkers whose jobs are on the chopping block. The five HPP providers in New York City—CAMBA, Catholic Charities, Citizens Advice Bureau, Queens Community House, and the Northern Manhattan Improvement Coalition—have offices in welfare centers across the city, and work closely with caseworkers from the Human Resources Administration, the city welfare agency. The Citizens Advice Bureau alone employs 25 caseworkers to staff its eviction prevention program, which administered 2,700 FEPS grants to Bronx families last year.
