Philadelphia Weekly

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Shelters are not permanent housing." That was the message protesters toting placards and shouting through bullhorns sent to Carl Greene, director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, last week.

The protesters met outside City Hall last Monday before making their way to PHA's North Broad Street office, where they demanded that the agency release Section 8 housing vouchers. Through the program more than 15,000 households--which include low-income families, the elderly and the disabled--receive subsidies toward their rent, and there are 7,000 names on the waiting list.

Out of the 2,800 remaining Department of Housing and Urban Development vouchers earmarked for Philadelphia, PHA plans to release only 700. The remaining vouchers--valued at $16 million--will be used to provide supportive services like job training, daycare and financial counseling to existing recipients. PHA's idea is to prepare families for the responsibility of having their own home, but opponents see it as a political move to appease communities wary of Section 8 tenants living in their neighborhoods.

"To take housing dollars and keep people in shelters because you want to give them some training about how to put out the trash, that's just not fair," says Phil Lord, executive director of the Tenants' Action Group, a nonprofit that works with tenants and homeless people throughout the city. "I think certain neighborhoods don't want poor people, and this is an attempt to placate them. This is a stereotype that we need to be fighting, not accepting. The truth is most of them blend into communities, and you don't even know that they're there."

Through Section 8--renamed Housing Choice last year--vouchers are distributed across neighborhoods based on property owners' interest in renting to low-income families. PHA says many communities balk at the program, believing it contributes to deterioration, but residents of the Northeast have been the most vocal.

Last Thursday, in an agreement with the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition, an urban development group, PHA released 300 vouchers for homeless families to use once they become "housing ready." But critics aren't swayed.

"It's a pacifier," says protest organizer Habeebah Ali, founder of Raise of Hope Inc, a organization that works with the homeless and low-income families. "It may move some families out of shelters, which is always a good thing, but it's not enough. There are thousands of families in shelters, and they need housing first."

Ali says she'll keep organizing demonstrations until PHA releases the remaining vouchers and ends its new policy of limiting Section 8 aid to seven years for low-income families.

In 1988, while working full-time in a temporary position at the Philadelphia Department of Revenue, Ali was one of tens of thousands of people living in the city's homeless shelters. After leaving an abusive relationship, she says the shelter was the only place she and her four children could afford to stay.

"I was handling millions of dollars in the day, but sleeping on the floor at a shelter at night," says Ali, who was homeless for about a year. "I was no bum. I had a good job, and I was thankful when subsidized housing became available."

But for some city residents, Section 8 is viewed as a catalyst for blight. To improve that image, Greene has been meeting regularly with a citizens' advisory committee, a group of Northeast Philadelphia residents, to find ways to improve the program and gain community support.

The committee says, in a written statement, that the program "must be carried out in a manner that does not lower the quality of life and property values of homeowners in affected neighborhoods."

PHA says the supportive services will meet that aim, as well as provide stable housing for Section 8 tenants.

"The goal of the program is to provide temporary housing and to help people who are having difficult times move to self-sufficiency, and hopefully get into home ownership," says PHA spokesperson Kirk Dorn. "We believe that with the proper support the majority of families can do that."

Ali has been living in subsidized housing for more than 10 years, at one point paying her $700 monthly rent without the help of a Section 8 voucher. But despite getting laid off from her job at the Tenants' Action Group last October, and losing her unemployment benefits in June, she's certain about her future.

"If I don't get employment real soon, I will have to go apply for public assistance," she says. "Does that make me a bad person? I have always worked. But if I didn't have a subsidy I'd be looking at homelessness again. This is the reality and this is the safety net that Section 8 provides."

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Kia Gregory (kgregory@philadelphiaweekly.com) last wrote about an unsolved murder in the gospel community.