Housing Authority Notifies My Son Of A Vacancy

Aspect of Need Addressed: Residential

My son recently received a notice from the public Princeton Borough Housing Authority. A subsidized studio apartment became available for which he could apply. Fortunately, he has already secured housing through a different private local agency, Princeton Community Housing. But the letter provided an opportunity to remind ourselves about this particular--and critical--Aspect of Need.

One of most challenges aspects of mental illness is housing. Studies show that stable and adequate housing is a critical element in recovery. But housing for disabled mentally ill is extremely hard to get, especially in high-cost places like New Jersey.

Housing: Three Kinds

For afflicted loved ones, there are basically three kinds of housing: supportive, subsidized, and "affordable".

Supportive housing is usually group or cluster housing where the psychiatrically diagnosed can receive low-cost housing with various supports, like medications management, transportation, assistance with financial management, emergency services, and other services mentally ill residents may need from time to time. Rents are usually assessed as a percentage of a resident's income, no matter how low, usually at 30% of deemed income. Thus for disabled consumers receiving only SSI and SSD, which in total might only amount to about $700 per month, supportive housing rent might be assessed at only $210.

Clearly such low rents hardly suffice to cover costs, so funding for supportive housing usually requires two other sources: rental subsidies and program sources. Rental subsidies include so-called HUD Section 8 vouchers, either "project-based" or "individual-based". They also include state subsidies. In New Jersey, this subsidy is called the NJ State Rental Assistance Program, or SRAP, managed by the NJ Department of Community Affairs, which serves about 430,000 families currently. Program sources are funds for the specific program supports. One such support is the Program of Assertive Community Treatment, or PACT, which for certain consumers provides an outreach full-service of psychiatric supports where a consumer lives. But PACT only serves a restricted number of consumers who fit certain recovery needs criteria.

(By the way, one such PACT client, in Mercer County, NJ, is Nobel Prize Winning Physicist John Nash, subject of the movie and book, A Beautiful Mind. Click here to read an article about his involvement in PACT.)

Supportive housing is in extremely short supply. Priority at the moment is given to institutionalized consumers. Certain judicial decisions, like the Olmstead Decision requires New Jersey to find community housing for consumers in mental hospitals who qualify for discharge but who are not able to be released for lack of adequate housing. Such cases usually receive priority in the assignment of supportive housing. Local examples of supportive housing include SERV Behavioral Health's apartment building on Belmont Avenue in Trenton, NJ, or Catholic Charities On My Own Supportive Housing Program in Mercer County and elsewhere in the Trenton Diocese.

Subsidized Housing is the second subset. Unlike Supportive Housing, Subsidized Housing addresses only financial need. And the financial need addressed tends to be very low income. Rents for subsidized housing also tend to be based on a percentage of income, i.e., 30%, no matter what amount. "Section 8" housing from the HUD constitutes a major source of such subsidized housing.

And then there is Affordable Housing, which addresses a wider range of financial need, not only the poorest of the poor, but also the poor and sometimes even the less poor. "Affordable Housing" is a relative term. In the State of New Jersey, a whole scheme of affordable housing is governed by the controversial Council on Affordable Housing, or COAH, which has set regulations and rates for affordable housing in response to the New Jersey Supreme Court decision in the landmark Mt. Laurel case, which ruled that the State of New Jersey had a constitutional obligation to provide for affordable housing. (New Jersey is the only state in the Nation to have such a constitutional obligation.) Every municipality has now been required to organize its own COAH plan, resulting in numerous (and often disparate) programs.

The Housing Authority's Notice

The Princeton Borough Housing Authority is a regular Public Housing Authority, or PHA. PHAs tend to be public agencies (as opposed to private non-profit organizations). They have governmental sanction and connection to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which maintains a section about them on its website. New Jersey alone has scores of PHAs.

The letter to my son was the first step in the Housing Agency's facility allocation process. He has been on their waiting list for over two years. His waiting list position is #17. When a unit becomes available, the Princeton Housing Authority notifies all on its waiting list and asked those interested to respond. Those who respond are invited to submit additional information about themselves and submit to a background and credit check. Those who pass these tests are then eligible to be considered for the available unit. The Housing Authority then proceeds sequentially down the waiting list until a qualified candidate is founded, who is then invited to take the unit. If that candidate does not accept, then the next qualified person on the waiting list is invited. And so on.

Well, this part of The System seems random, arbitrary and officious. Such is probably to be expected in a government program that is managing a scarce resource in high demand.