The uncertainty of federal government funding has become somewhat predictable for April Black, the executive director of the Tacoma Housing Authority (THA).
“We’ve really come to plan for it,” Black said of the current federal government shutdown. “The federal budget hasn’t been on time in my 20-plus-year career.
Some years it’s a shutdown, other years, it’s a continuing resolution passed at the last minute to patch funding that, for Black’s customers, keeps them in their homes.
This year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) pushed out October payments for rental assistance through housing vouchers minutes before the government shut down.
Beyond that, it’s uncertain, according to Riley Guererro, the strategy and program manager for Pierce County Housing Alliance (PCHA).
“We have solid plans for November,” Guerrero said, “Once we start getting to look at what happens in December, that’s when we get really scared.”
Guerrero and Black’s organizations are finding any money they can to try and patch rent assistance in order to keep people housed past that point.
Black thinks the reserves THA has built up in preparation for government shutdowns will keep them helping the 11,000 people that depend on them through three months.
“It would be a matter of taking money out of reserves without a real clear assurance that we would be repaid by the federal government,” Black said.
Both point to the burden this puts on the people who are helped by housing vouchers.
For PCHA, they serve 5,000 people, including 2,000 children. Most of the other clients are veterans and seniors on fixed income, averaging $20,000 a year.
“Any uncertainty in our program not only stresses our relationship with those landlord partners we work with to provide housing across the county, but it also makes it so that our participants have to balance this on top of everything else that they’re dealing with,” Guerrero said.
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