The Director of the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority, Jeffrey Phillips, says they're in crisis mode. His counterpart in Akron, Tony O'Leary, who heads the AMHA also uses the word crisis. They're talking about a Housing and Urban Development administration proposal to cut their funding in the middle of the fiscal year. O'Leary says it's the tightest budget since the U.S. Housing Act was signed 70 years ago.
Tony O'Leary: We aren't just out here whistling in the wind saying we want more money. We're saying we have a contract with the federal government to provide these services. They've agreed since 1937 to provide the money to do it. We collect rent from tenants that they're restricted by federal law - we can only charge so much. HUD and the Congress are not keeping their end of the bargain of paying their portion of the operating costs.
O'Leary says AMHA will have to cut $4.5 million. In Cleveland, Phillips says CMHA cuts will range from $3.8 million to $6.8 million. They've cut 100 positions. Akron has cut 25 of its 270 positions and is likely to cut another 15 to 20. Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic is angry. He recalls a Bush administration proposal two years ago to cut Community Development Block Grants that he says would have meant more Federal aid going to Iraqi cities than to American cities.
Don Plusquellic: And I am furious with all those so-called red blooded Americans who come to the defense of President Bush to say 'America First.' Horse manure! Horse manure that we ought to be spending more money to help Iraq right now than we are to help citizens of our own country.
The HUD budget is developed through a formula that adds up data on demographics, poverty, age of property and other factors. The base figure or so-called eligible funding level is set at 100%. O'Leary says the actual proration they've been getting since 1990 has been in the 92 to 96% range.
Tony O'Leary: The president prepares his budget; he obviously has the has the discretion to request all that money or a portion. He only requested 76% of the money to operate the program using their own numbers. Those aren't our numbers; those are HUD's numbers.
Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania turned out to be the biggest losers. And why Ohio?
Tony O'Leary: You need to ask the Bush Administration that. When we asked, they said historically the eastern part of the country and the midwest are over funded and the southeast and southwest are under funded. But an interesting coincidence is if you take a red states and blue states map and overlay a public housing formula on it lines up perfectly, with the exception of Ohio and Illinois. There's no good explanation for that.
Whether or not partisanship played any role this time, Plusquellic says it didn't used to.
Don Plusquellic: This, from 1937, was never looked at as a Democrat and Republican issue. Nixon actually increased the funds to be able to support housing and communities across the country. And it's just beyond belief.
Where once public housing was dominated by the unemployed, O'Leary says now a majority are the working poor. 40% of the people in Akron public housing are elderly or disabled. He and Cleveland's Jeffrey Phillips are hoping the new Congress will be more willing to spend money on such programs. President Bush releases his new budget in four weeks.