JOHNSONBURG — Elk County’s affordable housing options are becoming less so, tenants say, with rent hikes squeezing the elderly and piquing frustrations about crime and conditions in the municipality’s federally-subsidized complexes.
During a meeting in Johnsonburg on Monday, both the tenants and their landlords at the Elk County Housing Authority cited an adverse impact from federally-mandated rent increases now in their second year and meant to bring local low-income housing values in line with those of the local fair market.
The result has been two-fold.
Officials said higher costs are driving tenants out, contributing to more vacancies and less financial certainty for the authority, which some describe as simply treading water.
On the other hand, long-time residents, many of them elderly and on fixed incomes, say rent increases have left them choosing between shelter and, in some cases, their medicine.
“We’ve worked all of our life to have Social Security Insurance and we’re the ones they come down on the hardest,” said a woman named “Pat” who declined to give her last name fearing reprisals for speaking out.
At the authority-run Duffy Apartments in Johnsonburg, where Monday’s meeting was held, and the Dan Dickinson Apartments in neighboring Ridgway, rents grew by as much as 37 percent between 2013 and 2014.
In that time, the average cost of a one-bedroom rose by $111, up to $411 per month; the average two-bedroom rose by $131, up to $506 per month; the average three-bedroom rose by $149, up to $574 per month; and the average efficiency unit — essentially a no-frills studio apartment — rose by $85, up to $370 per month.
Individual rates are based on those flat rates and further configured by taking into account a number of factors, among them a tenant’s income, number of children and medical deductions.
More recently, rents for two-bedroom units rose by $4 this year, to $510 per month, while three-bedrooms rose another $60 to $634. All others remain the same having been brought into proportion with the fair market values of similar units in the area, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s specifications. Similar mandates have been imposed on lopsided public housing markets across the country.
But rates, including those in Elk County, are scheduled to be re-evaluated again in two years’ time, at which point HUD, which directed the recent hikes, could suggest more.
For those residents on fixed incomes, the prospect is terrifying.
Whether that reality is fueling their anger, or whether Monday’s meeting was just a rare chance to vent to someone in charge, many of the attendees spoke passionately of an inability to shoulder added expenses and an unwillingness to do so for properties they say are in dire need of repairs as well as beefed-up security.
“The drug traffic down there is terrible,” said Joanie Klase, a former county prison guard and current resident of the Dan Dickinson Apartments on North Mill Street in Ridgway.
Some described drug dealers as common and increasingly brazen, while criticizing the authority for not doing enough to curb crime, saying while HUD-imposed rent increases may be beyond their control, these issues aren’t.
Klase and others like her called for more scrutiny of tenants to find and stop those with felony convictions from moving in, as policy dictates.
She also wants to see drug-sniffing dogs return to sweep the properties and surveillance footage combed to identify trespassers, delinquents and, potentially, criminals.
“You’re half afraid to approach them,” one resident chimed-in. “You don’t know if you’ll get your house burned down.”
But authority director Kathy Laughner and site manager Pam Lingren said low-occupancy rates, exacerbated by higher rents, have taken tolls on these areas of enforcement as well as the authority’s bottom line.
“Our accountant tells us we’re meeting the bills but there’s not a lot of extra,” Laughner explained.
As for Lingren, she said the rate hikes come after 15 years without one, a conscious decision made by the authority in recognition of Elk County’s economically depressed status — a status which municipal officials say continues to improve.
But when HUD officials swept in two years ago, Lingren said they deemed a rate hike long-overdue, the eventual imposition of which sent some tenants in search of new housing.
“We only get money when they’re occupied,” Lingren said, citing an estimated six vacant units currently.
As a result, the authority said it’s increasingly understaffed and underfunded, and in the midst of frenzied efforts to attract new tenants — efforts that might be further jeopardized by a smoking ban being eyed by federal authorities.
In the midst of this, the authority is eyeing its own repairs and upgrades of everything from toilets to parking lots as part of a rolling five-year plan.
And while some residents lamented the effort and bureaucratic clots that often accompany progress in public housing, others acknowledged the benefits, calling the buildings “great places to live.”
It was not immediately clear how many of them are affected by the flat rate increases and to what extent.
Lingren informally listed a total of 176 tenants between the authority’s buildings in Ridgway and Johnsonburg.
When reached for comment Monday, HUD officials were unable to discuss the Elk County rate increases immediately.
Meanwhile, in McKean County, Housing Authority director Dusti Dennis said their rates were already in compliance prior to HUD issuing this latest notice, meaning they will not be looking at the same increases as Elk County.
“Each year our authority adopts HUD’s fair market rents for McKean County for our public housing units,” Dennis said. “Sometimes these rents increase slightly but there have been years where they have also decreased.”
McKean County public housing remains at 97 percent occupancy, she added.
Elsewhere in the region, Cameron County is without a Housing Authority, having only privately-owned public housing, while Potter County’s Housing Authority did not immediately respond to questions on this matter Monday.
