From the City ManagersBlog..
Middletown Public Housing
December 3, 2015

As most are aware, in 2014we shut down Middletown Public Housing Agency with the intention that ourconcentration of Section 8 vouchers would disperse over time until we had a“normal” amount for a city our size.

40 years of HUD data shows thatvoucher holders generally go no further than about 10 miles from their currentlocation when they receive a voucher.  The reason for that appears tobe that because voucher holders are by law, extremely poor, they stay close towhatever limited support system they have in place for rides, babysitting,access to public transit, etc.

By closing MPHA and distributing thevouchers to Hamilton and Lebanon, staff believed that over time Middletown vouchers would be turned in for various reasons(jobs, death, program violations, etc.) and then reissued in Hamiltonand Lebanon. It was believed that many of the vouchers would not make their way back toMiddletown.

The shutdown of MPHA was a year longprocess getting computer files, paper files and HUD funds distributed to thecorrect places.  On Tuesday, City Council passed the final piece of thatpuzzle, allowing us to close down the bank accounts and distribute theremaining funds to Butlerand Warren Metropolitan Housing Authorities.   With that transfer, wewill finally and officially be out of the Housing Agency business.  No oneis happier about that than me.

At the peak of our Section 8 program,we had just over 1,700 MPHA vouchers operating in the City along with someadditional number of vouchers from Butler Metropolitan Housing Authorityliving within Middletown.

When I checked in with BMHA a couplemonths ago, the number of Section 8 vouchers operating within the City haddropped to around 1,000, a drop of over 700 vouchers from just a coupleyears ago.

If we were to be consistent withother communities, we would have just under 800 Section 8 vouchers in the Cityto serve our extremely poor.  Remember that many of these voucher holdersare elderly citizens on fixed incomes or disabled residents.  Despite thebad rap, almost all of our Section 8 holders were law abiding citizens justtrying to stay in decent housing.   Over time, we should continue toadjust down to somewhere near our 800 goal.