Acclaro: the number of vouchers will remain the same in Middletown (1662) the city will no longer have control over the program and they will no longer get the HUD money they were getting to run the program. They also will be missing some other HUD money in the form of CDBG NSP funds. You know the ones they like to move around to use else where for other projects.so no I wouldn't call it a win because you didn't reduce the number of vouchers and you also lost all the extra HUD money. So no Ms. Judy and Dougie failed. But then again he can always spin it to them about how much more he can do. Remember when he told council "we haven't done any thing wrong" "they have to charge us with something" No Dougie you're wrong ,they told you you were "not in compliance " that means you're not doing the right thing. That's how HUD WORKS. If you are to stupid to figure that out... But then he's not stupid that how he spun it to council and they bought it. IMO

How does anyone in their right mind conclude that the transfer of the HUD Housing Choice Voucher Program to the Butler Metropolitan Housing Authority would be a feather in the cap of a Community Revitalization Department staff member? The units to be transferred to BHMA is 1662, or, the current number administered by Middletown Public Housing Authority. What makes anyone think that non-Middletown segments of Warren and Butler Counties will clamor for Section 8 units to be transferred there? And, what about the 10% of HCV funds that is earmarked for administrative purposes? Yes, there are likely less than $150,000 in funds utilized by the city. And, what about the funds paid to Nelson Associates, etc., etc. Please be advised that there's much, much more than $150,000+/- involved to set the record straight. It's illogical for anyone to presume that the transfer of the Section 8 program is something to be considered favorable for one current city staff candidate for City Manager.

Yes  sir, City Hall said they only get about $150,000 for the Section 8 Program…
I can’t wait for you to see the tap dance they are going to do to cover up this big lie.
Keep your eye on the bouncing red ball folks….

Wait, wait…do you hear that strange noise…That big sucking sound is all those HUD Funds leaving the City of Middletown coffer’s.
Yes. sir now you will see who has really benefited from all that HUD poor peoples money.

FOR THE PAST 5 YEARS YOU HAVE BEEN LIVING IN "SLUMVILLE USA" AND GETTING WELFARE CHECKS EVERY SEVERAL MONTHS FROM THE STATE AND FEDERAL GOVERMENTS TO KEEP THIS CITY OPERATING.   

JUST THINK.... IN 15 SHORT YEARS THESE IDIOTS HAVE COMPLETLY DESTROYED OUR HOME TOWN
THEY HAVE DONE SUCH A FINE JOB....HELL YES GIVE THEM MORE MONEY AND ANOTHER RAISE!

I am sorry....but I am totally confused.
Well Acclaro I will try to untangle this web for you one point at a time...

It was stated there is pending investigation and  an open audit by HUD which prevents any information from being available from the HUD audit, and yet there are statements made about an outcome, non published to date, about 1662 vouchers which will remain and transfer to the current program out of Middletown to two county programs. How was that decision determined? HUD or the city?
WORD ON THE STREET: HUD said turn over the program or we will take legal action against all those involved City Council, Miss Judy and Doug Adkins. I have heard that Adkins has filed an appeal with HUD.

Secondly, I have read Marty Kohler and Dr. Price worked in tandem to raise HUD Section 8 vouchers; the same vouchers Nancy Nix, Noah Powers, Tony Marconi, others, denies, or all sitting council a few years ago  but Marty Kohler still works for the city and the levy nearly passed, when many claim it was the vouchers that undermined MCSD performance.
The increase of HUD Section 8 Vouchers started with Neil (see MJ article under vouchers). and then Marty took over the program and approved all other increases in the voucher program to their current level of 1662. City Hall increased the program by about 900 vouchers…then multiply that number by 2 to 3 children per household and you now have the increase and need for all the new schools that were built with the last levy. For all these PHD’s, Collage Educated people to say that they did not realize what would happen to the school system…Is a flat out lie…A high school drop out could have predicted this out come…mercy
Why was Marty Kohler not fired?
…and as my granny would say..”Now that’s the $64,000 question”

Thirdly, I have not heard anyone on council state the voucher transfer was coming forth.
”This is a legal action and we are not allowed to talk about it” They are all up to their eye balls in this mess because COUNCIL MEMBERS ARE THE MPHA

Fourthly, if all is true, you would agree Doug Adkins will not be offered a position in either of the two counties in all probability, some they have county administration, so the  very fact Doug Adkins is a finalist for city manager shows that council doesn't think he did something wrong, or they are not aware these vouchers are being transferred for administration? And, as importantly, if they know, they think he needs a job.....isn't it true they will likely give him a job as city manager?
If city council admits that Dougie has done anything wrong…then they have to admit that they have done something wrong also because COUNCIL MEMBERS ARE THE MPHA

     

Perplexed
Thanks for reminding me about these projects.
Yes they were really good buds back in those days.
Perplexed please correct me if I give any incorrect information on any of these HUD programs.
My three little grey cells are about to OD on all this mess.

acclaro: I have to clarifiy a statement I made earlier in which I posted "if you are too stupid to figure that out" I was ofcourse referring to Doug NOT you.I did not want you to think that was directed toward you. Sometimes you post something how you are thinking put in print it looks much different.

Ooops…Acclaro
I forgot another important point..
Nelson and Associates contract for the Section 8 Program expired in March 2014 and it has not been renewed.
It is now only a matter of them separating and transferring all the data to Warren and Butler counties.

Middletown Journal
Posted: 6:24 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2013

Council weighs options for response to HUD

By Michael D. Pitman

Staff Writer

    MIDDLETOWN — The city is not at risk of losing federal funding or being sued by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development if it proceeds with a plan to eliminate 1,008 Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers over the next five years — at least not right now, said Community Revitalization Director Doug Adkins.

    “You’re at no risk right this minute,” Adkins told Middletown City Council at the board’s Tuesday meeting. “Zero.”

    Adkins presented council members with five options for responding to a Dec. 21 letter the city received from HUD about its plan to cut Section 8 vouchers. In the letter, HUD officials told city officials that they needed to either fill Middletown’s available vouchers, transfer the city’s voucher program to the Butler Metropolitan Housing Agency or face possible legal action.

    Adkins told council he disagreed with characterizations of HUD’s letter as being “strongly worded.” He said he thought the letter was “diplomatically written” given each side’s differing point of view on the matter.

    “No fair housing or civil rights threats were made, no regulatory violations were cited,” said Adkins, a former attorney with the U.S. Labor Department. “We have been politely asked if we would like to walk away and give our program to Butler Metro… As an attorney, I’m looking for, where’s the hammer?”

    Adkins said there is nothing in HUD’s regulations that says Middletown can’t cut vouchers. He said he’s “100 percent comfortable moving forward” with the city’s plan because HUD needs to cite the city before they can say any federal funding would be in jeopardy.

    Still, Adkins said city staff would research and make a detailed presentation to council in two weeks about five ways they could respond to HUD’s letter. The options include:

·                       Transferring the program to BMHA as requested. Adkins said while it gets the city out of the public housing business and attention can be redirected to other issues, the city would “lose all the controls and safeguards that we have built into the program over the last three years and the vouchers will continue to stay concentrated in Middletown.”

·                       Negotiating a transfer the program with conditions. BMHA would take over the program with the city’s standards, which includes honoring the city’s barred landlord list and adopting rent usefulness and payment standards to de-concentrate high poverty census tracts.

·                       Transferring just the 1,008 vouchers to BMHA and continuing MPHA operations with the proposed 654 vouchers.

·                       Keeping vouchers and negotiating to reduce other subsidized housing units, though Adkins said this option is the least likely HUD would consider.

·                       To “politely decline” and move forward with what the city has proposed.

    The city must respond to HUD’s letter by Jan. 31, however, Adkins told council he has asked for an extension until March so that the city could thoroughly review its options.

The proposal city leaders sent to HUD, which was approved by the Middletown Public Housing Agency on Oct. 16, reduces the city’s total subsidize housing to 10 percent of the city’s total housing stock. It also places the city in compliance for HUD regulations to have 95 percent of its vouchers filled. With more than 1,600 vouchers issued, the city only had about 82 percent of them filled.

    Staff proposed and the MPHA board, which consists of all seven members of city council, approved the plan to reduce the vouchers to 654 and transfer the remaining 1,008 vouchers to another housing authority or back to HUD.

    Jeff Faulkner, of Wilbraham Road and a Section 8 landlord, said he felt HUD’s letter was clear: comply by filling the available vouchers or risk losing the program and local control. Faulkner said he’s “fed up” with the process and the way the city is “beating up” Section 8 landlords with its strenuous property inspections.

    Faulkner has sued the city in small claims court on Dec. 28 for boarding up his rental property at 2108 Winona Drive four years ago, and alleges it cost him potential income and thousands of dollars in repairs. He is seeking $3,000 plus interest from the city.

“This program now is getting a bad reputation of not being landlord friendly,” Faulkner said. “It’s all about the landlords. We’re the vendors, we’re the ones that own the homes, we make them available for people who need them.”

    Councilman Joshua Laubach assured Faulkner that council wasn’t “unfairly going after or targeting landlords or Section 8 owners.” Laubach said the city’s plan is about maintaining local control of how Middletown looks demographically and not being governed by outside federal dollars.

    But other council members expressed concerns about challenging HUD.

    “My concern is the same as the vice mayor’s, that we run the risk of losing a lot of what we built over the last three years that I’ve been here,” Councilman A. J. Smith said.

If HUD comes back and says the city did violate some regulation, Adkins said City     Council will have time to regroup and reassess its position because “they have to cite us with something, they have to find that we have broken something.” Then they have to allow the city to have an action plan to regain compliance.

 

Acclaro,
       I'm sorry to say your assessment regarding Doug Adkins being appointed City manager is correct. In spite of the fact he and his boss have negatively impacted thousands of citizens Council is going to appoint him. If Council does this, and I have good reason to believe they will, then Council will demonstrate great irresponsibility toward their constituency and should have to be held accountable. We will be going down the wrong path again. When all is said and done Council must understand he is a prosecutor and thinks and acts like a prosecutor and he should go back to being a prosecutor. He  cannot communicate with the general public like a profesional administrator. He certainly is NOT qualified to be a City Manager. I appeal to council to take more applications, spend a little more money if necessary, but get the right person. As Ken Cohen suggested, "Don't settle."  Who in teh world got up such alist and tehn made a short list like this? It is a joke. This is vitally important at this time. Its not too late. We can and must turn the city into a more positive direction. We have the talent and can create the opportunities in this city to do it.
       Paul Nagy

We don't even have to look at the number of vouchers Marty brought in.Lets just look at the number of businesses Marty single handedly has caused to decline to move to our city. He doesn't return phone calls, he refuses to consider zoning changes. Doug threw the city under the bus saying our zoning laws are antiquated and should be changed ..Why has Marty not done that? Would that be dereliction of duty? It would be in OUR world and WE would be dismissed. They say it cost money and the city doesn't have it. But we do for other projects. You would think it would be top priority to be working off of current law. So maybe that goes back to Les. The point is Marty has been a detriment to the city but there he sits drawing a nice salary. IMO

Acclaro -

Much of the Community Revitalization Dept. administrative funds, presuming Section 8 Administrative funding is transferred to BMHA, are HUD-based (Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) plus the Home Investment Partnerships (HOME) programs). As noted previously, CDBG is already administratively top-heavy while HOME only allows roughly 10% of the grant ($40,000+/-). Something has to give.

Posted: 12:00 a.m. Sunday, March 24, 2013

Housing expert says city is ‘playing with fire’

Section 8’s watershed moment with HUD will play a part in determining the city’s future

By Michael D. Pitman

Staff Writer

    MIDDLETOWN — Cutting 60 percent of Middletown’s existing Section 8 housing vouchers would be reckless and could cost the city millions of dollars in funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, low-income and housing experts say.

    City officials plan to eliminate 1,008 Section 8 vouchers through attrition in the next five years. They say Middletown is over-saturated with subsidized housing that is taxing city services, generating crime and negatively impacting the city’s image. Middletown has the highest rate of subsidized housing in the state at 9.7 percent.

    The Middletown Public Housing Authority presented the plan to HUD back in October, but it has encountered some resistance from the federal housing agency. HUD has told Middletown officials to fill 95 percent of its available vouchers, or transfer its voucher program to Butler County Metropolitan Housing Authority, or face possible legal action.

    But city officials recently sent HUD a letter refusing to back down from their position.

    HUD spokeswoman Donna White confirmed the agency is reviewing the city’s letter, but would not indicate when or how it might respond.

    Elizabeth Brown, executive director of Housing Opportunities Made Equal, a Cincinnati-based housing rights organization, said Middletown officials are “playing with fire if they continue to thumb their noses at HUD.”

    Brown said for years Middletown has been “held up as a model for running the Section 8 program,” but now the city is “tumbling off the pedestal.”

    “They were serving their residents. They had a need in the community, and they had been meeting the need,” Brown said. “That’s not a negative thing to say they’re successful (serving low-income families).”

    Brown said HUD has the ability to cut off all of its Community Development Block Grant funds if the agency believes Middletown is not being fair with its voucher program. Middletown is slated to receive $1.4 million in CDBG funds this year, according to city records.

    She said she has talked with HUD after hearing about the city’s plans and that the agency is “extremely upset with Middletown.”

    “To me the simplest thing is, if the city does not want to be in the business, they should simply turn the program over to the BMHA, and let them run it for the entire county,” Brown said. “It would be a fair process throughout the county, and it gets the city out of the middle of it.”

    Phyllis Hitte, director of BMHA, said she would have no comment on Middletown’s vouchers until something happens with them involving her agency. Hitte said last week that BMHA would assume Middletown’s vouchers if HUD said so because there is a need for the vouchers.

    BMHA currently administers 1,111 Section 8 vouchers and about 300 portable vouchers, which are vouchers assigned to other public housing agencies. Hitte said BMHA has a 4,000-family waiting list based on applications filled out nearly three years ago.

    But Middletown officials don’t want to give up control of the Section 8 program. They say they just want to run it at a reduced level.

    Doug Adkins, the city’s community revitalization director, said because there is a significant poverty rate in Middletown, having no subsidized housing wouldn’t be beneficial.

    “Our poverty rate is over 20 percent, and we have a portion of our population that, due to age or personal circumstances, cannot fully provide for themselves,” Adkins said. “Two examples would be low, fixed-income seniors and disabled residents.”

    Ignoring the needs of those residents when federal funds and programs are available “would lower those residents quality of life and place additional burdens on city resources to fill those unmet needs.”

    “The harder part is finding the balance between helping the disadvantaged without hurting the remaining residents through loss of the income and property tax base and the ability to provide core city services,” Adkins said.’’

     Middletown had less than 800 Section 8 housing vouchers in December 1999, but that figure more than doubled by October 2005. City officials placed a moratorium on accepting additional subsidized housing vouchers in 2005 in an effort to stop single-family homes from being transformed into multi-family residences.

    A 2005 staff report on the moratorium stated: “A major concern expressed in the master plan is the trend towards higher renter occupancy in formerly owner-occupied neighborhoods. This trend has been coupled with disinvestment in the same neighborhoods.”

    Butler County Treasurer Nancy Nix, who served on Middletown City Council when the moratorium was introduced, said it’s “anybody’s guess” what will happen if Middletown is allowed to reduce the total number of vouchers to 654.

    “I hope that (HUD) would understand that we are out of balance and let us reduce it to a reasonable amount,” Nix said. “There is no reason that Middletown should be the Section 8 capital of the state. It’s a continued strain on our services, and it hinders our progress to be a more vibrant community.”

    But critics of the city’s plan say eliminating the vouchers could create more problems than it solves. Cutting the vouchers would pull an estimated $6 million out of the local economy in funds paid to the city’s 400 Section 8 landlords. It could potentially create more than 1,000 new residential vacancies and displace more than 1,000 low-income families.

    “The program participants, for the most part, are people who have lived in the city for generations and generations,” Brown said. “And why should people who have lived in Middletown for generations be kicked out of the city, or fell like that’s what’s happening?”

    Miami University Oxford professor Dennis Sullivan, whose expertise is in poverty, public and urban economics, said he has not heard of any public housing agency attempting to reduce vouchers. Typically, you hear of communities needing more, he said.

    Sullivan said Middletown’s attempt to cut 60 percent of its vouchers, or roughly 200 a year for the next five years, is a lot in a relatively short period of time. He questioned where program participants would go if the voucher assistance is cut, but also said he disagreed with concentrating Section 8 vouchers in one area of the county.

    “I think it’s a very telling thing that so much of Butler County’s Section 8 housing is sitting in the northeast corner in Middletown,” he said.

    John Spring, director for the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, said the city’s proposed cuts would greatly affect those who need help the most.

    “Generally, cities are suffering, having hard times economically,” Spring said. “Often times, the people that get blamed are the people at the brunt of the issues, the ones in poverty. (Governments) say if those people just weren’t here, then we’d prosper.

    “The people who use Section 8 are likely people who’ve lived there for generations,” he continued. “It’s a question of whether Middletown will take care of its own people. The other question is: What happens when we get rid of affordable housing? It creates homelessness, and not homelessness of people coming into the city, but their own people.”

    Section 8 allows people to move out of blighted areas and gives them a hand up and a chance to become productive citizens, Sullivan said.

    “People are concerned that Section 8 will be a vector that carries blight like a disease,” Sullivan said. “That doesn’t mean that’s the case.”

    Brown said Middletown needs to concentrate on economic development, bringing in new businesses with new jobs, and the city’s 23 percent poverty rate will drop.

    “That’s where their time and energy should be,” she said.

    This is the third of a three-part series looking at the past, present and future of Section 8 in Middletown.

Continuing the coversation

How this program moves beyond this conflict with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development regarding the future of the city’s Section 8 program will play a role in how the city is shaped in the future. The Journal will continue its in-depth coverage on this program.

Join the conversation

Visit us online at Facebook.com/MiddletownJournal and join our conversation about Section 8 housing in Middletown.

Subsidized housing

Middletown has highest percentage of subdizied units in the state. Here’s a list of neighboring public houisng agencies (number of Section 8 vouchers in parentheses):

·                       9.7 percent: Middletown (1,662 vouchers)

·                       5.1 percent: Cincinnati (11,266 vouchers)

·                       1.7 percent: Butler County (1,111 vouchers)

·                       1.5 percent: Clermont County (906 vouchers)

·                       0.8 percent: Warren County (448 vouchers)

·                       0.3 percent: Preble County (52 vouchers)

Here’s a list of the top five public houisng agencies in the state (number of Section 8 vouchers in parentheses):

·                       9.7 percent: Middletown (1,662 vouchers)

·                       8.5 percent: Chillicothe (515 vouchers)

·                       5.7 percent: Cambridge (743)

·                       5.2 percent: Akron (9,760 vouchers*)

·                       5.2 percent: Jefferson (818 vouchers)

·                       State average: 2.6 percent

*Includes cities of Barberton, Akron, Cuyahoga Falls and Summit County

Source: City of Middletown, October 2012 report