Feds shutter program to house elderly

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Dec 7, 2006 | by Matthew Artz

UNION CITY -- Under orders from federal regulators, the Alameda County Housing Authority has belatedly terminated a

12-year-old program designed to help frail seniors stay in their homes and out of nursing facilities.

Since 1994, the housing authority has administered Project HOPE, a now-defunct federal housing program for seniors that combined Section 8 housing vouchers with social services such as meals on wheels, paratransit and housekeeping visits.

The 124 seniors now participating in the program will still receive services through the county, Housing Authority Director Chris Gouig said.

However, seniors not already enrolled in the program who need support services won't receive them through a Section 8 housing voucher.

Also, seniors who previously could have qualified for a housing voucher under Project HOPE may have to wait longer for a standard voucher, Gouig said.

Project HOPE vouchers have been combined with the county's 5,400 Section 8 vouchers -- all of which have been allotted.

More than 1,000 residents are on the voucher waiting list, which the county has closed and doesn't plan to reopen until 2008 at the earliest, Gouig said.

Union City Councilman Richard Valle said he would ask the county's representatives in Congress to try to revive Project HOPE, which stands for Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere.

"It gives low-income seniors who are still able to live independently the chance to do exactly that," he said.

Twenty-four Project HOPE recipients live in Union City and five live in Newark, said Valle, who didn't have tallies for Fremont or Hayward.

If not for an apparent oversight by the housing authority, Project HOPE would have ended four years ago, Gouig said.

The federal Department ofHousing and Urban Development, or HUD, which oversees the Section 8 voucher program, started Project Hope in 1994 as a five-year demonstration project.

Alameda County received a three-year extension in 1999. But in 2002, when it asked for an additional 50 vouchers, HUD ordered it to scrap the program, Gouig said.

"I don't know why there was the delay" in ending Project HOPE, said Gouig, who discovered the oversight shortly after taking over the housing authority this year.

HUD could choose to penalize the housing authority for not promptly complying with its order to end Project HOPE, she added.

HUD spokesmen in Washing-

ton, D.C., and San Francisco said they didn't know why the department ended the program or how the county housing authority managed to continue operating it for four years after HUD ordered it terminated.

Gouig added that Project HOPE had been successful in Alameda County, but that apparently the results weren't as positive in other jurisdictions.

Staff writer Matthew Artz covers Union City for The Argus. He can be reached at (510) 353-7003 or martz@angnewspapers.com.