Sept. 11 aid for jobless went unused

Dan Kulin

Thursday, Nov. 7, 2002 | 10:55 a.m.

When the economic effect of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks hit the Las Vegas Valley, many local charities used every dollar they could get to help people make mortgage payments, pay rent or pay utility bills.

But programs set up by the Clark County and North Las Vegas housing authorities to help financial victims of Sept. 11 pay rent ended up with about $400,000 more than they could give away.

Eligibility restrictions on the housing authorities' programs and the long wait to get help from the authorities kept many people away from those programs, Deni Conrad, executive director of HELP of Southern Nevada, said.

"The qualifications and jumping through hoops defeats the purpose," said Linda Lera-Randle El, executive director of Straight From the Streets, a nonprofit group that helps the homeless. "That the programs would have hundreds of thousands of dollars left over is ludicrous."

Representatives for the housing authorities said the restrictions were unavoidable, because the money came from federal sources and carried a list of eligibility restrictions.

Both housing authorities used federal money that was originally designated for rental assistance or housing rehabilitation for low-income households.

"I would have loved to have been able to help homeowners and not just renters," said Don England, chief executive of the North Las Vegas Housing Authority. "This was an emergency, but these were not emergency funds so we had to live with the restrictions of those funds."

The housing authorities' funds also came with income limits for the recipients. For example, a family of four could make no more than $33,000 a year to be eligible, Cheryl Hale of the county housing authority said.

The county government gave the county housing authority about $1.6 million to help laid-off employees pay rent. Almost $100,000 of that paid for administrative costs, and about $1.2 million was given to 408 families, Hale said.

The North Las Vegas City Council gave the city housing authority $200,000 to help those who lost their jobs pay rent. Just less than $30,000 of that money was given to 11 families, England said.

County authority officials spoke with federal officials about waiving or loosening some of the restrictions on the money so they could get it to applicants faster, Gustavo Ramos, deputy executive director of the county housing authority, said. But they were told none of the restrictions could be waived because they were part of federal law.

England said the North Las Vegas housing authority did not ask whether any of the restrictions on the funds could be waived because "it takes forever to get anything through the federal government."

Another obstacle were delays, Conrad said. Applicants told her that they were told they would have to wait as long as four weeks to see a housing authority official, she said.

"These people ... couldn't afford to wait," she said. HELP provided assistance within a day, she said.

Hale and England said they were not sure exactly how long it took people to get the funds, but said it could have taken anywhere from a week to a month.

Gustavo Ramos, deputy director of the county housing authority, said the county authority was able to speed up the process for applicants, in part by training maintenance staff to inspect homes, which was another condition of the funding. As a result, people were able to receive help within two or three weeks, he said. Typically, applicants would have waited as long as six weeks to receive assistance through the program, he said. HELP of Southern Nevada was among a group of area nonprofit organizations that helped local financial victims of Sept. 11 pay their bills. The group gave $175,000 to 700 families to help pay rent, utility bills or make mortgage payments, Conrad said.

"We were out of money almost instantly. ... Many of us in the private sector were scrambling," she said.

The United Way of Southern Nevada distributed about $1.1 million to local nonprofits, which used the money to help more than 8,000 households pay for housing, food, medical, and utility bills, United Way spokeswoman Gena Satori said.

Conrad said she was not surprised the housing authorities weren't able to give away all the money they had.

"They had pretty restrictive qualifications to get assistance," she said. "They were just stuck by no fault of their own."

North Las Vegas Mayor Michael Montandon said he was OK with the restrictions on the money, because they ensured the money would go only to those who were most in need.

"This was money of last resort to prevent people from being homeless, not to pay a mortgage," Montandon said.

The unused money from the county housing authority went back to the county government at the end of March, Hale said.

The City Council voted Wednesday to spend the unused city housing authority funds to pay for repairs to the Thunderbird Apartments. The housing authority bought the apartment complex in April for about $3.2 million, England said.