State tough place to find affordable housing

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Friday, Sept. 23, 2005 | 10:26 a.m.

Nevada is the seventh toughest state in the nation to find affordable housing if you're physically or mentally disabled and receive Social Security benefits, according to a report released at a local conference this week.

The report's conclusions were announced only days after the Sun reported that a Clark County Housing Authority pilot program with $1.5 million in federal funds meant to house the homeless who are mentally ill had languished for more than a year without putting anyone into housing.

The need for that stalled program was underscored by this week's report, said Jonna Triggs, the top mental health official in Southern Nevada. Her agency, Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services, is supposed to partner with the Housing Authority on the $1.5 million program.

Triggs said she would "set a fire" under her agency to clear the bureaucratic logjam blocking the program.

Housing is a vital ingredient for the mentally ill to reclaim their lives, said Ann O'Hara, the consultant who worked on the report as part of the Technical Assistance Collaborative, Inc., a Boston-based nonprofit organization.

"If you don't solve this problem, it costs a fortune elsewhere -- in emergency rooms, jails (and other services) ... you're paying for emergency solutions but not getting at the problem," O'Hara said.

The Supplemental Security Income program is meant to help those over 65 or the disabled with little or no income pay for housing, food and clothing.

O'Hara's report, "Priced Out in 2004: Housing Affordability for People with Disabilities," indicated that a person in Nevada receiving SSI benefits from the Social Security Administration would need 31 percent more money than he gets in his monthly checks to pay for the average one-bedroom apartment.

Nationally, the District of Columbia was ranked worse, where nearly two SSI checks -- 85 percent more than the average check -- would be needed to pay the rent for a one-bedroom apartment.

The average SSI check in Nevada was $564 a month last year; the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment, $739. The situation was worse in the Las Vegas area, where the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment was 37 percent more than the average monthly SSI check.

Lloyd Shaw, who processed applications for SSI benefits for 14 years, said not only is the amount paid out to the disabled too little for housing and other needs, the process itself is too complicated for most mentally ill people to handle on their own.

"Unless they have a third party, they're never going to make it through the (application) process," he said.

About one-third of an estimated 18,000 people statewide receiving SSI benefits might be mentally ill, O'Hara said. They include who the report calls "the most visible of these individuals -- defined as "chronically homeless" by the federal government" -- (who) live on our streets, in makeshift campgrounds, under bridges and highways, and in over-crowded and expensive emergency shelters."

The report concludes that "only an ongoing monthly housing subsidy -- such as provided through HUD's Section 8 ... program ... is sufficient to close the extreme affordability gap."

The Clark County Housing Authority's stalled $1.5 million pilot project is a Section 8-type program that could house 75 individuals or families for two years.

Triggs said she would try to make that happen in the next two months, before the Housing Authority's interim director, Carl Rowe, reaches the end of his contract.

"This is not acceptable (that no one has been housed through the program)," she said.

"I want to guarantee that I will cut through any red tape."