#rental vouchers

[realmikedirnt]

It Is So Fucking Expensive To Live Out Here

#the housemate who brought up us paying more of the rent is coming home today and i am quite frankly. #a little terrified. #i cant pay any more than i already do. at least not until i get another job #which. made email contact with my potential caseworker yesterday and she will hopefully be calling me soon #kiiinda hoping i can get help with a rental voucher of some kind #i like living out here but Christ. #anyway. it's not like this housemate can actually make me (or my roommate) pay any more than we do #we have everything in writing i'm pretty sure #i need to double check #but he can probably make me miserable #so that's fun ! #like we split rent by size of room #so the single room [redacted] and i share is uhhh. $975 or so #but we each pay half that because we share the room #the other two housemates pay $725 and $675 for their rooms #Christ just typing those is awful #like we could *maybe* pay $500 each for our room. $1000 for a shared bedroom. #AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH #^ having An Time #love being Insane. its so fun how it makes it extremely difficult to have a job. #i miss washing dishes :(

[prozach27]

.

#breathing deep and I recognize I shouldn’t use tumblr as a journal but this is my coping mechanism #and I need it rn lol #so the situation is worse than I thought #emergency rental assistance only covered my moms rent until January rather than February #the property never told me it was late #now they tell me today I need to pay two full months’ rent or my mom’s evicted #so I spring into action and I’m panicking tf out today #and I get a hold of my mom’s social worker at aging and long term care #bc she got approved for their housing voucher!! and I thought it was already submitted!! #the whole POINT of emergency rent was that it would give them a few months to get her on housing #but no - two months AFTER it ends she finally gets the voucher #actually she doesn’t even have it yet. they submit the paperwork April 3rd #so it won’t even take effect next month. meaning I actually need to pay THREE month’s rent #nearly $3600 with $150 in late fees tacked on #I’m. a mess today. esp after finding out someone stole my passport and was trying to steal my identity #but that didn’t stop me and we found an emergency service that will pay backrent when someone’s facing eviction. #it can take 8-12 weeks (!!!) to process but I gave the necessary permissions to everyone and so the landlord and my moms social worker #talked and he explained everything going on and is sending the plan in writing to her. and she’s forwarding it to corporate #and maybe they’ll actually let us hold off and have this service do what it does best #esp considering she’s going to be in the housing system so it’s state-guaranteed rent for a year if they keep her #I just. it’s 1 pm and I’m so emotionally exhausted and reeling #why is life this fucking hard lol

[wausaupilot]

Wausau accepting Section 8 housing applications

Wausau Pilot & Review The City of Wausau is accepting wait-list applications for a subsidized rental assistance program for low-income families in private housing market, officials said this week. Potential tenants can apply for apartments at Riverview Towers, Riverview Terrace or a few other sites. The assistance program application period began on March 25 and runs through 3.30 p.m. on April…

View On WordPress

#city of Wausau #rental assistance program #Section 8 Housing Voucher Program #subsidized housing #Wausau Community Development Authority

[carriesthewind]

"The problem, however, is that the city’s chatbot is telling businesses to break the law....

If you’re a landlord wondering which tenants you have to accept, for example, you might pose a question like, “are buildings required to accept section 8 vouchers?” or “do I have to accept tenants on rental assistance?” In testing by The Markup, the bot said no, landlords do not need to accept these tenants. Except, in New York City, it’s illegal for landlords to discriminate by source of income, with a minor exception for small buildings where the landlord or their family lives...

The NYC bot also appeared clueless about the city’s consumer and worker protections. For example, in 2020, the City Council passed a law requiring businesses to accept cash to prevent discrimination against unbanked customers. But the bot didn’t know about that policy when we asked. “Yes, you can make your restaurant cash-free,” the bot said in one wholly false response. “There are no regulations in New York City that require businesses to accept cash as a form of payment.”

The bot said it was fine to take workers’ tips (wrong, although they sometimes can count tips toward minimum wage requirements) and that there were no regulations on informing staff about scheduling changes (also wrong). It didn’t do better with more specific industries, suggesting it was OK to conceal funeral service prices, for example, which the Federal Trade Commission has outlawed. Similar errors appeared when the questions were asked in other languages, The Markup found."

Kathryn Tewson is stress-testing the bot over on bluesky and has found it will provide some truly horrifying responses:

#ai bs

[rodimuses]

OKAY GUYS, I BRING GO FUND ME FOR MY MOVE. I DECIDED I NEED THE HELP. Tumblr, please I have a short time and want my dream apartment. Please share my GFM.

Hi, I am Rod, I am a trans nonbinary person, and I recently got approved for a rental assistance voucher, but the downside is I have to move 40 minutes to the city. I have two cats that help me with my mental health and a job that I work but don't make enough to move on short notice. I need to break my current lease as well. This fundraiser is for moving funds. All help is welcome. I ideally should be moved with in the next 2 months. My ideal move in date is January 20th 2024.

[probablyasocialecologist]

America isn’t suffering from a housing shortage. Housing production has lagged behind household growth since 2010, but this doesn’t account for the massive overhang of housing produced in the previous decade. Fueled by the housing bubble of 2000-07, 160 homes were added to the stock for every 100 households formed during the aughts, our analysis of Census Bureau data shows. This level of production created a huge surplus of housing, which has yet to be fully absorbed. Put differently, from 2000-21, the nation grew by 18.5 million households. To maintain an adequate inventory of vacant housing, which historically would be 9.3% of the total, the housing stock needed to expand by 20.2 million units. Instead, it grew by 23.7 million housing units, producing a surplus of 3.5 million units.

[...]

It’s conceivable that a huge increase in supply would eventually lead to lower prices. But that would require a major intervention in the market, and the case for it is weak. U.S. housing policy should focus less on adding to the already ample stock of housing and more on raising the incomes of low-income households and giving them access to good-quality housing in safe neighborhoods. We know how to do this. Raising minimum wages to the living-wage level will help the working poor afford housing. Zoning reform can encourage the production of multifamily housing, accessory apartments, and other less-expensive housing formats. Subsidized construction should be targeted for supportive housing and for affordable rental housing in places with actual housing shortages. The most effective housing assistance for low-income households is not found in building more units but in helping low-income households afford the units that already exist through housing vouchers for renter households and down-payment assistance for home buyers. The U.S. cannot build itself out of its housing crisis.

#us politics #housing #homelessness

[fallintosanity]

calling all US-based renters

I just spotted a VERY interesting request for public comments from the FTC: 

The Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau invite interested individuals to submit comments about background screening issues affecting individuals who seek rental housing in the United States. Tenants, prospective tenants, tenants’ rights and housing advocacy groups, industry participants (including property managers, commercial landlords, individual landlords, and consumer reporting agencies that develop credit and tenant screening reports used by landlords and property managers to screen prospective tenants), other members of the public, and government agencies are encouraged to provide comments and information about the use of credit reports, credit scores, and criminal and civil (including eviction) public records in tenant screening; the use of algorithms in making tenant screening decisions; the use of tenant screening recommendation products developed, marketed, or sold by consumer reporting agencies; and other tenant screening issues.

The full document (pdf) also includes a series of questions about “unique impacts on historically underserved populations, such as Black,  Indigenous, and people of color; the LGBTQI+ community (especially trans and gender nonconforming individuals); military service members; immigrants; public housing voucher recipients; renters with disabilities; or others”

If you have Opinions on this, drop a comment by May 30th, 2023: 

https://www.regulations.gov/document/FTC-2023-0024-0002

#sanity talks a lot #psa #social commentary #politics #sort of #also please share this with any other renters you know #reblog repost whatever idc #the current FTC is VERY effective #and VERY determined #help 'em crack down on shitty landlord business practices

[cy-cyborg]

Omg it's finally done, the insurance company finally paid us for the accident my partner was in last August and I can finally afford to get the hand controls put into the new car since they wrecked the old one.

Just to put the cherry on top too, because the company dragged their feet for so long and fucked us and everyone else invloved around so much they're getting fined now too. Partly because they left the wrecked car in the inpound lot for months and refused to communicate and partly because they ghosted the rental car company (and us for a while too, but the fine is for the company).

According to my Local Area Coordinator at the NDIS, they also violated the DDA (Australian disability discrimination act) - they were supposed to pay for a rental vehicle with hand controls for me to use in the interim (they did pay for a car eventually but it was unmodified and therefore I couldnt actually use it), or a suitable alternative (e.g. pay for things like taxi vouchers or uber fairs), which means we have grounds to take them to court, but I'm so burnt out I don't want to do that. Right now I'm content knowing they're dealing with the consequences of their own actions with the other companies. The rental car company mentioned getting fair trade (I think) involved, too so that's probably not the last of the consequences of their own actions either lol.

[risingphoenix87]

Since I have some new followers, I thought I should try this again.

So, as some of you might know, because I deal with several different disabilities (chronic pain that makes walking unassisted difficult, major depressive and generalized anxiety disorders, chronic fatigue, and undiagnosed autism), I'm unable to hold down a regular job. I'm on several different painkillers and SSRIs for them, but they just help me function day to day. I've been applying for SSI/SSDI for about four years, and it's a constant cycle, but I can't give up until I get it. I'm able to live in my own apartment thanks to a housing voucher and get $281 a month for food (but with rising food costs, it doesn't go as far as it used to), but I'm still on the hook for utilities, food, insurance, and litter for my cat/ESA, rental insurance, med copays, transportation (I depend on paratransit), and all my basic household/personal care needs.

I have a GoFundMe to help sustain me during the process and also have several payment apps. I look forward to the day when I no longer have to e-beg to survive, but until then, I could really use y'all's help. I'm currently out of dish soap, dishwasher detergent, and KN-95 masks, and I need extra cash to order food on low-spoon days (which I've had all this week). 

GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/helpblackcrippledqueerstayafloat

Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/lunafirebird

CashApp/Venmo: lunafirebird87

Please help in any way you can! Even reblogs are a big help!

#mutual aid #black lives matter #community care #repost #black mutual aid #SOS #urgent #signal boost

[anthonyxblake]

starter for @samxbradford

location: rapple raiders

Anthony was not a rock climber but after receiving a voucher from the motel that he had been staying at prior to moving into his apartment, he figured it was time to give it a shot. He walked into the building, spotting a fairly small group of people that seemed to be helping one another out. Anthony went to the front desk first, getting his rental gear before approaching the small group. "Excuse me," he cleared his throat, the forty-three year old man hesitant in meeting new people, "I was told you guys help teach others? Some sort of rock climbing group? Club?" He couldn't remember what the employee had said.

#anthony blake || threads #threads || w. sam bradford #sorrry this is awful

[mariacallous]

Housing vouchers are a cornerstone of US federal housing policy, offering aid to more than two million households. Vouchers are meant to provide the poor with increased choice in the private rental marketplace, enabling access to safe neighborhoods with good schools and higher-paying jobs. But do they?

The Voucher Promise examines the Housing Choice Voucher Program, colloquially known as “Section 8,” and how it shapes the lives of families living in a Baltimore neighborhood called Park Heights. Eva Rosen tells stories about the daily lives of homeowners, voucher holders, renters who receive no housing assistance, and the landlords who provide housing. While vouchers are a powerful tool with great promise, she demonstrates how the housing policy can replicate the very inequalities it has the power to solve.

Rosen spent more than a year living in Park Heights, sitting on front stoops, getting to know families, accompanying them on housing searches, speaking to landlords, and learning about the neighborhood’s history. Voucher holders disproportionately end up in this area despite rampant unemployment, drugs, crime, and abandoned housing. Exploring why they are unable to relocate to other neighborhoods, Rosen illustrates the challenges in obtaining vouchers and the difficulties faced by recipients in using them when and where they want to. Yet, despite the program’s real shortcomings, she argues that vouchers offer basic stability for families and should remain integral to solutions for the nation’s housing crisis.

Delving into the connections between safe, affordable housing and social mobility, The Voucher Promise investigates the profound benefits and formidable obstacles involved in housing America���s poor.

[supersabbatical2024]

5/28/24: Happy Birthday to Me! Happy to be traveling with my One and Only, G.O.A.T. husband Claude GOETZ! We were about to reach max sabbatical homeostastis, and then Claude came down with a nasty cold yesterday. By today, he was down for the count. He was a trooper, and we packed up and left our Pusada (government-run hotels in Portugal—really surprisingly nice!!!) in Arraiolos to drive to our next destination, Condeixa. But Claude was slowly fading, and I ended up driving (even though I am not on the rental contract…shhh). Stopped in Abrantes, to check out another lovely village with windy cobblestone streets and a castle on the hilltop. I dragged Claude up the hill to the Castelo Jardin, and put him to sleep on a bench. I took a walk around the castle, and entertained myself with experimental selfies. Am I getting any better at it? Anyway, Claude slept on the bench, slept in the car on the way to our next hotel in Condeixa, called Conímbriga Hotel do Paço. Claude slept until dinner. I went out to the beautiful pool, did some mini laps, and read my New Yorker. Claude hauled himself out of bed in time for our 8:00 dinner reservation in our hotel (he tested negative for Covid, shew!!). We had wine, fish soup, grouper and mushroom risotto with crispy bacon (YUH-UM), and the whole restaurant sang Happy Birthday to me…Claude was feverish and shaking by the time I got him back to the room, and he laid back down and yes, went to sleep. I will take a rain check on the wild birthday celebrating that we might have done if he were not so ill, and I will use the four(!!) drink vouchers the hotel gave me for my birthday. Maybe not tonight though. #StillGratefulAfterAllTheseYears.

[longlivetv]

It's funny that you added the point about reliability for trains, because it's a big issue and Amtrak have absolutely no consideration for the fact that they regularly fail to achieve the scheduled times. It's never been a huge issue for me because I've always been on holiday and learned quickly to factor in an assumed delay, but I met 2 Belgian guys on the train from Denver to Chicago last summer who were totally bemused by the fact that they train was running about 5 hours late and all the Amtrak employees said was "come back later" with no provision of food vouchers or even just a sincere apology! Obviously, the staff deal with the same thing pretty much every day, so they're probably over it, but the difference with the European network is insane.

My wait for that train at Salt Lake City was one time I got caught out a bit. I was supposed to leave at 3am so I decided to just go to the station on the last tram ... which was at about 1030pm. But when I arrived they said the train would be there til 530am (at the earliest) so I really wished I'd just kept my hotel room! It ended up being 630am. I still had a great journey, but it's not a great service.

My one and only Amtrak trip was literally the trip from hell. The planned vacation was a trip to Disney World planned for me by my then boyfriend. We were university students with no money, so the trip also included various friends, including two girls I didn’t know well, a friend of mine from high school, who had introduced us, and my best college friend. Best college friend and I had always wanted to take the train, so we decided to do that while my boyfriend, his two friends, and my high school friend drove. The plan was for them to pick us up at the train station, and we would all end up arriving about the same time, and then we would go to the rental house.

Well. Although our train left on time, somewhere in the middle of nowhere we got stopped. For 12 hours. Which was then so long that once they fixed whatever had us stopped, we were still trapped there waiting on a new crew because they’d been on duty too long. They ran out of food, and we couldn’t get off to walk to the Shell station we could see out the train window to get food or water. There were almost no outlets, so passengers had to take turns sitting in the bag storage to charge their phones.

We arrived in Orlando an entire day late. We missed a whole park day, and in my absence my boyfriend had slept with my high school friend, as I discovered finding her stuff and used condoms in the room he and I were supposed to share. And I then had to fly back to my hometown with her and eat the most awkward dinner with ever, because our respective parents were picking us up and her dad was on the board at my mom's work.

So yeah. No amount of vouchers or refunds was gonna fix that one. Gonna take a lot to convince me to go very far on Amtrak.

#I can laugh about it now #but that was horrific lol

[rodimuses]

Making a new post to clean things up but uhhh

Hi, I am Rod, I am a trans nonbinary person, and I recently got approved for a rental assistance voucher, but the downside is I have to move 40 minutes to the city. I have two cats that help me with my mental health and a job that I work but don't make enough to move on short notice. I need to break my current lease as well. This fundraiser is for moving funds. All help is welcome. I ideally should be moved with in the next 2 months. My NEW ideal move in date is February 20th!!!!!! Since i was unable to get this one apartment, i had lost over 100$ trying to apply for it

Here are two ways to donate!

MY GFM IS AT 790/1,000 RAISED

Ive had to dig into the cash ive pulled out for laundry and taxis to work since i cant drive, so a second boost on this would help greatly.

[redheadgleek]

Today, I downloaded and printed off the voucher for my car rental in Iceland (I leave in 36 hours).

Th fine print says "make sure you bring a credit card that has been activated for international travel and has a PIN."

I've gone online, put in travel notices where I can, but I forgot about the PIN. I log back in and request to change pin - CC company tells me that one will be mailed in 7-14 business days. Repeat with a second credit card - same thing. Frantically look through a bunch of old paperwork that I've kept, but I did not keep a paper with a PIN number at least 5 years back. Call up customer service, finally get connected to a real person who cheerfully informs me that there's no way that they can expedite this process and there's no to change it unless I know the old PIN. Have a great trip!

Luckily, my credit union does allow for changing of a PIN in the app, so I'm not completely screwed, but my credit card with them doesn't have any perks, including the car rental insurance that I planned on using.

#always so much stress #so much still to do #i'm hoping that i can convince the rental company to just do a chip and sign method

[resolutedoubt]

While monied industry groups merely affect the posture of grassroots action and woke language while advancing high level political and legal crusades, small landlords like Lincoln Eccles, uniquely affected both by the pandemic’s economic precarity and its emergency regulations, have taken to the streets and Twitter, where they trumpet slogans like “landlords are people too,” “justice for mom’n’pop housing providers,” and “small landlord lives matter.” Some have even rebranded themselves as “indentured landlords,” “carelords,” and “community-based landlords.” When the New York City Council mulled a bill to target discrimination against formerly incarcerated tenants, a state committee member and shareholder of a Bronx gated community, spun it as “The End of Black Landlords.”

This narrative—and the cash machine behind it—has proven effective in swaying politicians, blunting tenant progress. It was reportedly influential in stopping Good Cause Eviction for the fifth straight year. Discussing the bill, a central Brooklyn assembly member representing a district of nearly three quarters Black renters argued that regulating rent increases would actually lead to “Black grandmas out on the street.” New York Mayor Eric Adams, himself a landlord, said in February that it’s important to “remember that small property owner—who came from the Caribbean [and] was able to buy a ten-unit house—how their increases are going up, what they’re going through.” When pressed by a Holocaust survivor tenant about city-wide rent increases on stabilized units approved by the Rent Guidelines Board, the members of which he appoints, Adams accused her talking to him like a “plantation owner.”

This pernicious rhetoric has succeeded not only at moving liberals but at arming conservatives, offering them the guise of populism while muddying the waters of debate. It has allowed the real estate establishment to cannily exploit the contradictory commitment of Democrats to both wealth-building through private property and, nominally, social justice.

For landlords, the language of victimization, which both identity politics and right-wing grievance draw upon, proves a potent force, tying together a relatively economically and politically diverse movement. It is the central engine of real estate’s outrage machine. No matter how absurd some manifestations of the social justice-minded mom-and-pop trope are, they’re the face of a deadly serious campaign—one close to snuffing out rent control entirely.

The narrative of the “woke” mom-and-pop landlord has since been taken up across the country. During public hearings about a new rent control program in St. Paul, an opponent—on Zoom from a beach vacation, naturally—characterized the policy as a form of redlining. Small landlords seeking to roll back rent control in Portland, Maine, adopted progressive language to do so, with ​​some arguing that their willingness to rent to asylum seekers, those on federal housing vouchers, and other marginalized communities demonstrates notable liberal bonafides. In Seattle, opposition to a local measure was led by a mom-and-pop group called Seattle Grassroots Landpeople. A Democratic city councilwoman in Minneapolis who led the charge to scrap consideration of a rent control program derided tenant advocates as “wealthy beer drinking pants rolled up white men” who need to “get out of mommy’s basement.” In a landlord forum, she described her role as “getting ready, putting my lipstick on, curling my hair and selling our message. [Landlords] are the experts at giving me what I’m selling.”

…

Outside of New York, this dynamic has played out most notably in California. The successful fight against Los Angeles’s pandemic eviction moratorium was led in part by the ​​Coalition of Small Rental Property Owners, “a California-based advocacy group that mostly represents black and Latinx landlords.” This past February, one small landlord launched a hunger strike to push for the end of Alameda County’s eviction moratorium, calling himself and other immigrant landlords “victims of government abuse.” The moratorium was ended by April.

Across the country, small landlords wielding social justice language are on the march, but their efforts could prove unnecessary. At the time of writing, the Supreme Court is mulling whether or not to hear any combination of five separate challenges to New York’s rent control law. Rent control has previously been upheld by the court, but with a ultra-conservative majority unbothered by established precedent, there’s ample reason to think they may take the case on—and undermine, if not outright abolish, rent control. Amid a national housing crisis in which rent prices are up just over 30 percent from 2019, the average American tenant is rent-burdened, eviction filings are 50 percent higher than the pre-pandemic average in some cities, and homelessness has reached record highs, the few restrictions on rent hikes that exist could be made unconstitutional overnight. The effects would be catastrophic, especially on renters of color.

#rent control #housing