Federal Cuts Put Public Housing on Path to Decline

None by KCPW

(KCPW News) The latest funding cuts announced by federal housing officials mean Utah's publicly-owned apartments could fall into disrepair. The state will see a loss of nearly 700-thousand dollars next year to the capital budget, which pays for fixing and cleaning city and county-owned housing units:

"We can make bandaid repairs, but in time the property will deteriorate," says Terry Feveryear, director of housing operations for the Salt Lake City Housing Authority. "We have to do something because we have a beautiful housing stock and it would be a shame to watch it deteriorate."

The city is in the process of drafting a proposal to sell most of its housing units to private and nonprofit groups. The city would trade that housing for low-income vouchers from the federal government. Feveryear says ideally, none of the city's housing clients will be displaced. She says they hatched the plan in anticipation of such funding cuts.

"We keep getting news releases that there will be further cuts," says Feveryear. "Knowing this, we saw the only way to preserve housing stock for low-income families was to take drastic measures."

Feveryear says the city's plan has yet to receive federal approval. Meantime, the cuts means the Salt Lake City Housing Authority will operate at 78-percent budget in 2007. The latest cuts amount to a 23-percent cut in funding for capital repairs.

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