CHARLESTON, South Carolina—Housing Secretary Ben Carson said his latest proposal to raise rents would mean a path toward self-sufficiency for more than 4 million low-income households across the United States by pushing more people to find work. For Ebony Morris and her four small children, it could mean homelessness.
Morris lives in Charleston, South Carolina, where most households receiving federal housing assistance would see rents rise an average 26 percent, according to an analysis done by Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for The Associated Press. Her increase would be nearly double that.
Overall, the analysis shows that in the 100 largest US metropolitan areas, low-income tenants—many of whom have jobs—would have to pay roughly 20 percent more each year for rent under the plan. That’s about six times greater than the growth in average hourly earnings, putting poor workers at an increased risk of homelessness because wages haven’t kept pace with housing expenses.
“I saw public housing as an option to get on my feet, to pay 30 percent of my income and get myself out of debt and eventually become a homeowner,” said Morris, whose rent would jump from $403 to $600. “But this would put us in a homeless state.”
The proposal, which needs congressional approval, is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to scale back the social safety net, under the belief that being less generous will prompt those receiving federal assistance to enter the work force.
“It’s our attempt to give poor people a way out of poverty,” Carson said in a recent interview with Fox News.
The analysis shows families would be disproportionately impacted. Of the 8.3 million people affected, more than 3 million are children.
Morris, a pediatric nurse, said she sometimes works 50 hours a week just to get by. Her four young children would be hit hard if her rent increases, she said.
“Food, electricity, bills, school uniforms,” she said. “Internet for homework assignments and report cards. All of their reading modules at school require the Internet. Without it, they’ll be behind their classmates. The kids are in extracurriculars, those would be scrapped. I would struggle just to pay my bills.”
The impact of the plan would be felt everywhere.
Rent for the poorest tenants in Baltimore, where Carson was a neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and where his own story of overcoming poverty inspired generations of children, could go up by 19 percent or $800 a year. In Detroit where Carson’s mother, a single parent, raised him by working two jobs, rents could increase by $710, or 21 percent. Households in Washington, D.C., one of the richest regions in the country, would see the largest increases: $980 per year on average, a 20-percent hike.
“This proposal to raise rents on low-income people doesn’t magically create well-paying jobs needed to lift people out of poverty,” said Diane Yentel, CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “Instead it just makes it harder for struggling families to get ahead by potentially cutting them off from the very services that make it possible for them to find and keep jobs.”
While the Department of Housing and Urban Development says elderly or disabled households would be exempt, about 314,000 households could lose their elderly or disabled status and see higher rents, according to the analysis by the policy center, which advocates for the poor.
Carson’s “Make Affordable Housing Work Act,” announced on April 25, would allow housing authorities to impose work requirements, would increase the percentage of income that tenants are required to pay, from 30 percent to 35 percent, and would raise the minimum rent from $50 to $150. It would eliminate deductions, for medical care and child care, and for each child in a home: Currently, families can deduct $480 per child, significantly lowering rent.
Donald Cameron, president and CEO of the Charleston Housing Authority, calls the proposal catastrophic.