For Information contact:
Bob Kafka 512-431-4085
Marsha Katz 406-544-9504
Janine Bertram 503-504-9787
Washington, D.C.---500 ADAPT activists wasted no time getting to work on barriers in the way of full implementation of Money Follows the Person (MFP), passed by Congress last spring as part of the Deficit Reduction Act. People moving to the community from nursing homes and other institutions must have affordable, accessible, integrated housing available in numbers that currently don’t exist. ADAPT began work to change those numbers by hitting two of the nation’s largest public housing professional associations, winning meetings with both, and gaining their commitments to work together in the future.
“Until today, we’ve been in sort of a good-news-bad-news situation, “ said Shona Eakin, ADAPT Organizer from Erie Pennsylvania . “The good news was that Congress listened to ADAPT and passed Money Follows the Person, which gives states the tools and the financial incentive to move people from nursing homes and other institutions into their own homes in the community. But the bad news was that there is no affordable, accessible, integrated housing for people to move into when they leave institutional settings. By working with these two organizations, we can definitely change that.”
The two organizations targeted by ADAPT were the Public Housing Authorities Directors Association (PHADA), and the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA). ADAPT occupied the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hotel, where PHADA was holding its 2006 Legislative Forum, until PHADA Executive Director Timothy G. Kaiser, and its Policy Analyst Jim Armstrong agreed to a September 25 meeting with ADAPT in Washington, D.C. Simultaneously, 60 ADAPT activists occupied the Eye Street offices of CLPHA, barely avoiding arrest until CLPHA Board President, Sandra B. Henriquez, Administrator of the Boston Housing Authority agreed to an October 4 meeting.
ADAPT wants PHADA and CLPHA to endorse ADAPT’s “Access Across America” which includes linking housing vouchers to Medicaid-eligible people transitioning to the community from shelters, nursing homes and other institutions; and the creation by HUD of a national preference for the receipt of vouchers and other programs and services specifically for people leaving shelters, nursing homes and other institutions. ADAPT additionally wants HUD and the Public Housing Authorities to increase the amount of their accessible housing to 10% of their total units, and to assure that persons with disabilities holding Section 8 vouchers can have existing non-accessible housing modified to meet their needs as a reasonable accommodation for their disabilities.
“I know a man in a Philadelphia nursing home who is desperately seeking housing,” said Jimmi Shrode, Philadelphia ADAPT Organizer. “He’s been on a Section 8 waiting list for over a year. Because his yearly income is less than $15,000, he is somehow not eligible for what they call “affordable housing.” This so-called affordable housing for low income people is out of his reach. With a Section 8 voucher he could be free. If HUD and the Public Housing Authorities work with us to implement “Access Across America,” he will be free.”
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