Thirty of 32 low-income housing units inspected in southern Maine recently failed quality reviews done by the federal government, according to an update provided to Sen. Susan Collins.
Collins had requested last December that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general review the Section 8 program in Maine after problems with housing in the Norway area were brought to light during an investigation by the Advertiser Democrat newspaper.
“The failed inspection rates uncovered by the Inspector General’s investigation are shocking. They indicate systemic failures by both Maine State Housing Authority and affordable housing developer Avesta, rather than problems caused by one ‘rogue inspector’ as MSHA and Avesta previously had asserted,” said Collins in a statement. “It is appalling that taxpayers’ dollars are going to subsidize housing that fails to meet basic safety and health standards.”
Collins, the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, released the report Tuesday. The HUD inspector general will release a full report at a later date.
According to the interim report, the inspector general’s office inspected units in March that had passed either MaineHousing or Avesta Housing’s inspections after March 2011. Of the 30 units that didn’t comply with HUD’s “housing quality standards,” 20 had been inspected by Avesta and 10 by MaineHousing. Some of the units contained health and safety violations, the inspector general reported.
“Also, several different inspectors, from both the authority and Avesta, were responsible for inspecting these units, and some units should not have been approved for initial occupancy because of deficiencies that would have existed at that time,” inspectors noted.
The report contains pictures and descriptions from inspected units. In one case, a picture shows electrical wiring hung over an interior doorway, which is a violation. In another, debris litters the yard and inspectors found “health and safety issues including open pool chemical containers.”
“The bottom line is people who live in federally subsidized housing should expect decent, safe, and sanitary conditions,” said Collins. “Unfortunately, this report shows that federal funds are instead going to property owners who fail to properly maintain their units. This is absolutely unacceptable.”
MaineHousing had been under increasing scrutiny since Gov. Paul LePage made appointments to the board last year. The scrutiny involved the Section 8 properties in Oxford County as well as the types of projects MaineHousing was funding, priority areas for the agency, and the amount spent per unit in development, among other issues.
Earlier this year, Executive Director Dale McCormick resigned after facing mounting pressure from new board members, including State Treasurer Bruce Poliquin, and the Maine Heritage Policy Center over management of MaineHousing. McCormick could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
Peter Anastos, chairman of MaineHousing’s board of directors, said the report reflects the criticism he and others have leveled at past leadership of the quasi-governmental agency.
“It confirms what all us new board members felt from the moment we got there: the focus of the agency was totally out of whack, was on pet projects, the solar, the green, the carbon — they took their eye off the ball,” said Anastos. “The most important thing they should have been doing was making sure their core mission was taken care of.”
Peter Merrill, who is serving as interim director at MaineHousing, called the findings of the inspection “unacceptable.”
“That is just miserable, it’s unacceptable and we are going to do everything we can to address it to make it right,” said Merrill. “I believe that there is a systemic problem. I think there’s no question about it.
“We have a problem and we’ve discovered it’s a bad problem and it needs our immediate, undivided attention. And it’s got it.”
Of the six inspectors who worked on the properties, only one remains, Merrill said. The others have been reassigned or have retired or resigned. MaineHousing has hired five new inspectors, with three more hires pending.
“We are going to make sure that every apartment — whether it’s in Houlton or Eliot — is going to get the same inspection,” said Merrill.
The agency also is going to increase its inspector training so everyone is consistently applying the same rules across the board, he said.
As MaineHousing started looking at the program, it used a risk-based approach, attempting to check the areas with potentially the most problems, said Merrill. But the results “suggested that the whole portfolio was at risk,” he said.
So MaineHousing brought in an independent, out-of-state inspection group that examined 500 units and found 40 percent of them failed quality standards. The inspections were done earlier this year and the agency is working to make sure that the problems are resolved. Merrill noted that units can fail an inspection for a range of problems, with minor problems such as a cracked light-switch wall plate contributing to a failure. More serious health and safety violations also lead to inspection failures, he said.
MaineHousing oversees 3,200 Section 8 units, Merrill said, and “HUD wants to inspect just about everything in the next three or four months, so we’re working closely with them to do that.”
HUD’s inspector general soon will be inspecting 30 units in northern and eastern Maine as part of its review, Merrill said.
MaineHousing had outsourced inspections of Section 8 units to Avesta in York, Cumberland, Oxford and Androscoggin counties. But the agency is taking that work back in house and already has taken over inspections in Oxford and Androscoggin counties. York and Cumberland counties will be in MaineHousing’s hands by the end of May. All of the 3,200 units statewide will be MaineHousing’s inspection responsibility by the end of September.
The report questioned whether MaineHousing had the capacity to reorganize and take those inspection responsibilities in house while also running inspections.
“Since 10 of 11 units previously inspected by the authority failed to meet HUD’s housing quality standards, we are concerned that the authority may not have the capacity and expertise to accomplish both a reorganization while effectively managing the inspection program,” the report said.
Merrill said MaineHousing has been able to hire the right people to oversee the program and to inspect the properties.
Dana Totman, president and CEO of Avesta, said several things jumped out at him after reading the HUD inspector general’s report.
“When I looked at it, it sort of reinforced in my mind how substandard housing is simply very problematic. Also, I think it shows sometimes how difficult it is to distinguish tenant activity from landlord activity,” said Totman. “It also shows a bit that an inspection at one point in time might reveal something very different from an inspection several months later.”
Maine has the oldest housing stock in the nation and a poor population. Those factors create challenges in the affordable housing arena, he said.
The report also doesn’t provide details, Totman noted, such as when the newly inspected units were inspected last. A lot can change over a few months, he noted, sometimes at the hands of tenants, sometimes the responsibility of landlords.
“I think this situation starts to shine a light on the substandard housing that exists in Maine — particularly in the rural parts of Maine,” said Totman. “I think it’s incumbent on us to do our very best in creating newer, safer, decent housing.”
Well I have seen how a nice apt. can be trashed in a very short period of time, give the tenants the materials and let them fix these places up. They can do something to earn their keep. Maybe they would take more pride in a place they put some blood, sweat and tears into. There are two sides to every story.
True and the trash in the yard is not likely caused by the landlord. But the report is not clear what the problems were and the severity of them is in question, too. Poorly handled reporting-wise.
A link to the HUD report is provide in the article. If you don’t have a Google account you can read a pdf version here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/92921859/HUD-OIG-Report-on-Maine-Low-Income-Housing
And the examples provided in that HUD report are for free-standing homes and a mobile home. Tenants are guaranteed the right of quiet enjoyment. Which means the tenant is responsible for the violations pictured in the HUD report. Why do you think the landlord is responsible??
For the examples cited in this report (which is hardly thorough) I agree – the violations illustrated are mostly caused by the tenant. That does not absolve the landlord/owner from responsibility to maintain the property (trash in the yard, for example).
My comments about landlords refer more to the examples found in Norway – the fire escape no longer attached to the wall, for instance. I’ve been through more than a few slumlord properties – it’s actually depressing to see.
That’s a good point, and as a renter if the landlord does not fix issues they can fix the place and send the landlord a bill, or use rent to pay for repairs.
Great idea, but what if the tenants refuse to help? Would you kick them out?
The folks who would trash a place that quickly are not likely to comply. Government (including subsidized) housing has a terrible record. It never seems to work. Personally, I like the idea of poor houses for the really desperate.
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Actually, it (camps) did work–during the depression. Plus, there is a difference between the term poor houses and the term camps–we are not talking about concentration camps and we are not talking about forcing people. They can live where they want but if they want to live on the public dime they will do it on terms that do not condone the irresponsibility shown by section 8 tenants and they will do at minimum cost to the taxpayer–that’s fair to me. If you believe that society OWES it to provide minimum basic needs (and of course, many do not), then I maintain that the poor houses meet t hat need while encouraging folks who can do better to go out and do so.
The problem is that bleeding hearts like you have transformed the notion of helping the needy to an entitlement of substantial comfort and equality to middle-class folks. So you have housing, food, a stipend and a lack of fraud inspection and feckless encouragement towards getting off the dole; you have grocery carts full of junk food, and overfed, obese welfare (an oxymoron, you would think) users with cable, internet, cell phones and transport thanks to the taxpayer. Thanks to our (your) enabling society, these folks and their junk food diet also are prone to diabetes and heart disease. Not to worry, the taxpayer will take of that, too.
(by the way, I am not a Republican or Tea Partier and agree with some mainstay Democratic issues like environment, choice, religious freedom, etc., but I have worked in social service and am convinced that the nanny state programs do not work to help the people or serve the taxpayer)
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Today is not yesterday. Insane asylums were pretty bad back then but modern mental hospitals are generally pretty good these days. Different era, different standards. But that leads into a related topic: The ‘advocates’ for the mentally ill thought that it is not right to segregate from the community so they had all but the most severe folk released from the institutions. Think that was such a good idea? The lucky ones are in group homes–still segregated, but with some freedom (course there are still stigma, stares, and snickers). The rest of what used to be institutionalized are in jail, prison, or homeless (50% of which are diagnosable). So much for good intentions. Poor houses, in my estimation, would be a last resort, be clean, well managed, and require assistance for upkeep by tenants at whatever level they are able to. They will be invested in their living arrangements and may learn a skill or two.
Now, to whether I have a heart and the problems we are facing. Centralized, governmental, blanket policy assistance is wasteful, ineffective, and inefficient. I prefer as decentralized an assistance policy as possible- friends and family first, community/local charities second; government last. I volunteer at a (non-governmental) community health clinic in Florida, am active with local and national Red Cross and deployed to Katrina and Northeast Floods. I am never judgmental when I serve in a volunteer capacity, but, realistically, I note differences between those people who have been laid off, had some disaster strike, or find themselves burdened by a health issue they could not have foreseen and those that have been on the dole forever. I would say I do have a heart, but believe that throwing benefits at folks without accountability does more damage than it helps because it enables current and generational dependency.
The problem we are facing, in addition to enabling dependency, is that we cannot afford to continue this. The amount we are spending on entitlements is increasing precipitously. We are going to run out of money…and then what? John Stuart Mills, I think it was, (and others) believed and wrote about democracy in the earlier days of our continuing political experiment, but was worried about the tendency of the populace, the interest groups we would say today, to vote themselves a permanent share of the public purse. We call that an entitlement now and it is (almost) axiomatic that once granted an entitlement is never reduced or rescinded…that is unless the society goes bankrupt. It’s happening in Greece right now. Let’s see how that turns out.
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Yup, blame all the tenants. Calling a slum-landlord to fix a problem gets you where? Okay, granted there are those who do totally wreck their habitats and an inspector can distinguish between holes in walls created by whacking them with baseball bats and hanging wires. And, you are right. Those former tenants should be former.
Well it looks like Bruce Poliquin had a good reason to go after Maine Housing. Here’s an internal report worth checking out:
http://www.themainewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/final-hqs-inspection-review-report-010612.pdf
Isn’t the Maine Wire the “news” branch of the Maine Heritage Policy Center? Hardly an unbiased source.
If you took 10 SECONDS to click on the link, you would clearly see that the document I linked to is not “news” from the Maine Wire, instead it’s a link to a Maine Housing Internal Audit. Sorry you don’t like where the file is hosted….
I have seen the aftermath of what some of these tenants leave behind. Freezer’s full of food cigarette burns in the carpeting Holes that mysteriously appear etc I am not saying landlords are perfect in in anyway. Things cost to replace and repair Sec 8 housing is hard way to make money
A Section 8 contract allows for a landlord to claim damage expenses, if done properly, a landlord won’t spend a nickel repairing tenant damages. The program will then seek re-payment from the tenant. Section 8 is a good program, it infuses money into property owner’s hands.
Maybe the government could fix the apartments as a tenant can fix an apartment if it needs work and bill the landlord, or withhold rent for repairs. How about using the renters as the labor force?
I did a section 8 exactly once. The tenant actually passed my strict guidelines for renting and it actually worked out OK. That said, I had to jump through hoops to “qualify” for the section 8 contract and it was pointed out to me that everything was my responsibility. The housing authority no longer paid for damages by section 8 tenants. What you are left with to repair damages is the security deposit and let me tell you that those few hundred dollars don’t go very far when a tenant can do thousands of dollars in damage. Not to mention that usually the tenant doesn’t pay the last month’s rent and you end up using the security deposit for that. since these people have nothing it does no good to take them to court to try and recoup your losses.
I have to say that the majority of section 8 rentals that are dumps are that way because of the tenants themselves.
I have to ask how many properties Susan Collins has invested in and converted to Section 8 housing.
Why is it that absolutely NO bleeding heart liberals who know how to spend MY money ever spend THEIR money the way they suggest that I spend mine?
Tenants who have no skin in the game treat everything with contempt and neglect. This really should come as no surprise.
Ah, but if you read the landlords with integrity who posted above you will learn that there is skin in the game and these are the working poor who are employed by companies who do not pay a living wage so the employee qualifies for housing assistance. Wonder if the employers also have interests in landlord businesses? Interesting way to keep their victims trapped in a cycle of dependency.
Do they require a security deposit of any kind on this housing?
I doubt it. In fact if you had enough money to come up with a security deposit, you probably wouldn’t qualify for one of these apartments.
Your right.
Yes they do, and they have a yearly inspection, and it says in the lease that you have to pay for repairs every year. these people are low income, and they do pay 30% of their income in rent, it is not free, if market rents were realistic to the low paying jobs in Maine, people wouldn’t need section 8, is it reasonable to pay 3 times what a mortgage would be?
I know section 8 isn’t free. Most of what I saw was just trash and properties that should never have been given section 8 status. There are bad landlords and they need to be dealt with through inspections which evidently wasn’t happening.
Heather, the reality is that most section 8 landlords ONLY receive that portion paid by the government. Period.
Wrong. point blank wrong. Tenants DO pay 30% of their income towards rent. If they fail to pay their portion of the rent then the landlord notifies the housing agency, housing contacts tenant, requires them to square up, if not they lose the assistance.
How nice on paper, how lousy in action. The reality is the tenant fails to pay their portion, and if you try to evict (and, BTW, GOOD LUCK if they are disabled or have children) all the recent damage is blamed on the landlord. Yeah, on paper it looks great, but the reality is the landlord and the tenant both play the taxpayer for a FOOL.
Susan you know this is true for any renter. Any renter can stop paying rent, any renter can make you take them to court to be evicted, any renter may have children or be disabled. We get it, section 8 burned you. But these are blanket statements that can apply to any rental situation. As landlords we have the RIGHT to screen our tenants, the right for references and credit checks, we have the right to design our leases to protect us, and we have the RIGHT to rent to whom WE CHOOSE. You chose a bad one, suck it up and deal. No one held a gun to your head and forced a section 8 tenant on you.
HUD says if a landlord wants to require a security deposit than they may but HUD will not assist in paying it. As long as the amount does not exceed two months rent (Maine state law) that it is fine. The landlord sets the rules in the lease, HUD helps pay the rent.
As a professional land surveyor, I conducted a post construction survey for a local subsidized housing development in Waldo County and found the condition of the units to be absolutely disgusting just several years after project completion. Broken window screens, dirty cat litter dumped on open lawns, and sliding glass doors that parents had let their children finger paint on were just some of the obvious problems. The icing on the cake for me was having a shirtless man come out of his unit at 1 PM just to yell obscenities at me because I had walked past his front window. It must be nice having subsidized apartments that make my apartment look like a thimble.
Remember, while all this was going on, isn’t it nice to remember that MSHA employees got backrubs on the taxpayers’ dollar…
what is “backrubs on the taxpayer’s dollar” supposed to mean?
It means that MSHA employees got massages, paid for with tax payer money. Do you not follow the news regularly??
The hackorama at MSHA was buying gift cards ala Paul Violette and bringing in masseuses for those dedicated, hard working public servants while they slaved away designing quarter million dollar, thousand square foot “affordable” housing units.
That was one of the perks that the agency provided. Along with donations to organizations in Iowa. Plays in the prisons.
Dale belongs in jail. Every employee of that agency who went on one of those outings should be fired. How does any decent person spend on themselves the money that was provided to help the needy? Unconscionable.
The Government can do a lot of things, but doesn’t do a lot of things well.
None of the housing cited in this report is owned by the State. They are owned by individuals or corporations.
While MSHA or its contractors may have been lax in their inspections, it is the landlords and owners that have failed to maintain a decent place for these people to live. It is the landlords and owners that are responsible for failing to meet building and life safety codes.
I would argue that it may be time to remove the private sector from the low-income housing equation, since it has so obviously failed.
You have obviously NEVER been a landlord. I have. The intrusion by the government into a contractual relationship between a landlord and a tenant is a recipe for disaster. It leads to an unhealthy relationship where the landlord, guaranteed a percentage of the rental payment, turns a blind eye to misuse of the apartment by tenants, and the tenants don’t complain about the living conditions because they know they are violating the terms of their section 8 apartments. The rest of the neighborhoods, and landlords like me who don’t have section 8 tenants, see our property values decline and our neighborhoods decline as crime and violence move in at taxpayers’ expense. Unless you’ve been a landlord yourself, you have no credibility on this issue.
No, I haven’t been a landlord. I am an architect that has worked on more than 20 low-income housing developments, both family and elderly. I agree with you that some Section 8 landlords do not maintain their properties, to the detriment of their neighbors.
An analogy is speeding. Is it the fault of the police that some drivers break the speed limit? Could they make more of an effort to crack down on speeding? Probably. Will that stop some people from driving too fast? No.
Once tenants move in, there is little a landlord can do to ensure that the apartment is properly maintained, particularly where freestanding mobile homes or private residences are concerned. Again, tenants have the right to quiet enjoyment.
Your credentials as a architect are worthless on this point. Again, unless you have been a landlord, and understand that landlords begin the relationship being viewed as moneygrubbing Scrooges out to screw their tenants, rather than as responsible property owners who want responsible tenants, you don’t have a clue what goes on. When tenants misuse properties and violate rental terms, it takes an act of God and thousands of dollars to evict them. The process is even worse and much more frightening when the tenant is section 8 or has children.
“Once tenants move in, there is little a landlord can do to ensure that the apartment is properly maintained” You clearly do not understand how the program works. HUD contracts clearly state the obligations of tenant/landlord and the ability to terminate assistance or withhold payment for failure to maintain a unit. Futhermore the landlords lease dictates entry provisions. If you want to go in once a month, put it in the lease, boom, you’ve got access. There are very few things HUD mandates be included in a tenant lease. Quite enjoyment is not grounds for no entry. HUD inspectors are required to return to a unit within 365 days of each inspection. Its’ called an “annual” inspection for reason. It happens every. single. year. Landlords are notified of deficiencies, both tenant and landlord, and a time frame for repair is given.
where is the analogy?
Wow! I’ve found the program to be the exact opposite. If the tenant isn’t maintaining the unit, one call to the inspector to have them pop out, take a look, site the tenant for violations, either they clean up their acts of they lose the assistance. Same goes for a tenant, the landlord doesn’t maintain the unit, they give a call to get an inspection, payment is withheld until repairs are made. Its all in black and white on the contracts. That contractual relationship, if used correctly, provides accountability for BOTH parties. And never has one of my section 8 tenants paid nothing for rent, they are always responsible for some portion.
you completely made that up.
I am familiar with thousands of section 8 cases all over the North east and the tenants ARE NEVER required to do a damm thing… and I think you know it.
Frankly what I see VERY OFTEN is a tenant getting mad at a land lord and breaking a window… ALL units must have all windows in good repair, or section 8 withholds the month’s rent, and it does not matter how the window was broken… the tenants break the windows on purpose and th eland lord loses rent for as many days as the window is broken.
tenant pours Karo down some outlets to attract ants/rodents… same story… no rent paid and massive electrician/copntractor bills.
nice try telling your leftie tales, but you are fibbing
Yes, that is a great way to have a intelligent discussion “no, you’re a liar so everything you say has no merit and is false because I know it is”. Seriously dude, come at me better than that, guy…. weaksauce. At least Susan gives me true scenarios from real life experience to disagree with. As far as your statements go, if either party is not held responsible or forced to uphold their part of the lease/contracts then clearly the agency administering the program (and the money) has fundamental gaps in its staff. If the inspector doesn’t site the tenant for the failed items either because they haven’t had the training or are too lazy to do their jobs properly or just plain don’t care where their tax money goes then the program will always fail. Anyone can read the Code of Federal Regulations and see how the Section 8 program is SUPPOSED to work, but if those guidelines and regulations are not followed and no one is held accountable then the program is doomed to fail. I have no doubt that you’ve seen the program failing at one site or another and that doesn’t suprise me. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some good, honest people out there who do comply and who are maintaining their units and are participating in good standing on the program. More accountability and oversight for govt. employees to ensure compliance is clearly needed at MSHA.
all section 8 tenants engage in crime and violence? wow i did not know that, Thnaks for clearing that up. Discriminate much?
More like the opposite – we need to remove the government from the low-income housing racket.
I didn’t say the State owned the property you did. So removal of trash from the home and yard is the landlords responsibility? I wonder if the trash was there before they moved in and the above ground pool full of algae. One report was a window that was to high. I bet the window was to high from the beginning. One was dirt on three walls, must have missed that on the first inspection. My point was Why were these units ever allowed to be used as section 8 housing at all? You called it lax inspections by the Government and I concur. As a property owner myself I wouldn’t rent that type of property to anyone and I sure wouldn’t let someone trash my property.
Nearly all the items cited in the OIG report seem to result from the tenants. Regarding the room with the window that is too high (the sill can be no higher than 44 inches off the floor, and it’s too small), it may be that a room that was never intended to be a bedroom is being used as one. I toured one empty property here in Rockland and found a mattress on the floor of an unfinished and unheated attic. There was also a garbage can in a closet of a bedroom with piping for the water that came in through leaks in the roof – a solution by the tenant because the owner refused to fix the problem.
The hidden story here is that there is money to be made in low-income housing – a lot of money.
There is a lot of money to be made in low income housing. Just ask Dale McCormick.
And Rosa Scarcelli, her parents, and her husband.
Exactly. The job of the inspector is to make sure that BOTH parties are maintaining a unit. If not, program violations result in termination of contract. Landlord has to keep a decent unit to get paid, tenant has to abide by lease to get assistance. If that isn’t happening its up to the inspector to site the unit violations and follow through to see repairs get made, if not, they may no longer participate.
“The bottom line is people who live in federally subsidized housing should expect decent, safe, and sanitary conditions,” said Collins.
Uh, no, Senator Collins. I think the bottom line is the federal government needs to GET OUT of the landlord/tenant business. Completely. Close down HUD. Close down MSHA. Until tenants have to pay for where they live, they have absolutely nothing at stake in this contractual arrangement. As my mother says, that which you get for nothing, you value as worthless.
Again, the State of Maine or the Maine State Housing Authority does not own any low-income housing units. They are owned by private companies or individuals.
MSHA is essentially a bank that amongst other things administers the housing voucher program (Section 8) and provides loans and tax credits that help developers build more units.
MSHA is a hackorama where worn out political vermin go to leech off of the taxpayers and build up years of “service” so they can continue to leech off of the taxpayers in retirement. See Dale McCormick for the latest example.
Oddly, Paul LePage was the director of finance for the Maine State Housing Authority from 1977-79.
Oddly many continue to advocate for giving more and more tax money to these hackoramas. I advocate shrinking them severely or disbanding them altogether.
I repeat, close down HUD and MSHA. Let the market place determine rental values. Section 8 artificially inflates rental values for what eventually become substandard housing stock as neither the landlord nor the tenant have anything at risk in the contractual agreement. Public housing is a joke.
Where would the Democrats put their political ‘refugees’?
Actually, a private market landlord that chooses to participate in Section 8 is limited by the Fair Market rent of the area therefore putting a rent cap on what can be charged so that it DOESN’T inflate the market. Also, the marjority of tenants pay atleast 30% of their income towards their portion of the rent, with most agencies setting a minimum tenant contribution and stating in policy that they do not recognize “zero income”.
The reality is very different in action. I can tell you that as a landlord who has dealt with Section 8 tenants. The tenants are supposed to pay their portion of the rent directly to the landlord. THey never do. The landlords are aware that the tenants will rarely if ever pay anything towards rent, so they inflate the fair market value cost knowing that the percentage paid by the government is the ONLY payment they will receive.
That doesn’t even make sense Susan. I can tell YOU as a landlord that it takes ONE call to the Housing Agency with a follow up in writing to report that a tenant isn’t paying the rent. Within the week I’ll get a copy of the letter from Housing to the tenant stating they will lose the assistance if they don’t provide proof that I’ve been paid. If you read your contracts you would know that.
I’ve lived in my apartment for over 30 years and I have seen so many people kicked out of the apartment above me for not paying the rent and it is not a subsidized apartment. But there is an subsidized tenant in the other apartment that is never late with her rent. Plus I have a friend that owns apartments and says that she prefers section-8 because she knows that she will get her rent.
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I am sooo sorry!!!!!
Thank you for that clarification. So private companies benefit from the flow-though money, aka taxpayer dollars, and cut corners to insure their profits. Yup, we have heard that story over and over again. Private companies need to deal with their tenants then. And, if they don’t and continue rent to them to get those taxpayer dollars then they need to clean up after them. But, then I think companies should also be responsible for cleaning up the toxic waste they leave behind.
No one is making you rent to section 8 tenants
If you turn them down, you can be sued for discrimination.
Nonsense. Reference requirements and Credit risk, would elimenate 99.9%.
I love your mothers quote…
The rules need to be changed. An indipendent inspector needs to inspect and inventory any appartment before it is rented to someone who isn’t footing the bill. The renter needs to sign a form telling them that they will be summarily evicted if their appartment is trashed and that they are subject to inspection on a regular basis.
I lived in a lot of Navy housing when I was a kid, and we were subjected to inspections all the time. My mother was continually scrubbing walls with 5 kids! There is very little difference between the housing for military families and lowincome housing. The inspections and the assumption that you will take care of the housing is one big difference. Maintaining the yard is included in the expectation.
In several instances after the reduction in forces military housing has been converted to civilian lowincome housing. Within a short period of time they have been virtually destroyed. Definitely an attitude problem.
However, the problem with the housing in Maine is systemic. Hopefully, the new board of directors and a new head of the agency can make a difference in the expectations from the top. Everyone has a responsibility in this issue: landlord, tenant and taxpayer.
Caring for those truly in need should not be watered down by taking care of those who are not willing to take responsibility for themselves.
They do sign such a contract which includes information on their inspections and penalties for failing an inspection. Furthermore if they leave the program trashing a unit and owing money they are now tracked on a nation wide database that prevents them from obtaining housing elsewhere, assuming the new agency checks the database before offering assistance.
Just try and “summarily evict” anyone.
good one :-)
Let’s see, on the one hand, you have slumlords who get government subsidies for renting to low income people. Then you have low income people who trash the apartments that they pay peanuts to rent. What could possibly go wrong?
It is possible to manage Sect. housing so that it is well kept and that means weeding out bad tenants and holding them responsible for contractual violations. MSHA seems to have created a steaming pile of festering problems that demanded more and more social welfare dependency; no wonder Liberal democrats love subsidized housing projects so much—along with kickbacks, err campaign contributions from the firms that owned them.
I wouldnt rent to section 8 tenants, then you get rid of the problem.
I sure hope Dale McCormick is enjoying her paid year off, while Maine’s leadership continues to clean up the mess she left behind.
Naran, I wonder if this story will run in the PPH anytime soon? If so, I wonder how they will spin it?
maybe if anyone could point to the clause in the Constitution that mandates that I pay for these apartments…
the blame here does not lie with Maine State Housing. the blame should be placed on the shoulders of the owners of the buildings. They get higher than market rates from the government, tax payer money, for their sub standard buildings, and they refuse to spend the time or money that it takes to keep the buildings in living conditions. I’ve seen building owners that just sit back and take the money, living off taxpayers while failing to do normal upkeep.
It is sometimes the tenants making the mess and sometime it is the landlord not fixing things. I lived in an apartment and couldn’t get the landlord to fix anything and a friend of mine lives in a place right now that there was a leak from the apartment upstairs three years ago and all they did is nail a board over the ceiling and it is still there. It is not always one.
People not recieving free housing live in equally disgusting conditions. Why should they have awesome free living conditions? (Though I DO agree it needs to be healthy, of course!)
I know from personal experience with work that it is often times the tenates responsible for the damage. There is a percentage of low income people who live up to the stereotype, and live as though they are low income. Dirty, disgusting homes, trashed door-yards. And the other percentage gets terrible landlords that don’t do their jobs and take care of their locations.
I’m guessing that the issue lies more with the tenant than the landlord.
I was living in a shady part of town once, the building that my apartment was in also accepted section 8.
While i was there, i put new flooring down and painted the apartment. a thorough cleaning, and a few nice touches and you’d think that the apartment was brand new.
my neighbors (section 8 recipients) trashed theirs. literally.
They had trash bags sitting on the deck outside for months, the cops were called to their apartments several times about noise and “domestic disputes,” and their apartments smelled horrible.
So, while i think that yes, some landlords are really bad, and need to fix their buildings. I also think that many, if not most, of the issues that may have been in the report are the doings of the tenants.
And once a section 8 tenant moves in, it takes an act of God to evict them.
I wouldnt rent to a section 8 tenant..
As children rise the the level of expectation so do adults. Expect little and provide much, people will not rise. There is no expectation to rise to. Section 8 delivers the money to the landlord because the people cannot be trusted. Inspectors inspect property for section 8, but no one else because??? I’m still trying to figure that one out. Where is the desire to achieve middle class status when everything is done for you in section 8?
Why doesn’t everyone have the same set of rules? Why respect these people more or less than anyone else? Respect the people, and they may show respect in return.
We are to mutually pledge to each other our sacred honor, and when one apple kills it for the bunch, I think it destroys the ideals of a free country, changes for safety and happiness, and the mutual respect for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The problem is these people are home all day. They won’t work because their rent is based on a percentage of their paycheck. And because they choose to not make pay, they get the opportunity to have free housing, cell phones, healthcare, higher education, groceries, etc. and discounts on all the other amenities the other 1/2 of the population pays full price for. They can even say they don’t have nice enough clothes to apply for a job,…….and get money for clothes! Not kidding, I’ve seen it done. We’re the stupid ones. Why do we go to work? Self-respect is the only thing I can think of.
They make money, it is just “under the table” money that is not taxed and accounted for. I have worked since I was 14 delivering papers 6 days a week held jobs all through school and full time jobs since graduation. I believe it is a strong work ethic that drives me. It’s funny in a job I had in the 80’s in Mass, Mainers were known for a strong work ethic… What has happend to our state/society?
This does fall on both, the tenant and the landlords making money off the taxpayers. I have fixed many of these “trashed’ units over the years. Some of the things I have seen and reported has fallen on deaf ears. Some have been caused by the tenants and other times the landlords. The sad truth is, when people receive things for free, respect for others property goes out the window. Same goes for the landlord. When they are paid by a corrupt Gov’t agency, respect for who pays goes out the window as well, So take a good look everyone, this is what a socialist dictatorship looks like. The progressives from both sides are playing America for fools, time we stand up to the ones who fight for this very thing as they only want the control and power that it feeds. Hope all understand, it’s time we clean up America and take the power away from those who cause and fight for this destruction of American values and respect.
You are absolutely right. Section 8 is responsible for the decline of public housing stock for exactly the reasons you cite. We need to get the government out of subsidizing the downfall of property values.
OK you are mixing two very different programs, there is a Section 8 Program that allows private market landlords to participate in a federal program while maintaing their tenant/landlord responsabilities and their is Public Housing which is owned, operated and/or funded by fingers of HUD/MSHA making thus making federal govt. the ‘landlord’.
MSHA and HUD do NOT own public housing. Some projects are owned by local communities, but much of it is owned by private developers.
are we talking the ‘MSHA’ public housing or the majority of public housing in Maine? All the public housing in my area is owned by the local Housing Authorities, which I consider fingers of HUD.
No, I am not mixing programs. I am saying that BOTH should be terminated.
Sooo.. what you’re really saying is you’d have no problem with the Maine homeless population increasing a couple thousand families? Whats that going to do to your “property values” when they are camped out on your lawns? Sure there are going to be low life’s who fraud the program, what about the others? The disabled/handicapped, veterans, elderly who DO play by the rules? What happens to them Susan?
Maybe their immediate families could be FORCED to pay for their housing?
Why does the federal government get to FORCE EVERYONE else to pay for these people?
IF the federal government can force people to pay for others, why doesn’t it pick and choose those who might be able to get the recipients to make better decisions?
Maybe if the Federal government FORCED immediate family members to let the section 8 tenants live in the homes owned by their family members, someone might teach the leaches to pick up after themselves, or at least yell at them when they burn the carpets.
meh… anyone with a brain already knows all this, and anyone without one has clearly never worked an honest day in his/her life.
YES!!! The intervention of the government weakens the family and completely eliminates accountability!!
Ok…. so you just assume everyone has a family? And that those families have homes? That is an interesting view point. So my 95 year old tenant, who has no family left alive, including his wife, goes where? Some kind citizen should just adopt him then right? But anyone with a brain knows that…
A lot of landlords will not rent to section 8 ..
This is true, and that is their right and it should be no other way.
I see a lot of comments about how the apartments came to be substandard. The take-home message of the article, and one that I agree with, is that–regardless of how an apartment came to be damaged, the landlord must NOT rent it out unless it is in decent condition. Trying to shift public sentiment away from this fact, as though ALL people who are impoverished deserve substandard housing because SOME renters trash apartments, is a typical conservative trick.
As a landlord that has several section 8 tenants all I can say is don’t blame me if the place looks bad, we go right through the units before they are rented, everything is either cleaned or painted. That’s not how they generally look when the tenant moves out. I would live in any of these units when we put them out to rent, the tenant needs to have responsibility in this too.
Why would a landlord fix up an apartment for a section 8 renter when the renter will destroy the place? Why don’t they hold the renters who live in section 8 responsible.
Yes some places need improvement but so do the tenants that live like pigs !! I’m not saying they all do but if I had someone paying my rent the least I could do was keep it clean . It isn’t right anyway that they pay one persons entire rent . I think they could help more people by paying part of there rent and then they could spread it out more. Why should they pay one persons entire rent that is living off the state . It should be to help not pay it all . If they divided that up they could help three in stead of pay it all for one !! Just saying !!
i know people who are section 8 tenants and you can eat off their floors….then there is the house next to mine…as of today the grass is up to the knees, i don’t think the garbage has been bought curbside for a month (there is more than one of the big tipper barrels over there for trash)…people in the neighborhood have at times complained becuz of the garbage and then the town notifies her landlord who comes out and tells her to put it out and then she cleans out the carport and mows the lawn and then it is back to the way it was withing a few months…… the carport looks like a hoarders delight …the back yard is unusable and the youngest child has her playtoys on the front yard…. i would not even want to see the inside…the sad part is her teenage daughter is the politest nicest girl and she always has the 5 year old who is so sweet too…. and where is the tenant?? she started working part time last fall and then she drives her suv (not a new one) back and forth to her parents all day who live on the other side of me….the parents who dug their driveway up, planted grass let it grown in and use the roadside as a driveway…i just do not get it….my house is clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy so i am not saying people need maid service clean dwellings…i am saying just have a little bit of pride wether you own the place or not…..shame on her landlord too as i hear he is the town slumlord…..i think the towns need to have someone make sure that these slumlords who get a check from the govt. every month keep up their end of the deal too.
Having rented for many years–from good and bad landlords, and *always* returned my place as good or better than I received it–I have had to remind several landlords of two things:
1. This is your house, but it’s my home…would your wife tolerate this condition?
2. Never assume I care more about your property than you do. If you aren’t good to it, please don’t expect me to be.
one more government program that should not exist and will now be three or four times more expensive due to “new” oversite. same scam different program.
“The bottom line is people who live in federally subsidized housing should expect decent, safe, and sanitary conditions,” said Collins.
Who do you think caused these homes to be in this condition?
When you give people stuff that doesn’t cost them anything, they have no stake in taking care of that stuff.
When you find someone has damaged property that we allowed them to use then kick them out of the system and don’t let them back in.
That gives everyone a little skin in this game.
again, I have to wonder how many units Collins owns and how often she puts her money where her mouth is.
Does anyone beleive a word this incompetent woman says?
She destroyed the Postal Service, she has bankrupted our children in college over loans, Rumford Bridge is ready to collapse but she wont vote on a transportation jobs bill. She just Filibusters and goes to Cocktail parties. This LOSER is totally Incompetent.
Had to look into this one. I checked out Avesta’s site sure didn’t see any apartments that looked like this one! http://www.avestahousing.org/ the website does everything to get your subsidized apartment other than picking you up, probably can get a voucher for that. @AvestaHousing — Avesta receives $30K energy
improvement grant from Cumberland County CDBG for heat & domestic
hot water systems at Wayside Pines, Bridgton. I have heard from individuals that had the pleasure of performing maintenance at a few “locations” in the Portland area you can not imagine what goes on in theses units.
Maybe the State should ask Rosa Scarceli for some help here, she does have experience in this area.
I think she’s too busy suing her parents, and organizing another website targeting Eliot Cutler.
The housing usually meets standards prior to getting section 8 status. The problem is that section 8 tenants do not feel responsible. By (taxpayer) rights, inspections should hold tenants responsible for their portion of maintenance, upkeep, cleanliness, damage and trash. But, if they did that they would have to evict many, if not most tenants–politically impossible.
I believe in many government programs but section 8 is not one of them.
Yup, elbow grease is free.
Plenty of trailers with well kept yards and maintained exteriors. Its about self respect, not income level.
Once again, LePage and Poliquin have uncovered one source of that lingering stench in disGUSTA…holdover Democratic corruption. Good riddance Dale! Are the crony ‘rats fleeing from MSHA ‘partners’?
So, the question: do the Republicans want government involved in private enterprise or not? If so, then let MSHA do its job as best it can (the speeding/police analogy works here). If not, then don’t blame them for poor Section 8 housing conditions.
Your bias hate is amazing. Republicans have always said, there is “some” gov’t involvement needed. This shows what happens when Democrats are in power and go way over board in control, and no accountability. Helping people is one thing, allowing this for votes and power is another. Remember, this was all caused under Democrat rule, LePage and Republicans are the only ones doing something about it.
Hey Collins you waiting for the Rumford Bridge to collapse and kill a few Mainers before you will vote a Transportation Jobs Bill. You inspected it and you know it is ready to collapse. Lepage’s Thugs should be worrying about section 8 housing. He has fired so many people bet LePage don’t even know who does the inspections anymore. You Republicans just cant manage anything anymore just get paid off by the KOCH Brothers.
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Senator Collins should take a look inside some of the Bangor Section 8 Housing! We need a local ordinance that prevents the warehousing of human beings, subsidized by the state of Maine.
Maybe this is petty, but from the looks of the toilet in that bathroom, it hasen’t been cleaned in many years!! Or anything surrounding it—That is not the landlords fault! Yes , looks like it does need a lot of repair, but it must get damn discouraging to keep fixing things, and the people that live there never in their lives have cleaned anything!!
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Some people are just dirty……..I agree its not all the landlords fault.
The only thing new here is that Collins decided to get on the train with the loops that run the republican party right now, these are the same people who can’t organize a convention… no less guide the housing authority as board members.
You see we do need more government workers to do the job right and they do need to be supervised. Imagine, a private company does not actually do a better job. Good for Susan. Should have come from the new director of Maine State Housing. I would believe his statements if he had been pro-active in this area instead of reactive.
“It confirms what all us new board members felt from the moment we got
there: the focus of the agency was totally out of whack, was on pet
projects, the solar, the green, the carbon — they took their eye off the
ball,” said Anastos. “The most important thing they should have been
doing was making sure their core mission was taken care of.”
Seems like we just need those government workers to actually do their job for a change…or better yet just disband the whole outfit. What are we overpaying these people for anyway?
Clearly, so they can make discretionary donations to prison theater groups with public funds. After all, it’s good to give away other people’s money.
[/sarcasm]
Maybe they should expand the inspection to other areas in Maine. After someone reminds them that there ARE other areas in Maine. In Penobscot and Piscataquis the apartments are inspected at least yearly.
Drive through any native reservation and you will see how getting a subsidized home pays off in the long run.
“Of the six inspectors who worked on the properties, only one remains, Merrill said. The others have been reassigned or have retired or resigned.”
Once again, we must connect the obvious dots: if they were private sector employees, they would have been fired. If they were private sector business owners or consultants, they would have been fined by the state and their licenses pulled.
But they are public sector employees, so no punative action. Pathetic.
More of our dedicated, hard working public “servants”. Responsibility for doing your job is optional in the public sector.
Just like those dedicate, hard working public “servants” who blew $120,000,000 on the DHHS computer billing system and couldn’t get it to work in two tries. Ever hear about one of them being held responsible?
Oh my god. They are getting practically free housing. The least they can do is take care of it, and not act like they are entitled to everything and anything. Don’t blame the landlord that the tenants act like trash
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I agree with you to a point, but I think people need to have “skin in the game”. I bet the immaculate apartments you refer to are not late on the rent…
They need to have ownership in the properties so they will not destroy it!!
Of course it’s all the landlords fault, All the HUD recipients are primo renters, That’s a bunch of bull!, They have no stake or pride in the property.
Oh can it Olympia & Collins, you’ve only had how long to read a report and do anything, besides contribute to the waste,…..like 50 years in office?
When people get something for free they treat it badly.
This is a letter I sent to your web site Susan.
Haven’t heard anything back.
Where’s my rights?
I can’t even get into my home to fix anything if I could.
Subject: They stole my home.
Dear Senator Collins,
Let me start by telling you some basics about myself and my situation. I am a 59-year-old disabled veteran. I have had my home at 1210 US Highway 1 in Hancock, Maine for 15 years. Due to lack of work I had to put my home up for rent because I could no longer afford to live there myself. I have been unemployed for over 3 years and don’t believe I will be able to work in the future due to my disabilities getting worse. I am living at a friend’s home to make ends meet. I never wanted to be a landlord I just wanted to survive and save my home. By renting my home I was able to keep up the payments to the bank and hope that I could eventually sell it. As everyone knows the market is not good but by renting I hoped it would get me thru.
In August of last year my tenants stopped paying rent completely. I tried contacting them by phone but they would never answer or return phone messages. They wouldn’t even come to the door if they saw it was me. The last time I did make contact with them they said they did not plan to pay.
It is necessary to give them notice before I can either show the home to someone for selling purposes or just to check on my home. It’s hard to give them notice if they will not respond. Not only that this prevents me from selling my home because they will not let anyone in. I visited my home sometime last fall to try and talk to my tenants, as usual they would not answer my knock on the door even though I knew they were in there. I found out that they had called the police on me. When I talked to the sheriff’s dept they patched me thru to the state trooper on duty. I asked for an escort into my home as I had been told could be done. The state trooper seemed not to want to be bothered with this situation. She made a statement over the phone that I thought was not right. She said something to the effect “You should not be renting if you don’t want these problems”.
I finally went to court at the end of November. They lied in court and were allowed to stay. Because of my health issues and financially I could not afford a lawyer I decided to just let it go for now and hope they would eventually feel guilt and leave. Even if I could afford a lawyer it is now to late. They are still in my home after almost a year without attempting payment or contacting me and I don’t believe have any plans to ever leave. I am feeling better now but I am still financially unable to afford a lawyer. I am now about to lose my home because the bank have started foreclosure to take my home. My only hope would be for them to leave soon so I can make a deal with the bank and put it back on the market and hopefully save myself from bankruptcy. A couple of months ago I contacted my state representative. She said she could not help, but maybe she could enact some sort of legislation in the future.
I was born and raised in Caribou, Maine and was taught that if you work hard you can succeed. This all falls in the face of what I believed in. How can people like this be allowed to take advantage of the system like they are?
Sincerely,
jbcritter
PS: the last time I was allowed in my home last summer I saw where they had hooked up an electric dryer directly int to breaker panel, not at all proper. I called the code inforcement officer of Hancock. He said “the only way they could do anything is if they saw smoke coming out ot my house”. What’s wrong with this picture?
You need a lawer, not a Senator (ironically they are typically one in the same). Try Pine tree legal you might meet the income guidelines. Unfortunately landlord tenant law in ME favors the tenant most of the time. Go to the below link to contact them. I hope it helps.
http://www.ptla.org/
In releasing this statement to the press, Senator Collins should be ashamed.
MSHA learned of these debacles last January. Under then Executive Director Dale McCormick, MSHAs immediately reorganized the inspection process and created a totally new division to inspect the units taken back from vendor agencies who administered them for MSHA. Additionally more than 28 persons were hired, (with additional inspectors still being hired), and the units publicized were totally rehabbed. All of these corrections were initiated and finished under Dale McCormick and HUD was so notified. HUD then informed MSHA it was aware that the deficiencies had been corrected and they (HUD) would not publish their report, since it was no longer accurate. However, HUD did send a copy of the report to Senator Collins who, feigning outrage, used it for politcal gain while trampling over many hard working people’s honor.
Senator Collins, have you no shame?
I currently rent a few houses.And last year I thought I’d give a section 8 mom and son a shot at living there. BIG mistake.She was required to pay for the heat. So she uses electric heaters so that I have to incur the costs.I said no pets.She moved in with a dog and had a statement from the state saying it was for emotional well being , And I couldn’t deny renting to her and could not require a deposit for the dog.She is a pain in the butt and knows the system all to well. Never again