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**Equal Housing Opportunities inNew York: An Evaluation of Section 8 Housing Programs in Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse**

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**Chapter 7**

**Section 8 Housing in the Syracuse Area**   

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This chapter provides aportrait of the Section 8 housing situation in the Syracuse area covering suchtopics as demographics of the area, barriers to fair housing and mobility, andhousing administrators� concerns. Divided into four sections, it firstillustrates the demographic attributes of the city and surrounding area, thendescribes the four agencies that administer Section 8 programs. The chapter alsocontains statements from three fair housing organizations and the four Section 8housing program administrators serving the Syracuse metropolitan area.

**Demographic Characteristics**

Syracuse is located incentral New York in Onondaga County. The total area of the city is 26 squaremiles. Located in the center of a farming region, its manufacturing industriesproduce electronic equipment, electrical appliances, chinaware, automobileparts, and roller bearings.

In 1980 Syracuse had apopulation of 197,217, of which 10.8 percent were black, 1.1 percent Hispanic,and 0.5 percent Native American. Since then, Syracuse has experienced a declinein population. According to the 1990 census, the population declined 17 percentto 163,860. However, the minority population continued to grow, and in 1990,blacks made up 20.2 percent, Hispanics 2.5 percent, and Native Americans 1.3percent of the population.1

Accordingto the *Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice In Onondaga County*,of the 14,683 low-income renter households eligible for Section 8, some 3,142 or21.4 percent were minority and 7,063 or 48.1 percent were female headed.2

**Section 8 Housing Agencies**

InSyracuse and throughout Onondaga County, four separate public housing agenciesadminister Section 8 programs. They are as follows:

-  The Syracuse Municipal Housing Authority.The North Syracuse Housing Authority.The village of East Syracuse.Christopher Community, Inc. (on behalf of the village    of Manlius).
Thefirst three entities serve primarily the city or the village of its name, whileChristopher Community serves a consortium of the remaining 32 municipalities inthe county, with the village of Manlius acting as the �lead agency,� i.e.,the formal entity with which HUD contracts for the subsidies.

Thenumber of subsidies administered by each program, together with the ethnic andracial breakdown of minorities in the program, is shown in table 5.
**Table 5          *Section 8 Agency      Profile*****HA**
**# of subsidies**
**          % black**
   **%      Hispanic**
Syracuse

2,637

62%

4%

North      Syracuse

252

1%

1%

East      Syracuse

80

NA

NA
Christopher      Community
570
6%
2%*Source:      HUD Community Database (1996 data).*
**Fair Housing Advocates**

TheAdvisory Committee heard from representatives of three local agencies, the FairHousing Council of Central New York, Legal Services of Central New York, and theUrban League of Syracuse, which provide support and legal services to low-incomeindividuals who believe that they are the victims of discrimination. Theseorganizations stated their main concerns as follows: 
-  Lack of information and assistance given to Section 8    recipients.Use of residency preferences.Use of segregated landlord lists.Suburban landlords� unfamiliarity with Section 8.
The panelists providedthe Advisory Committee with examples of these concerns and others during theirpresentations.

***Fair HousingCouncil of Central New York***

MerileeWitherell is the executive director of the Fair Housing Council of Central NewYork, a nonprofit organization that prepared the*Analysis of Impediments toFair Housing Choice In the City of Syracuse and Onondaga County*. Accordingto Ms. Witherell, the overall minority population in Syracuse is 27 percent,which includes 20 percent African Americans. In Onondaga County, the minoritypopulation is 3.1 percent, which includes 1.3 percent African Americans. For thevillage of East Syracuse, the overall minority population is 2 percent, while inNorth Syracuse the minority population is 2.2 percent.3She said:  

In Syracuse thepercentage of minorities participating in the active Section 8 program is 66percent, with 62 percent being African American. In Onondaga County the overallminority participation in the Section 8 Program is 14 percent. So we can see abig difference in the participation rates for African Americans between the cityand the county. *Any*effort to facilitate the ease of movement for Section8 residents between these areas will have a positive effect on integration.4

Inher recent study of the Section 8 program in the city of Syracuse, Ms. Witherellfound that more than half of the Section 8 participants in the city of Syracuselive in areas that mirror their own racial makeup.5In other words, �If it is a white Section 8 recipient, they live in an areathat is predominately white. If they are African American, they live in an areawhich is predominantly � African American.�6

Sheattributed this lack of mobility to a number of reasons, including lack ofinformation and assistance given to Section 8 recipients and also to residencypreferences by suburban programs. Illustrating the plight of a Section 8recipient, she said:

Somebody, who is new tothe program and doesn�t know how it works, would think �This is where Iapplied and here�s where I go find my place to live,� and they are given alandlord list with apartments in that same jurisdiction. There�s a prevailingunderstanding that this is where you go, and this is what you do, and you do itwithin 60 days or else. As a recipient, there isn�t a lot of thought aboutother options.7

Shesuggested that the HAs could combine their landlord lists, allowing recipients agreater choice of where they use their subsidy. This would facilitate theprocess of greater integration throughout the Syracuse area as a whole.

Residencypreferences, Ms. Witherell believes, are racially exclusionary because of thedemographics of the area. With a 2 percent minority population in those villagesand a 27 percent minority population in the city of Syracuse, �we�re talkingabout a discriminatory impact,� she said. According to Ms. Witherell, theintent may not be to discriminate against minorities, but �if you give apreference to those living within your village, and your village isoverwhelmingly white, then the effect of that policy is to put minorities at adisadvantage for this important opportunity.�8

Ms.Witherell also discussed discrimination faced by minorities attempting to findhousing. She said that the fair housing testers themselves often do not knowthey have encountered discrimination. Only by comparing reports side-by-side canthey tell whether discrimination occurred. She has seen differences in rent asgreat as $100 per month quoted to both black and white tenants for the same unitwithin an hour of one another. She cites examples where prospective AfricanAmerican tenants were told only one unit was available�in building A�whereasthe prospective white tenants were shown units in buildings in D, E, and F, andthat there were three or four units available. Also, some complexes do notrequire credit checks of prospective white tenants, but consistently requirethem of minorities, she said.9  

Ms. Witherell believes that such subtle, and not sosubtle discrimination prevents Section 8 recipients from using their subsidiesin certain areas. She said:

We�re talking aboutfolks who may not be trained and may not be as assertive as those of us whoadvocate on their behalf. A lot of people who are poor and who are just hopingfor an opportunity are very willing to accept what is offered to them. And ifwhat is offered them is less than a good opportunity, it still may be somethingmore than what they�ve gotten, and they�ll take it. And that doesn�t makeit right and that doesn�t make it fair housing or equal housing opportunity.10

***Legal Services ofCentral New York***

ChrisCadin, a staff attorney with Legal Services of Central New York, reported aSection 8 success story of one of his clients:

She was a youngminority mother who had decided that she had to leave. She just lived off SouthAvenue. She had been robbed. She had been raped. Her neighborhood and herapartment complex were very unsafe. She had obtained a Section 8 certificate andwas therefore able to move somewhere else. She did not want to stay in theapartment that she was in. She wanted to start a nursing program at OnondagaCommunity College. She did not have a car. She was on welfare. The goal ofgetting a nursing degree from OCC was only a hope. She thought that her Section8 would be her key to get this degree, and it was.11

Shelocated an apartment near the Onondaga Community College, but it was beyond thefair market rent that was available for her household size on her certificate.The apartment complex, according to Mr. Cadin, was willing to rent to her, andthey were willing to go down in their rent. She would have been the first blackperson in this apartment complex. They had never had a Section 8 person in theircomplex before and they were willing to try.12He said:

Through negotiations onmy part with the landlord and through negotiations by the Syracuse HousingAuthority�Terry Kresser in particular�in agreeing to an incremental rentincrease, we were able to get this person into a fairly expensive apartment, andget her on her degree program. She went on to complete her RN degree.13

Mr.Cadin believes that the community needs to hear success stories, and that theSection 8 program is a way to get people out of poverty and into neighborhoodswhere they will have an opportunity to succeed.

***The Syracuse UrbanLeague***

JuliaBurnette is a housing locator with the Syracuse Urban League. In her position,she relocates people who have been evicted. When she first started, most of thepeople who were evicted were on public assistance. Over the past few years, mostof the evicted people she has relocated have been the working poor.14She sees Section 8 as a tool in helping these families, but acknowledges thatshe has encountered resistance from landlords to taking Section 8 recipients.    

Accordingto Ms. Burnette, many landlords are not familiar with the Section 8 program.�They have heard of it, but they have never used it. They have their ownstereotypes of what the subsidy program will mean.�15She recommends greater outreach and educational efforts to landlords:

You have to hammer awayat their reservations. You have to educate them. You have to bend their arm. Youhave to really let them see that this is not the multiheaded hydra that theyfear, that it�s a good program that will be beneficial to them as landlords,as well as to their perspective tenants.16

**Section 8 Administrators**

The Advisory Committeeheard from representatives of the four local housing authorities that provideSection 8 programs: Christopher Community, the village of East Syracuse, theNorth Syracuse Housing Authority, and the Syracuse Municipal Housing Authority.The representatives from these programs discussed landlord participation,residency preferences, waiting lists, and HUD directions for affirmativelyfurthering mobility.  

***Christopher Community***

ChristopherCommunity, according to its director Peter White, is responsible foradministering over 500 subsidies for 32 towns and villages outside of Syracuse,East Syracuse, and North Syracuse. As to interprogram mobility, White said,�We accept on portability those [Section 8 recipients] from the [Syracuse]Housing Authority who wish to go to suburban locations, and in turn we havepeople in the suburbs who occasionally want to go back to the city.�17He stated that Christopher Community does not administer any subsidies withinthe city of Syracuse, but that the two agencies rely on transfer and portabilityprocedures instead of direct administration of their own subsidies if a familychooses to cross the municipal boundaries.

ChristopherCommunity has 2,000 applicants on a waiting list, which is handled inchronological order. The turnover rate is 40�50 a year. �We have appliedevery year over the last 4 or 5 years for new subsidies; we just don�t get ahigh enough ranking [from HUD] as to need more,�18Mr. White said. A recent study commissioned by Christopher Community revealedapproximately 10,000 eligible families for the Section 8 program in itsjurisdiction. �The need for subsidy is great. It�s growing for the disabled,for the single mother with kids, for minorities. The need is there. There�s nodoubt about it,�19 Mr. White told the Committee.

Accordingto the *1996 Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice In OnondagaCounty, C*hristopher Community  received a high rating in conductingoutreach on a broad basis that included the entire county and the city ofSyracuse, and also in providing for a wide choice of participating landlords.20

***Village of EastSyracuse***

Thevillage of East Syracuse maintains a residency preference for its Section 8program according to its director, Bruce Gouhey. Justifying the need forresidency preferences, he commented:

Our income as a housingauthority depends on the number of housing units we have. If we were to get ridof the residency requirements, we would see tremendous fluctuations in thenumber of people. . .we might decrease and as a result our funding would vary.21

Askedwhat purpose residency requirements served, Mr. Gouhey replied, �For us theresidency requirement serves two purposes, one, it funds our agency, rather thanthe number of people in the housing authority funding the agency. And two is sowe can directly serve the community.�22

Thepopulation of the village of East Syracuse, according to Mr. Gouhey, is 3,343,with approximately 735 rental households.23His HA administers 90 Section 8 units and has a waiting list of 136 people witha 2�3 year wait. Of the 136 potential Section 8 recipients on the list, 10 areAfrican American, 3 Native American, 1 Asian American, and 5 Hispanic.24

Addressingthe issue of whether residency requirements are exclusionary, Mr. Gouheyexplained:

I think they are onlyexclusionary if their intent is to exclude. I don�t see them necessarily ashaving to be exclusionary. There are over 3,000 families with certificates orvouchers throughout the county; any one of them can move into the village at anytime if they want to. In fact, we would welcome them because our finances aretight.25

�Itdoesn�t really matter to us,� he continued, �as long as there is room. AsI see it, there should be room for easily 10 or 20 more families than we haveright now on our rolls.�26

***North SyracuseHousing Authority***

Residencyrequirements are also used for ranking at the North Syracuse Housing Authority,according to Suzanne Wass, program administrator. She said: 

We use Federalpreferences27 even though we don�t have to anymore, butwe have not found a better way to serve the neediest population. [We also have]a 1-year residency requirement. Because the housing authority was established toserve the Village of North Syracuse, we feel a primary responsibility to theresidents of the Village of North Syracuse.28

Ms.Wass added that the North Syracuse Housing Authority, through cooperativeagreements with other jurisdictions, accepts nonresident Section 8 transfers. Ithas a cooperative agreement with Christopher Community, the village of EastSyracuse, and the city of Syracuse to allow people to transfer immediately uponbeing issued a voucher or certificate, rather than having to fulfill a 1-yearresidency requirement.29

TheNorth Syracuse Housing Authority is in the process of setting up a computersystem to track racial and ethnic data.30At present, however, only data on elderly and disabled households are available.These households constitute 61.7 percent of the agency�s participants.31She also noted that most of her participating households resided in one of thetwo census tracts that contain the village, primarily because there were moreapartment complexes in that tract.32She stated that her agency would have no reservations about sharing its landlordlist with other housing agencies in the area.33

***The SyracuseMunicipal Housing Authority***

Administeringmore than 2,600 of the approximately 3,500 Section 8 subsidies in the Syracusemetropolitan area, the Syracuse Municipal Housing Authority (SHA), according toFred Murphy, executive director, is by far the largest of the four agencies. SHAalso has the highest minority representation in its program, at more than 65percent. When a subsidy holder from the city of Syracuse wishes to move outsideof the city, it is often impossible for any one of the other three agencies toabsorb that household into its own program because the smaller agencies havevery few subsidies available from turnover.34Consequently, the agencies must resort to a complex cross-billing procedure inwhich the receiving HA undertakes some of the tasks of dealing with thehousehold and landlord in its service area and then bills the sending agency forits services.35

Whenasked what proactive steps the SHA has taken to affirmatively further mobilityin the Section 8 program, Mr. Murphy said that he had not seen it as part of hisresponsibility in administering the Section 8 program to proactively assistminority or other subsidy holders in moving out of the city or to other areas oflower poverty concentration:

I don�t believe thatwe take any extraordinary methods to proactively try to encourage people toexplore neighborhoods or communities where they would maybe not normally thinkavailable to them, or that they may not want to do that. I suppose it would bealmost institutionally arrogant for us to try to do that. So we, I expect, leavepeople to their own devices and make sure that nobody blocks them from followingtheir dreams. . . . We don�t try to instill a desire for people to break newground or break into new neighborhoods.36

Withrespect to identifying low-poverty census tracts as mobility options, SHA�sSection 8 director Terry Kresser said that he did not have exact figures butestimated that only about one-third of the units rented by SHA subsidy holderswere outside of high-poverty census tracts.37Data are available, he indicated, to compare minority and nonminorityconcentrations of subsidy holders in each census tract, but he did not have thatdata available for the Advisory Committee.38

TheAdvisory Committee raised questions regarding SHA�s interpretation of its roleto assist minorities in moving out of areas of high poverty and racialconcentration, and the direction it has received from HUD with respect to thisissue. As Mr. Murphy�s quotation below shows, it is SHA�s view that it isneither SHA�s duty to help minorities to move out of areas of high poverty,nor has it beenprompted by HUD to act affirmatively to promote greater residential mobility: 

It�sa very difficult question. And to answer it honestly, I would  have to saythat we  have not, to this  point, considered as part of our missionto break what have been historic housing standards�or housing impactedneighborhoods�to try to break open impacted neighborhoods. I think it isaccurate to say that we haven�t been asked to do it, either by any supervisingagency, or any supervising entity, to make that part of our mission. I thinkthat that is probably the largest reason . . . why we have not even raised thequestion of ourselves.39

**Endnotes **

1 Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1990 CP�1�36, 1990Census of Population, General Population Characteristics, New York 48, table 3(1992).

2 *Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice In Onondaga County,*1996,**p. 13.

3 Merilee Witherell,statement before the New York Advisory Committee to theU.S. Commission on Civil Rights, factfinding meeting, Syracuse, NY, Nov. 20,1996, transcript, p. 138 (hereafter cited as Syracuse Transcript).

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., p. 139.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid., p. 143.

8 Ibid., pp. 313�14.

9 Ibid., p. 310.

10 Ibid., p. 144. 

11 Cadin statement, Syracuse Transcript, p. 285.

12 Ibid., p. 288.

13 Ibid., pp. 288�89.

14 Burnette statement, Syracuse Transcript, pp. 290�91.

15 Ibid., p. 297.

16 Ibid.

17 White statement, Syracuse Transcript, p. 60.

18 Ibid., p. 81.

19 Ibid., p. 82.

20 *Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice In Onondaga County*,1996,  p. 13.

21 Gouhey statement, Syracuse Transcript, p. 111.

22 Ibid., p. 112.

23 Ibid., p. 111.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid., p. 112.

26 Ibid., pp. 112�13.

27 Federal preferences are discussed in chap. 1.

28 Wass statement, Syracuse Transcript, pp. 92�93.

29 Ibid., p. 93.

30 Ibid., p. 102.

31 Ibid., p. 101.

32 Ibid., p. 105.

33 Ibid., p. 109.

34 Ibid., pp. 128�30.

35 Ibid.

36 Murphy statement, Syracuse Transcript, p. 50.

37 Kresser statement, Syracuse Transcript, pp. 40�41.

38 Ibid., p. 41. The data on all Section 8 programs are now available onlinethrough HUD�s Office of Policy Development and Research�s �Picture ofSubsidized Households� <www.hud.gov /fha/mfh/fharent.htlm>.

39 Murphy statement, Syracuse Transcript, pp. 176�77.