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Banner file photo
Ted Malone in front of the Meadows Road housing complex. |
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The lottery labyrinth
PROVINCETOWN — People love to hate affordable housing lotteries in this town.
Every time there is a lottery, where names are drawn from a jar to determine who will be granted the opportunity to purchase a subsidized home at a price significantly below market rates, conspiracy theories begin anew.
“Sometimes people see couples where each person gets a unit and they get grouchy about that,” said housing authority member Cheryl Andrews. “Sometimes they see someone who isn’t even here in the winter get a unit and they get grouchy.”
“You hear complaints through the grapevine that so and so has another source of income and shouldn’t be eligible,” added Michelle Jarusiewicz, Provincetown’s acting assistant town manager.
“No one knows when the lottery is, who’s doing it and what’s involved until the week before,” said a local housing official, who asked not be identified.
A few of the stories about ineligible applicants winning a lottery are true, and one person on the lottery waiting list told the Banner she did not receive the usual letter informing her that a July lottery was coming up. However, most of the complaints can be traced to a misunderstanding about how the lottery works, according to Ted Malone, president of Community Housing Resource, a Provincetown-based affordable housing developer who has used four lotteries since 2000 to allocate 20 low-, moderate- and median-income apartments in Provincetown.
“If somebody doesn’t know about the lottery, they haven’t been actively pursuing it. You have to be ready. You just can’t fill out the application the day before,” he said.
What most people don’t understand, according to Khristine Hopkins, head of housing intake services at CHR, is that the application process to qualify for an affordable housing unit is lengthy and complicated. There are strict income guidelines set by the state that an applicant must meet, based on five income categories ranging from low to middle-plus. An applicant cannot have more than $50,000 in liquid assets and must not have owned a home in the past three years. In addition, the applicant must have a mortgage approval from a local bank in hand before being allowed to proceed to the lottery. And all of this information must be backed up by pay stubs, three years of tax returns and other documentation.
“It is an onerous process,” Hopkins said. “You have to jump through a lot of hoops other people don’t have to. The prize is if you win the lottery, you get to stay.”
In the July 18 lottery for phase 2 of the Meadows Road CHR housing development, where seven units were awarded to lottery winners, CHR sent out 270 letters informing people in their database about the upcoming lottery. In addition, CHR placed ads in local newspapers, including the Banner, and mailed flyers to local service groups such as Helping Our Women for distribution to their members.
Of that outreach, CHR received 96 requests for lottery applications, of which only 34 were filled out and returned. Of that 34, seven were disqualified, leaving 27 finalists in the lottery, including only one applicant for the median-income two-bedroom unit that was available.
“There’s a marketing gap there. I think a group of residents here gave up because they didn’t realize there is a median-income category,” Malone said, referring to the income category above moderate that allows a single person to make up to $50,200 annually to qualify for the lottery.
“It needs to be a much friendlier and easier process than it has been,” said Geraldine Anathan, co-developer of the 12-unit Gull’s Nest community housing development, for which CHR will conduct the lottery on Oct. 3. “Two ads in the newspapers is just not enough.”
Gull’s Nest has created a brochure and is planning on putting information ads on Provincetown Television and WOMR, the local public radio station, in addition to the marketing CHR normally does.
Holding the lottery itself, which CHR does in a public meeting in a public building using public officials to pull the actual numbers, is the easy part of the process. Verifying the information submitted by applicants is the time-consuming and complicated part. And in Provincetown, where working off the books has been developed into a fine art, it can be difficult to fully assess an applicant’s income, leading to rumors of some winners making over the limit.
Nancy Davison, vice president of operations for Housing Assistance Corp., a nonprofit organization serving the housing needs of Cape Cod residents that has conducted lotteries in Provincetown, said there have occasionally been complaints about someone making above the income limits.
“You can only do as much as you can do. If a person has decided they’re not going to declare all their income, that’s really impossible to determine,” she said.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” Malone countered. “Somebody who hides too much income often can’t be approved for a mortgage.”
Mistakes are more likely to occur, Malone added, in other areas. For example, the lottery CHR conducted in 2005 for phase 1 of the Meadow Road complex initially awarded a unit to a man who neglected to include his live-in partner’s salary on the application, resulting in only the applicant’s income being classified when both salaries should have been added together. When CHR was informed of the discrepancy shortly after the lottery, the unit was given to the applicant whose number was pulled out of the jar second. There was also a single person who won a lottery in developer Ken Weiss’s housing complex on Race Point Road who was awarded a two-bedroom unit, which is normally against state guidelines. That winner was allowed to keep the apartment.
“I don’t care to comment on the housing situation,” Weiss said when asked about his lottery process.
On the whole, however, according to Paul Ruchinskas, affording housing specialist for the Cape Cod Commission, most lotteries are run properly.
“The fairest way is to have this random process,” he said
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Aug 9th, 2007