The same day 64-year-old Barbara May came home from the hospital last week, she got a letter saying her share of subsidized rent would be jumping from $189 to $426 a month. She lives on Social Security with a bit of state assistance. So she'll have to move to a small apartment across town.
About 600 low-income individuals and families around Alaska have been sent similar edicts from the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation: Pay more or move.
The cutbacks are due to a drop in federal housing funds this year, said Wes Weir, public housing director of AHFC.
Alaska took a bigger hit than other states because the federal government did not take into account additional expenses due to distances and other factors here, Weir said. The percentages and formulas are "based on a model not accurate for Alaska," he said.
AHFC quit adding new clients for five months this year to save money, leaving thousands on a waiting list. They include mainly low-income people, who may be in substandard housing or staying with relatives.
Beginning Oct. 1, the agency also tightened rules on what size unit each person or family receiving the help qualifies for. AHFC has dipped into its own reserves to partially make up for the rental-assistance funding shortfall, Weir said.
"It is unfair. It's unfair to all of our clients. And It's unfair to clients on the wait list, too," he said.
The agency received about $626,000 less for rental assistance this year over last year from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, Weir said.
"We appealed. We lost the appeals," he said. U.S. Sens. Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski, both Alaska Republicans, have also asked for a meeting with top federal officials to discuss the situation, Weir said.
The agency could get permission from the Alaska Legislature to spend more state money on low-income renters, but that doesn't seem likely, said AHFC public relations director Bryan Butcher.
"We have touched base with a few legislators and kept them abreast," Butcher said. "I would say they would be less than enthusiastic about backfilling federal funds with (state) general funds," he said.
Weir said AHFC held hearings and sent letters to those with rental vouchers months ago, warning that more strict standards lay ahead.
Barbara May seems to have misinterpreted a letter she got in early August, saying her rent share would change on Oct. 1 but listing the rent as $189, the same she's been paying. She didn't notice a paragraph of the form letter that said "an HQS inspection has been scheduled" for a certain date, which meant her eligibility level was being re-examined.
"I just looked at the amount," May said. "No change."
May was judged no longer eligible for enough help with the rent to pay for a two-bedroom place. She only qualifies for a one-bedroom apartment.
She's in about the same financial situation as when she moved into her yellow-gold house in Strawberry Village in the Jewel Lake area in late 2002, she said.
Strawberry Village is an experiment -- a subdivision of small, colorful pitched-roof houses owned by Cook Inlet Housing Authority. The houses are free-standing units available to low-income renters. They were the first rent-to-own houses in Anchorage. Fifteen years from when they were built, the occupants at that time will have the opportunity to buy, with credit given for each year they've rented.
May said she expected to spend the rest of her life in the house. "All that is dashed to the wind," she said.
Perhaps because she missed earlier cues, she didn't find out how much her share of the rent was going up until a week before she would either have to pay more or leave.
May suffers from crushed vertebrae as a result of a car accident and from a depression that followed some traumatic events, including her divorce and the death of a son, she said. She recently had surgery to install a morphine pump that keeps her back pain under control, she said.
Her surgeon wrote a note saying she shouldn't move for three months. But another of her specialists had already written to AHFC that a one-bedroom would suit her well and the change was already in motion.
May was recuperating at home last week at the same time she was faced with finding a place to move to.
"I'm sick to my stomach. I'm devastated," she said Monday. "Because I have to uproot again, and I'm not well. And it's so hard to move even when you're well."
She said a caseworker called last week and offered to help with the move. May called back and asked, are you going to get me a truck and some men to carry the boxes? No, the worker said, she'd help with the paper work.
May said no thanks.
But Cook Inlet Housing staff did provide real help, she said. On Friday, they found her a new place in Muldoon with a view of the mountains. She's grateful and sad at the same time.
The new place is 587 square feet with one bedroom.
May's Strawberry Village house is crammed with balls and baskets and candles and flowered furniture. She collected things during a career as an interior decorator, she said.
The apartment in Muldoon, she said, "is going to be tight. It's going to be tough. I'm going to have to let go of some of my momma's things and some of my grandma's things."
Daily News reporter Rosemary Shinohara can be reached at rshinohara@adn.com or 257-4340.
