Alderwoman receives second CHA approval voucher decades after applying
CHICAGO (CBS) – A woman who applied for a Chicago Housing Authority voucher decades ago says she hit a wall regarding her eligibility at the time. The now Alderwoman says she just received her second approval over the Memorial Day weekend.
CBS 2's Jamaica Ponder has her story.
"I wanted my own place, and so I signed up for CHA Scattered Sites because that's what it was at the time," said Jeanette Taylor.
Taylor, now an Alderwoman representing Chicago's 20th ward first applied for affordable housing through the Chicago Housing Authority in 1993. At the time, she was living in a one-bedroom apartment with her three children and several other family members.
"That's a lot of people in a one, changed into a two-bedroom, and so I wanted my own space because I know how important that is to the growth of your kids," Taylor said.
"And my friend, a friend of mine was like if you move out here, you'll you know you'll get your voucher quicker. So, I picked a place on 106 and Olgisvy."
Taylor didn't hear back about an affordable housing voucher until the early 2000s, over a decade later. She'd made it off the list but immediately ran into a wall with her eligibility.
Her eldest son had just graduated high school. In order to receive the voucher, he would need to move out and she'd need to remove him from her lease.
"Anybody over the age of 18, you got to show their income or if they're in school. And at the time, he had just graduated from high school, so he wasn't registered in another school yet. He wasn't working yet, and they told me he cannot be on my lease," Taylor said.
"If they caught him in my unit, I [would] lose my CHA house. So basically, making me pick between myself, us having housing, and my son. And I was like I'm gonna go with my son all day long," Taylor said.
The alderwoman declined the voucher and remained on the waiting list.
It was just this past Memorial Day weekend that the Alderwoman received her second approval letter from the CHA. Nearly three decades after her initial application -- she'd once again made it off the waiting list.
The letter surprised Taylor, as she'd just recently had a meeting with the head of CHA. Initially, she thought the letter was in reference to that.
"Because of my income, and so it just makes no sense to me whatsoever, it was like thinking," Taylor said.
She says her income as an alderwoman should disqualify her for the voucher program. In the 29 years since she applied, she's been able to find her own affordable housing, renting a spacious apartment from a friend.
And while she's no longer in need, thousands of Chicagoans are.
"You know my community and we got all this vacant land, but we also got 120,000 people on a CHA waiting list. On top of [that], we got 58,000 homeless people and a large percentage of those are people under the age of 18," Taylor said.
Ashley Jamieson, a federal attorney, was a government contractor with the CHA for nearly a decade. In her experience, wait times for Section 8 housing are directly due to a lack of funding from the federal government.
"[The city doesn't] control where the funding comes from. That money needs to be appropriated from Congress so that the Department of Housing and Urban Development can provide it to the housing authorities across the country to help open the waiting list," said Jamieson
"It's not just CHA that has a long waiting list, this is a common occurrence across all the housing authorities across the country. So, this is a larger political issue, you need to be supporting candidates, and governments that want to support housing," Jamieson said.
Jamieson also credits the long waiting lists to the "cyclical nature of poverty," impacting families for generations.
"Families do tend to live multigenerational because they can't afford to live on their own. So that's another reason why vouchers tend to pass down through families," Jamieson said.
"It's like the same family can be on the program for many years because of it, but it's also because that's a generation of need. It's not like, this is not a trust or— they're not passing on money. This is the cycles and generation of need."
The scarcity of public housing is a nationwide issue -- with most major housing authorities having similarly long wait times for their voucher program. That scarcity is exacerbated by the cyclical nature of poverty. With many households being multi-generational and passing vouchers down to younger family members.
Both Jamieson and Alderwoman Taylor say the most effective thing is to be vocal about one's experiences with Section 8 housing. Using social media to share stories and spread solidarity.
"[Social media] gives people opportunities to talk about things and say hey look like this is a problem," Jamieson said.