Recent rent hikes force relocation for those reliant on subsidized housing, says DeKalb County authority

DeKALB – DeKalb County low income housing officials say recent area rent hikes and cost of living increases are forcing voucher holders to relocate apartments.

Among the more than 450 countywide program participants with the DeKalb County Housing Authority, 53 experienced rent increases for one, two, three, four and five-bedroom units in 2019, averaging $40. In 2020, there were 79 increases averaging $24 and in 2021, 130 participants say their rent increased by an average of $69, said Shelly Perkins, housing authority executive director. For folks living with already tight monthly budgets, any unplanned increase can be disruptive.

Perkins said her office has noted anecdotally that area landlords are increasing their rent, including those who lease subsidized housing.

“We actually had to relocate tenants,” Perkins said. “Which is awful, because the landlords raise the rent high enough that it no longer worked for the tenant, even though they may have lived there for two years.”

DeKalb resident Beth Jones, 62, who receives housing voucher payments from the housing authority, said she and her husband Dan, 65, are living off of his disability income and pension. The pair lives in a ground floor apartment on Ridge Drive in the north side of DeKalb that up until recently cost $625 a month. Jones said she works in sales and doesn’t often has the same monthly income, so she and her husband started a housing voucher in September.

The program requires the Jones to record their monthly income with the housing authority each month, which in turn provides them with $50 through an income-based plan, enough to help pay for the groceries at least.

“I thank God for the supplement right now,” Jones said. “Because, otherwise, we’d have to go to food stamps and go to friends and stuff and get help with our food.”

Jones said her rent recently went up by $25 to $650, although her relationship with her current landlord helped them not have to relocate. Relocating also would offer its own challenges, Jones said, including finding a space which is accessible for her husband, who has a disability.

Regardless, Jones said the couple hopes to move out of their current unit in the Annie Glidden North neighborhood by November.

Jones said she wishes more landlords in the northern parts of the county, as well as Waterman and other surrounding areas, would open up to housing voucher tenants.

“I know they’re fearful,” Jones said. “But there are some people who are honest and care about their place.”

A housing voucher landlord’s point of view

Despite having to relocate tenants recently, Perkins said she doesn’t want to fault landlords, citing the longtime Illinois eviction moratorium because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Everything is raising right now,” Perkins said. “ ... I would certainly urge landlords and tenants to work together.”

DeKalb landlord Scott Morrow, who rents out eight residential properties in the city, has been a landlord for a decade in DeKalb and a decade in Cook County before that. In both counties, Morrow said his best tenants happened to be housing voucher – or Section 8 – tenants and that he prefers those tenants because “it’s almost guaranteed money.”

“People don’t want to fall behind on their rent when they’re on housing assistance, otherwise they will get removed from the program,” Morrow said. “I also feel that in my experience housing tenants have taken good care of my property.”

Morrow said he has only two tenants who have housing vouchers currently, however.

“The hardest thing about getting the housing tenants is the property has to be vacant and empty when they come do their inspection and before approval,” Morrow said. “I normally have very minimal turnover and people lined up for my apartments as soon as they go empty. So in order for me to have it empty, that means I’m losing money in between tenants.”

Growing prices for utilities such as gas, and other factors including homeowners’ insurance, real estate taxes and material maintenance costs have also factored in to increased rent, Morrow said.

“Are the landlords supposed to just eat the costs?” Morrow said. “Unfortunately, it’s a vicious cycle.”

According to the housing authority, there are 138 current landlords in DeKalb County who offer housing voucher leases. Of those landlords, 89 are “mom and pop” management who own a handful of individual units instead of complexes. And 33 are landlords who offer housing in larger complexes such as Barb City Manor or Suburban Estates, while 16 are a mixture of small and larger unit housing.

Perkins said the value of a voucher that the housing authority provides for standard vouchers has to be between 90% and 110% of the area’s fair market rent. For DeKalb County, fair market rent is $811 a month for a one bedroom apartment, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In Bureau County, fair market rent for a one bedroom apartment is $561 a month, $12 more than Putnam County’s. Within McHenry, Lake, Cook, Kane and Will counties – all part of the Chicago-Joliet-Naperville fair market rent area for HUD – monthly fair rent amounts range from $710 to $1,680.

In Kendall County, it’s $974 a month. In Grundy County, it’s $893 a month.

In Jo Daviess County, it’s $578 a month, $8 more than Whiteside County’s. In LaSalle County, it’s $605 a month, a dollar less than Ogle County’s. In Lee County, it’s $556 a month.

“It has to be affordable – it has to be in the program parameters,” Perkins said. “Nobody is getting exorbitant amount of rent and it has to be within our calculation. So we did notice that our local rents are definitely increasing.”

In 2018, the DeKalb County Housing Authority’s average voucher percentages was at 97% of fair market rent values, Perkins said. It went up to 103% in 2019 and 105% in 2020.

For 2021, Perkins said vouchers are at 108% of fair market rent, the highest the housing authority has recorded.

“That is simply because we recognize the rents of course increasing and the need that we wanted to give our clients every opportunity to have housing choice,” Perkins said.

Section 8 and Section 9 housing – what’s the difference?

Perkins said Section 9 housing is physical public housing run by the housing authority. Taylor Street Plaza in DeKalb is an example, where the housing authority adjusts rent for those units to 30% of the tenant’s household income.

“Back in the old days, that’s your Cabrini Green and Ida B. Wells houses, which they’re not anymore,” Perkins said. “In DeKalb, I am very happy to say, we have some of the best public housing.”

Perkins said that is different than Section 8 housing – also called subsidized housing – which are vouchers that help pay for market apartment rent. That could include vouchers for veterans, emergency housing or standard vouchers, which are the most common at the housing authority, she said.

“And they can take and go pick a market rate unit anywhere they want to within the jurisdiction and lease up,” Perkins said. “So the rental assistance goes with them.”

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, about 43% of DeKalb County residents are renters. At Illinois’s current $11 per hour minimum wage, a resident would have to work 68 hours a week to afford a modest one bedroom rental home at the $811 a month fair market rate.

If a worker earning $11 an hour works full time, between 37 1/2 and 40 hours a week, they could afford rent at $572 a month, according to the coalition.

Perkins said the standard of determining what is an affordable amount of monthly rent for a resident is whatever amount is 30% of their monthly income.

“For somebody who’s living off of social security, $238 would be affordable rent for them,” Perkins said.

Who’s using Section 8 housing vouchers in DeKalb County?

According to DeKalb County Housing Authority data obtained by the Daily Chronicle, about 74% of Section 8 standard housing voucher holders in the county are women and 26% are men out of the housing authority’s 553 total households as of April 2021.

Out of the 553 households, 214 of them are families with children and 461 are without.

The majority of the holders – about 65% – are not elderly, instead averaging 49 years of age. About 41% are not disabled and 59% are white, according to the housing authority. About 93% are not Hispanic or Latino.

There are 354 units leased with housing vouchers in DeKalb, according to the housing authority. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 40,290 residents in DeKalb as of April 2020.

In addition, there are 46 housing voucher leased units in Cortland, 45 in Sycamore, 14 in the Somonauk area, eight in Genoa, seven in Hinckley and two in Malta, according to the housing authority.

Kristen Brackmann of DeKalb said she lived in University Village in DeKalb while growing up and her mother received subsidized housing benefits to live there.

She said she witnessed the restrictions which she said can come from living in such housing, including management asking questions about visitors to the unit. She said when her mother’s boyfriend, now her stepfather, came over, the property management would ask how long he was staying.

“It was a really intrusive way to live,” Brackmann said.

Brackmann said her mom worked multiple jobs, despite the social stigma she said she’s aware of surrounding employment and people who live on housing vouchers. The living situation can be subject to change if a partner moves in who’s income tips the household over the voucher threshold, too.

“When you have small kids, that’s kind of a hard thing to deal with,” Brackmann said.

Brackmann said her experience led her to want changes to the Section 8 housing voucher program, including opening it up for two-parent households or enacting a strict probationary period for such living situations so families don’t lose their benefits or their home.

“And next thing they know, they have a five day notice on their door for wanting to be a family,” Brackmann said.