Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
The federal government sometimes giveth and sometimes taketh away.
Like a prime Biblical figure, it can also work in mysterious ways.
Witness the events in recent weeks that could essentially end local control of Tucumcari’s Housing Authority, which is a federal creature in the first place.
For reasons unknown, officials of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have set standards for local housing agencies that housing authorities in small, rural communities find impossible to maintain.
Because Tucumcari has not met these unreasonable standards, a regional HUD operation in Roswell may take over management of Tucumcari’s housing authority as a punishment, or at least that’s the way it was presented.
HUD standards require Tucumcari’s housing authority to maintain a 98 percent occupancy rate. All such authorities are held to that standard, but Tucumcari has only 90 units to its name.
City Manager Britt Lusk did the math, which I replicated. Calculating 98 percent of 90 comes to 88.2. That means that if 1.8 units, OK let’s say two, units are vacant during the year, Tucumcari fails.
In a city with hundreds of public housing units, a 98 percent occupancy gives the local authority some leeway.
For Tucumcari, however, that standard is unreasonable, because not all units can be occupied at all times anywhere.
HUD has presented its impending takeover of Tucumcari’s public housing as punitive. Patricia Campbell, a helpful and informative public relations representative for HUD in Fort Worth, told me “there is no justification” for the Tucumcari authority’s allegedly poor performance.
The result of HUD’s “punishment,” however, could bring some welcome improvements to public housing in Tucumcari, beginning with possible pay raises for housing authority staff, who would all keep their jobs, according to two New Mexico HUD representatives who visited Thursday with the Tucumcari City Commission.
Other benefits are likely to include expansion of available rental units in Tucumcari and “rent-to-own” programs in which subsidized renters can accumulate money in escrow accounts that could help them buy a house later.
The funding pool available from joining resources of several housing authorities can also improve eligibility for grants that can bring more improvements to the city’s public housing, the HUD representatives said.
Tucumcari is not alone among housing authorities who seem to be benefit from being punished. In recent years, the same fate has met housing authorities in Vaughn, Lovington, Eunice and Artesia, Campbell said.
Moreover, to benefit from this punishment, housing authorities must give up what seems to be a mere illusion of local control.
As Lusk pointed out, local authorities are a pass-through for the federal funds, which must be used only for very specific purposes.
I wonder why HUD doesn’t offer takeover as a favorable option rather than a penalty.
Yet another mystery: As Floyd Duran, director of HUD for New Mexico, left Thursday’s meeting at which he spoke freely, I asked for an interview.
Nope, he said. For that I have to talk to Campbell in Fort Worth.
Go figure.
Steve Hansen writes about our life and times from his perspective of a semi-retired Tucumcari journalist. Contact him at: