The Shadow System by Sylvia A. Harvey

Author:Sylvia A. Harvey [A. Harvey, Sylvia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2020-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

WHERE YOU LIVE HAS A huge impact on the quality of education your child can receive. Currently, Ayana and her mother, Evelyn, live in Miami Gardens, a middle class black enclave. They live together as roommates, splitting the cost of bills down the middle. Evelyn helps her take care of Niyah. Recently, Ayana’s sister and her two toddlers moved in. This stay is supposed to be temporary; they’ll be looking for a new place soon. Ayana, too, is looking for a place of her own again. The option to move was prompted when the Miami Dade Housing Authority pulled, after a decade, Ayana’s name from their waiting list. She had signed up for the housing assistance when she was pregnant with Niyah.

The Housing Choice Voucher Program, more commonly known as Section 8, is a federally funded program that would allow Ayana to receive a subsidy on a rental in the private housing market. The subsidy is paid directly to the landlord on behalf of the participant, and the renter pays the difference between the actual rent charged by the landlord and the amount subsidized by the program. A family generally pays 30 percent of their adjusted gross income in rent. To qualify, participant households either must not exceed the higher of the federal poverty level or they must earn less than or equal to 50 percent of area median income (AMI). For Ayana, that means she can’t earn more than $31,500 a year. The amount of support someone receives is based on their income. For Ayana, she would receive a 15 percent subsidy to use on a one-bedroom place that rents for no more than $1,100 per month. She’s a month into her eight-week time frame to find an apartment. If she can’t find a suitable apartment in sixty days, she can request two extensions, totaling 120 days. The rental companies or landlords she’s encountered so far require first and last months’ rent and a security deposit, which for Ayana is $3,300 dollars.

Because Ayana is not living below the poverty line, she has a hard time qualifying for any government assistance. She once tried to apply for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps people with limited income buy food. “They offered me seven bucks [monthly] of food stamps and you know Niyah takes lunch to school every day.” The monthly assistance would have been the same amount required for Niyah’s lunch every day if she purchased it at school. “I’m like, even if you guys give me food stamps enough for Niyah, that’s fine,” she says, perplexed. “I can’t even fix the taco meal with seven dollars.” Ayana feels like most assistance programs are designed for people living in extreme poverty, not for the working class or working poor. “They want you to not have a job,” she posits. “The system is just really messed up.”

Ayana is right that recipients must be living below the federal poverty line to be eligible for many resources. States differ in how they define income and household assets, which in turn determine a family’s eligibility for SNAP.

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