2014-09-17, Committee on People with Disabilities Minutes

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and what Housing is looking at doing. Every year the progress in the Con Plan is addressed, and that’s called a caper. He stated that the resources received for 2013-2014 was about $2,627,000 in Federal funds. Four priorities that are focused on are housing, special needs housing, homelessness, community development fair housing. Housing and special needs: The Section 8 housing has just under 2000 people in the program. In the last year, 24 new households were provided with tenant based rental assistance which is known as Section 8. Federal funds are received for this project where it provides a 70% subsidy, and if they have no income, it could be paying 100% of the housing. There is a wait list of about 6,000 people. Ten self-help houses were completed in Keaau which are for low income, people that normally couldn’t afford a house today. Participants will help build about 10% of the house. USDA puts in a really low interest rate loan. Home buyer counselling and education sessions was provided. In Puna – Keaau, Kurtistown, and Kau, a bunch of houses were rehabilitated through the RERP program – Residential Emergency Repair Program, which is available for people to retrofit houses and try to remove some of these barriers and make it more accessible. The eligibility for the RERP is that you have to be a homeowner occupant. There are some income requirements that are pretty flexible. You have to own the lot fee simple. A. Rudo stated that under homeless, they helped to find out just how many people are homeless in each district, where they are, and try to track that from year to year to see if it’s growing or if it’s shrinking, or if the population is changing. They also do work with the nonprofits on tackling those issues. There was 22 Fair Housing training sessions. A large part of Alan’s training is reasonable accommodations and modifications for people with disabilities. A study called the Analysis of Impediments is being done and HUD, which is the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, wants Housing to start focusing on people with disabilities and housing towards finding the people who aren’t getting what they need. Housing also has what is called the Emergency Shelter grants. To achieve all this, the county annually receives CDBG Home funds. Money is received from HUD and the state. County Housing does manage the wait list for elderly housing. For our Section 8 housing voucher, people can get things based on their disability. If you are a person with a disability, you can get live-in-aid, and extra room for equipment. We try to eliminate people who are abusing the system. F There are RERP specifically available for people that are native Hawaiians. The funds are seldom fully exhausted in that program. 2