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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2014-09-17, Committee on People with Disabilities Minutes MAYOR’S COMMITTEE ON PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES c/o Hawai‘i County Office of Aging, 1055 Kino‘ole Street,Suite 101, Hilo, Hawai‘i 96720 MINUTES Wednesday, September 17, 2014 The County of Hawai‘i Mayor’s Committee on People with Disabilities met at 10:05 a.m. at the Aging and Disability Resource Center at 1055 Kino‘ole Street, Hilo, Hawai‘i. MEMBERS PRESENT: Wesley Tanigawa, Vice Chair; Chris Cholas, Janice Mancini, James Souza, Laura Tobosa. ABSENT: Paige De Lima, Pauline Aughe, Jessica Arruda. OTHERS PRESENT AND GUESTS: Alan Rudo, Housing; Alisa Mitchener, P&R; Sandra Arriola, Aging; Jesse Floyd, DD Council; Sheree Matheson, Interpreter; Kauila Haumea, Gail Yoshishige, Joyce Imaino; Sam Nagasawa, Gena Avilla, Ray Hackett,(ADAPT); Karin Riedel, Paul Pascua, Danny Johnson, DRH. CALL TO ORDER W. Tanigawa, Vice Chair, called the meeting to order at 10:05 a.m. APPROVAL OF MINUTES OF THE JULY 16, 2014 MEETING W. Tanigawa called for a motion to accept the minutes of the July 16 meeting. L. TobosaC. Cholas moved to accept the minutes. seconded. All were in favor. None opposed. Motion passed. STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC (Agenda Items) There were no statements from the public. OLD BUSINESS None. NEW BUSINESS Presentation by Alan Rudo who is Housing and Community Development Specialist with the Hawai‘i County Office of Housing and Community DevelopmentAlan Rudo . (Before started, introductions were made.) Alan Rudo with Office of Housing is in Community Development and does Fair Housing issues as well as technical assistance. He spoke about the Con Plan which is a five-year plan that outlines what the projects are, what the goals are, 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 Family self-sufficiency program is a program where a person on Section 8 wants to own their own house, they would have counseling on how to make house payments, credit repair sometimes, income qualifications, things that they need to do. If they qualify, part of the money they receive, they will be getting credit as a deposit to buy. We’re doing re-entry housing for people who are re-entering from prison that are trying to get housing. A lot of impediments to Fair Housing are impediments to people with disabilities. This year there is going to be a big focus on barriers with people with disabilities. The result of that becomes part of our Con Plan. Kamakoanui, our workforce housing was built as an experimental demonstration housing program designed to meet the needs of low income and moderate income housing. A new program, Landlord Tenant Laws 2014 was approved through the real estate branch in addition with Hawai‘i Island Realtors. They’re not opening it up to the public, but they want to make sure property managers understand the rights and the changes in the laws. And what we’re really going to be focusing on are service animals, comfort animals, assistance animals and medical marijuana. Alan thanked the committee for having him and answered their questions. C. Cholas inquired if the RERP program was a loan program or a grant? Alan stated that it is a grant, but it goes as a silent lien unless you sell or refinance. It is handled by our Section 8 program. C. Cholas’ To answer inquiry - the administration office for the Office of Housing and Community Development is located at 50 Wailuku Drive. Another office is at 1990 Kinoole and the Kona office is at the West Hawai‘i Civic Center. The family self-sufficiency is only for people that are currently receiving county housing, Section 8. You would work with your case worker and they would let you know what the requirements are. A. Rudo stated that Office of Housing funds Hawai‘i Homeownership Counsel for people that want the same thing as the family self-sufficiency but aren’t on Section 8. They can get that counseling and get prepared, and they can also tie into programs like that. Gena Avilla spoke about the difficulty she had when she recently became disabled and her income changed dramatically. She and her service dog had to vacate their living quarters because the landlord did not understand that she qualified and that she had her service dog. There shouldn’t be any housing issues for people with disabilities, but Alan stated that in reality there are. J. Mancini lives in Hawaiian Beaches and has been trying to move since May and there isn’t anything available. Alan stated that there is no house in Hilo that 3 takes pets so do not put that down on your application. They have to take service and assistance animals. Right now it’s a mess trying to find housing available because of the university students, and people from Puna who feel they are going to be cut off are trying to relocate into Hilo. Technically if you signed a six month lease, you are responsible for that unless the house is destroyed and uninhabitable or you have no access to it. If it does cut off the highway, everybody is going to be trying to relocate. S. Nagasawa Regarding Section 8, stated that you receive a 60-day voucher and if you are not able to find a house you can get an extension for 30 days. But after that you get placed on the bottom of the waiting list again which is close to 6,000 people. The disabled on wheelchairs have no control over the housing situation at this point. Now it seems that the clients that get the voucher are being penalized for the economy. A. Rudo stated that they are well aware of the situation. But if you need a reasonable accommodation because of your disability, they have to grant you an extension. It is important to try and get a unit first and then you can change from there to be able to move. That way you’re not under the timeframe. You need to do whatever you can to protect that voucher. You’re dealing with a tight program and they do have a long wait list. There are no preferences for people with disabilities because there are a lot of people with disabilities on the wait list, especially elderly people. There is preference if you’re homeless but the problem was this program is only good for two years. Alan stated that he has seen the wait list go from years down to six months and up to five years. Housing in Hawai‘i can be tough. With HOPE services and other nonprofits out in the neighborhoods working with the community there is less resistance. S. Nagasawa inquired about the availability for low income housing or elderly housing in the Pahoa area. Alan stated that it was the most difficult region because it is in lava zone 1 or 2 and that is why there are no CDBG funds. With CDP, the first project was the buildings from Kawaihae which was earmarked for the re-entry housing. So we did get the 24 units there at the Catholic Church lands but it will be for senior housing. They are still doing repairs going through the permitting process etc. Minimum is about a five year cycle. J. Floyd inquired if there is a Housing website for questions and answers that can be posted as FAQs. Alan stated that they don’t have that but they do try to post things that they do see. Even with the lava information, USGS is tracking that. And I think the County site links directly to it. They do a fly over and they provide the projections. J. Floyd stated that his interest is in the response to the housing needs as a result of the lava flow. He works with the Development Disability Division with stroke disability conditions. The issue with his 13 family members (clients) is this could be a permanent relocation and they have no access to getting information and what their options are. They are worried about where they are going to go. It would help if there was a one-stop information center where people can go to. 4 A. Rudo stated that is something Housing is looking at all the time because housing is really tight. There is no clear cut solution because of the number of people that can be affected. According to Sam the problem is finding housing that is affordable. There was a time when landlords were happy with Section 8. People feel that Section 8 tenants are going to be less caring or do more damage. Alan stated he works with Sharon trying to get homeowners to go over to Section 8. Alan is planning to propose that the County look at passing something to say that property owners cannot raise rents during times of emergencies. Alan According to the other thing you’ve got to remember is do what you have to do to get a house. The voucher is like gold. Remember they can’t ask about your household, because they start getting into Fair Housing issues. So if people have to double up or three people have to rent a house and become a household to be able to afford it, those were things you should consider. Technically under the county code, no more than five unrelated people to a single family house. Sam inquired if the roommate also has to qualify for Section 8. Alan stated that was correct and to be sure to work with case manager. J. Floyd inquired about Hawai‘i Island’s Home Grant and wanted to know who decides how the $3 million is spent. Alan replied that any of the money that comes in, they have a review panel of people who look at all the different projects. He also stated that Puna will not qualify for these types of funds because of the lava zone. Jesse encouraged members and the public to be aware of the hearings and to attend and give testimony so they know what the public wants. S. Nagasawa wanted to know if the results were public for those studies. Alan informed her that it can be requested from Housing. Sam inquired about whether the homeless stats were public information too and where that information could be found. Alan stated that he didn’t know exactly where the homeless stats were, but the office does keep all that stuff so it is available. Chris would like to see statistics on how much new housing has more accessible features. There have been a lot of houses built in 16 years and how many of those houses are accessible and have visitability features? Alan replied that it was probably not very many. Alan liked the universal design and the visitability features. A. Mitchener inquired if there was any discussion about universal design with the self-help housing initiative and Habitat for Humanity. According to Alan, Habitat was the ones that had actually promoted it. There are training programs but they are through the state, DCAB. Chris stated that some of the places like HPM have building materials and designs, and they’ll help you with the features. And the more people that ask for those, the more they would promote it. 5 Joyce Imaino stated that United Health has a list of all the people who are disabled living in that area and inquired if Housing works or could work with insurances. Alan wasn’t sure about that because the information they have are public record too and Housing is not allowed to release certain things. And I don’t know if they can turn it over to us or not, but that would be very interesting. Something like that is a great resource. According to Alan during Flossie there was a lot of confusion at the shelters on where you could bring your animal, where you couldn’t, and DOE didn’t want them. But we’re trying to get around that so they understand that they have to take these animals at the shelters. Joyce inquired if Hawai‘i Disability Rights is involved in any of the housing issues. Alan stated that Hawai‘i Disability Rights is at the table with Fair Housing which is involved in the Analysis of Impediment study. They all meet quarterly. Chris stated that what we find with the Committee on People with Disabilities is housing and transportation are the two biggest issues. Alan stated that Housing has no oversight of private developers. We don’t know what they’re doing necessarily. When they are recipients of federal money or the county money, than we can see what they’re doing, we can kind of check it. But I will still say that the majority of the development is done by private developers who we have no knowledge or oversight on. They do fill out forms. But the county does not check after that. And it turns out that the county is not going to monitor the federal requirements. DCAB does not review plans for Fair Housing design accessibility guidelines. They do for ADA. You’re going to have more available visibility under Fair Housing design requirement than under ADA. W. Tanigawa thanked Alan for coming. Discussion about recruiting committee members due to resignation of Dr. Ron Wagner-Wright and Raelene Souza W. Tanigawa stated that he discussed with Renee about bringing new members in and she said the Mayor makes that decision. We should also consider - the larger the committee, the harder it is to get a quorum. And this has been a problem for the committee this past year. There was discussion about the J. Souza number of members the committee should have. felt that we should have only committed people be involved. C. Cholas recommended that we make membership on the Mayor’s Committee L. Tobasa a nine member committee. seconded that motion. All were in favor. None opposed. C. Cholas also recommended that the committee send both Dr. Ron and Raelene a note of thanks because they did serve for a while. 6 REPORT OF THE COUNTY OF HAWAI‘IEQUAL OPPORTUNITY OFFICER AND ADA COORDINATOR, TERI SPINOLA-CAMPBELL See attached report. REVIEW FROM COUNTY OF HAWAI‘I ADA RECREATION SPECIALIST, ALISA MITCHENER See Attached Report ANNOUNCEMENTS W. Tanigawa moved on to Announcements. Jesse provided posters for the National Disability Awareness Employment Month. Wes will post one up at the ADRC. W. Tanigawa spoke about a thank you letter for Alan Rudo. Laura will draft a letter to Mr. Rudo. NEXT MEETING The next meeting will be on Wednesday, October 15, 2014 in Hilo at the ADRC Training Room. ADJOURNMENT Meeting was adjourned at 12:00 noon. Transcribed by: Sandra Arriola 7