Officials with the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency want low-income residents to participate in a program that will help them move to high opportunity areas.
The problem is few people know about it, said agency executive director Deborah Jenkins. The Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program has helped low-income Oklahomen move toward achieving financial goals and home ownership since 2001.
“It’s not that well-advertised, but we’ve been successful with what we’ve done,” she said.
The agency’s FSS program has served 1,854 families with 430 of them achieving their long-term goals, according to figures released by the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency. In addition, OHFA currently has 107 active participants in the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher homeownership program.
The FSS program mandates that agency counselors meet with individuals who volunteer for the program and develop a plan of success designed to meet their specific needs. The agency and the individuals enter a five-year agreement with the stipulation that the individual will be employed at the end of the pact.
“They may be wanting to go to school and get a degree and they need housing assistance during that time. But by the end of the five years, it’s expected they will be employed,” Jenkins said.
Participants receive housing assistance from OHFA during the five years. Financial benefits include the establishment of an escrow savings account for those who plan to purchase a home.
Jenkins promoted the agency’s FSS program in the wake of a housing study conducted earlier this month by state Reps. Andy Fugate, D-Del City, and Tammy Townley, R-Ardmore. The lawmakers examined the Creating Moves to Opportunity (CMTO) project in Seattle, Wash. The Seattle and King County project examined the obstacles that keep low-income Section 8 housing voucher recipients from moving to areas with more upward mobility.
The results were positive and showed extra incentives and assistance is beneficial. The Seattle program involves providing financial and other incentives to encourage more poor families to relocate to the high opportunity areas, which are places where low-income children have grown up to have more successful lives, higher earnings, more college degrees and fewer teen births, according to an article published online at www.npr.org.
The initial results showed the program is working. Families receiving the extra help were almost four times as likely to move to a high-opportunity area as those who did not — 54% compared with 14%.
However, Jenkins said replicating the Seattle program will take more money than is available to state housing officials. The Seattle program was funded in large part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“The big question is how do you fund something like that?” she asked. “The current (Oklahoma) funds are not sufficient to do something like that.”
Jenkins speculated that duplicating Seattle’s program would interfere with the work Oklahoma already does with families.
“To serve one family at that (Seattle) level would force us to stop serving two other families,” she said. “When you move into higher opportunity areas it means higher rent and that increases the cost for that one family. At this time with COVID, now is not the time to talk about reducing assistance for families.”
Currently, the OHFA funds the salaries and benefits of three coordinators who work with families as part of the FSS program. In addition, the agency receives $55 million that provides subsidized housing for 11,000 low-income families statewide.