“The housing market is ridiculously slim for those of us in a chair,” says Tovar, who’s spent months searching for alternative housing while paying more than half of her social security disability income toward rent since the CHA lowered its voucher payouts to her in 2016. Through a series of emergency petitions to CHA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development this past year, Tovar has managed to remain at the Harbor Drive apartment on a month-to-month agreement. However, she has to plan to move out in the next year.
Amid the media frenzy and a Department of Housing and Urban Development audit aimed at assessing the supervoucher program’s compliance with federal guidelines, the CHA scaled back. It limited voucher payouts to 150 percent of fair market rent in opportunity areas, and many of those who’d been given the chance of a lifetime to move out of poor, segregated neighborhoods were sent packing.
To correct this disparity, the authors of the report recommend that the exception payment standards for voucher holders with accessibility needs be raised to at least 200 percent of the fair market rent for studios and one-bedroom apartments, and to at least 225 percent of the fair market rent for apartments with two or more bedrooms.
“It’s a wonderful place,” Tovar says of her Harbor Drive residence, but she adds that she doesn’t necessarily need the luxury of a lakefront high-rise, only accessibility of the type she’s been grateful to enjoy. “I need to be able to get in and get around the unit and do as much as I can on my own so I don’t feel like a burden and some thrown-away lump of meat that someone else has to cater to.”
