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HASLO tenants first to go

July 6, 2015
Julie Tacker

Julie Tacker

OPINION By JULIE TACKER

As a longtime Los Osos Sewer critic, people often ask me, “What will happen to Los Osos now that the sewer is a done deal?”

My answer is the same as it was in 2004 when the sewer in the middle of town appeared to be fait accompli. The community will be “Carmelized” or “Carmel-ized;” those who can’t afford it will sell and move away, leaving only the wealthy to afford the $165.00 monthly sewer bill.

The funny thing is, those who cannot afford it are the reason the bill is isn’t as high as it could be; thanks to them the community qualifies as “disadvantaged.” The sewer project was able to access Federal and State low interest loans and grants based on that status. Never mind that those very people whose income saved the project millions will be gone, those left and those who replace them, will enjoy the lower rates for as long as 40 years.

My activist mentor, the late-great Gewynn Taylor, called it “economic cleansing.” I’m glad she’s not here to see her prediction play out.

What I never expected was for the Housing Authority of San Luis Obispo (HASLO) whose clients range from disadvantaged, Section 8 recipients, elderly and/or disabled and/or all of the above, to pass on sewer related costs starting July 1. HASLO’s mission is “committed to building and maintaining affordable housing for citizens in our community,” yet they appear to have buckled to the costs and associated expenses to hook up to the project and are passing them on now.

HASLO recently implemented increases to both; deposits — some as much as $800 over that which has been adequate security and monthly rents — from $885 to $1,100 a month for a one-bedroom unit. Not to mention, within the notice was an invitation to move; as if the housing market is easy to navigate and rents are lower somewhere else.

Some of the financial assistance programs the Los Osos Waste Water Project team has presented include deferred tax, low interest loans and service charge rebates; all of these options will be explored in workshops this summer. It seems to me HASLO and their tenants would be prime candidates for these programs; at least for the time being. Over time, attrition will occur and the residents will move on. Costs could be recovered as new tenants move in.

HASLO is “committed to serving each Section 8 applicant and participant as well as the entire community in a manner that demonstrates professional courtesy, compassion and respect.” HASLO has missed their mark; this action has frightened these residents, handing them these outrageous increases and suggesting they leave their homes.

Ironically, the SLO County Board of Supervisors will be awarding HASLO $100,000 this week to renew a contract that the county funds for “eviction prevention” and the “provision of security deposit funds that may be accessed only after family, individual, community and other Social Service programs are explored and utilized.”

The staff report explains that the funds are intended to assist a family, senior, or individual who is at risk of losing long-term housing due to an unexpected hardship. These funds may be used for rent and it is anticipated that once the eviction funds are utilized the client will stabilize and be able to continue paying their rent with no further emergency assistance.

Studies have shown that it is less expensive to provide resources for an individual or family to retain their existing housing rather than allow an eviction to occur. Once permanent housing is lost, quality of life diminishes rapidly and the ability to find stable housing is difficult. This service is intended to be a safety net that offers preventative help to support these neighbors who are experiencing temporary personal difficulties.

It seems to me this is a case of HASLO needing to look in the mirror. Its own property is experiencing “hardship” and its own clients are faced with steep increases that may lead to the inability to pay rent and may lead ultimately to eviction.

Clearly HASLO and the county need to dialogue to ensure that HASLO’s own clients are not the first to be “economically cleansed” by the cost of the Los Osos sewer.

Julie Tacker is a 45 year resident of Los Osos and countywide activist.

 

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Nothing stays the same forever. These same folks that you think will have to move due to the increased sewer rates would move anyway if their earnings ability allowed them to move into better housing. That is a fact of life. While you may not see the immediate benefit of the sewer system it is a far better alternative for public health in the long term. In your worst case scenario of people moving because housing was no longer as affordable comes true, Is that a bad thing for the community? Having families with higher incomes, that may have the ability to fix up the homes and making the community more desirable, increasing property values and having more disposable income to spend at local business establishments is a good thing. The low income people that you are concerned about have the option of moving somewhere else that is less expensive, or educate themselves or improve their skills to merit higher pay. At some point we need to inspire the “disadvantaged” to help themselves rather than making them victims of dependency.


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Let’s hear it for social Darwinism.


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The other choice is Communism which has proven repeatedly not to work.


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Julie – I applaud your tenacity to tell it like it is and to stand up to those with uninformed, preconceived opinions that have no basis in fact, only in notions based on bias and ill-conceived superiority. Thank you.


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If you have to be wealthy to afford $165 per month then these are indeed dire economic times.


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Of course people can not be expected to not have the newest cell phone or cell phone at all, go without cable, stop eating out as much, reduce other expenses when a needed expense goes up. Much like the government people want everything the feel they are entitled to and want to complain when other expenses go up. Just live within your means, again something the government doesn’t ever understand.


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Julie, you have done more harm to the community of Los Osos than any sewer could possibly do.


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Feel free to submit your own opinion piece detailing your claim.


As opposed to the anonymous attack.


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Arrgh, Julie Tacker spouting off about housing and sewers again.

Learn your stuff, girl. You should know that title 22 water can NOT be used for injection for basin barrier use. Google the West Coast Basin Barrier Project, L.A. County. Title 22 water requires additional treatment trains not included, to my knowledge, in the current Los Osos plant. You often spout a mixture of diligent, quality research with fantasy bits interspersed.


It is beyond me, Ms. Tacker, how it is that you keep getting published when you personally threw a shovel and voted and destroyed a funded, vetted, lawsuit-victorious UNDER CONSTRUCTION WWT plant and project, now replaced at huge delay and increased expense. You and your fellow board members cost Los Osos owners MILLIONS, a DISASTER, and that includes impacts on housing costs of the low income, impacts that you now wish to pontificate about.


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Oh dear LC,

I am not suggesting the Title 22 recycled water will be injected. As you clearly know, I’m talking about the Broderson and Bayridge leachfields. Additionally, the Title 22 recycled water is being used for turf irrigation which will offset the pumping of the lower aquifer for that purpose on those fields…again mitigation for seawater intrusion.


Yes, I threw a gold shovel. That project was going to cost our community its downtown. We believed an alternative collection system and treatment plant location would have been cheaper — so did Water Board staff.


I accept that both the Tri-W and current project will displace people in Los Osos, my point in this opinion piece that I put my actual name to, full well knowing I’d receive criticism from the likes of the nameless, like you, is that HASLO, an organization built on helping people is hurting people under the guise of the sewer. They get money from the county and haven’t gone to them to see how they can apply for the assistance programs to help these people. Sheesh! Be creative!!!!


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You put your actual name to the opinion piece? If memory serves (and please someone or moderator correct me if I’m wrong) I thought that when you did an opinion article on CCN you have no choice but to use your real name??


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For the record, CCN has printed anonymous pieces in the past.


BTDT, anonymous person you, I also put my name to my comments.


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Hadn’t noticed thanks for clearing up. BTW yes I am anonymous but if you read my posts I don’t use that as an excuse to attack people. I have lived here since 80′ and we are small town still and as I do business in this community hence why I keep it civil and private.


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Perhaps you can call President Obama to advocate for the disadvantaged due to the skyrocketing cost of beef as we are burning our food supply (corn) to power our vehicles rather than using it to feed cows. Then there is the cost of chicken and eggs because farmers must provide more spacious living quarters to chickens. These folks cant possibly afford their rent even though somebody else is paying it for them with the higher cost of food so more government handouts are needed for groceries. ENOUGH! QUIT MAKING PEOPLE VICTIMS OF DEPENDENCY!


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Unfortunately Los Osos is going to change like it or not. As more folks retire and want coastal property, they will find towns like Los Osos affordable and move here with more money. They will be able to afford the cost of the sewer project and those who can’t will slowly have to move on.


Not everyone can afford to live in California any more, and the same thing has been happening to towns and cities in this state for a long time.


This sewer plant is going to be costly and that has been known for sometime now. For as many years as this mess has been going on, people should have thought about if they could afford to stay in the area of not. I am tired of the government being expected to pay for your housing when the writing has been on the walls for so long.


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Two questions that maybe someone can answer. First, how is it that large properties in the PZ did not have to hook up to the sewer? Using that logic, shouldn’t one out of six smaller properties in the PZ also be exempt from paying for the sewer. It sure seems like the rich property owners got away without paying. Second, if I can show that I’m not polluting the ground water by installing composting toilets and grey water recycling, I then should be exempt from paying for the sewer for the next 30 years. Why isn’t this a possibility?


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Jimmy your answer may come one day if someone authoritatively publishes an exhaustive history and study of this reeling and careening local government fiasco, possibly to be titled:


“Los Osos, a study of serial costly, spasmodic and disastrous public and public entity responses to an essentially mythical, fabricated whole-cloth groundwater crisis”.


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What is the PZ?


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Prohibition Zone


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jimmy_me writes:


“… if I can show that I’m not polluting the ground water by installing composting toilets and grey water recycling, I then should be exempt from paying for the sewer for the next 30 years. Why isn’t this a possibility?


EXCELLENT question, and what Jimmy’s talking about there might just be the greatest story in the history of SLO County (and that’s exactly why I’ve been reporting on it for the past eight years, just Google: sewerwatch “composting toilets”


… and read up.


The story is (present tense!) flat-out amazing.


I call it “the County’s worst case scenario in Los Osos“: A $160 million sewer system in Los Osos, that no one needs to hook up to, or pay for, because everyone’s rockin’ modern composting toilet systems, and modern and grey water recycling systems.


And, as I’ve shown in my reporting, over, and over, and over again (for the past eight years), if just ONE PZer did that — installed a modern composting toilet system, and a modern and grey water recycling system (which by the way, is the most environmentally preferred way to go… by far) — and went to court and argued “no benefit, no assessment, and got out of paying the sewer assessment, ALL PZers would eventually be forced to do the exact same thing (or move), because the more PZers that go the composting toilet/grey water system/no sewer assessment route, means that it will be even MORE expensive for those that choose to hook-up, which means more and more would go the composting toilet/grey water system/no sewer assessment route, which means even MORE expensive to hook up to the sewer… and so on, and so on… until there’s a $160 million sewer system that no one needs to hook up to, or pay for, because everyone’s rockin’ modern composting toilet/grey water recycling systems.


Oh, that’d be beautiful!


And I made damn sure to document that Bruce Gibson was aware of this situation, five years ago, and he just stuck his head in the sand, and did absolutely nothing about it, of course.


The County simply never ‘stress-tested’ the composting toilet route in Los Osos. HUGE mistake.


I have a question: Where’s COLAB on this intensely important “property rights” issue?


Uh, Debbie Arnold? Does a Los Osos PZ property owner have a right to install a modern composting toilet system, and modern and grey water recycling system — a system that the local Water Board actually considered requiring in Los Osos, as I first exposed in 2007, at this link:


http://sewerwatch.blogspot.com/2007/01/is-there-rosa-parks-in-los-osos.html


… OR, does government get to tell a property owner what they can, and can not do with their property… especially when it comes to doing the environmentally correct thing, like opting for a composting toilet system?


Uh, COLAB? Debbie? Lynn? Care to argue for LOPZ property owner rights on the over-the-top important composting toilet question?


Now’s the time.


[Oh, and, interesting piece, Julie : -) ]


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I am wondering if “eviction prevention” is for people already in HASLO, People’s Self Help, or some other form of subsidized housing; or if it is for the poor folks out there paying $1200 a month for a 2 bedroom slum that takes 70% of their income. Many employers do not offer benefits packages, like sick leave, so if an illness or emergency occurs, the family just loses that day’s pay.


Government subsidized housing is federally mandated, right? This means they can only pass along a certain percentage of that person’s income dependent upon the housing program that the person housed receives. HASLO cannot simply arbitrarily imposed $165 sewer bill to low income persons; but what it probably CAN do is impose a PERCENTAGE of an increase to those households.


You know what? I sympathize with those on fixed income. They can join the club of the middle class who also live on fixed incomes. What the middle class has to do when their cost of living goes up is to look at that bottom line. Did income go up? What bills are essential vs nice? What things can be cut back?


The one positive caveat about living in subsidized/low income housing is that the rent is and will be proportioned to income. There can be no random, arbitrary increase to rent by a slumlord. These units are by and large well maintained, which obviously cannot be said for privately owned dwellings.


So to sum up my monologue, I have empathy and sympathy for our financially strapped residents in Los Osos who now must absorb this cost. I just want to know where HASLO would get this money from if they people who are living in these dwellings and USING the sewer services don’t contribute as well…..


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The Problem is…..What’s the alternative?

Just continue to let the residents of Los Osos have their septic systems leaching into Morro Bay?


Because Osos is a poorer community than others, does that mean they get a special deal that the rest of us don’t get?


Affordable housing in this area is an oxymoron, the only solution is one that the elitists in government won’t allow, which is to build more housing, or maybe a Costco will help?


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Rich, first of all there’s still no proof septics are leaching into the bay. There has never been a septic study. Septics provide Primary treatment, a higher quality leachate than that of waste coming from your house. The sewer will provide secondary treatment and Title 22 water. This is where the project is necessary. Putting that recycled water back in the ground in the right places will help mitigate seawater intrusion.


Morro Bay is guilty of it’s own pollution of our shared bay. I think you are one who has argued about your aging collection system leaking into groundwater and/or storm drains that discharge directly into the bay.


Morro Bay will be eligible for State Revolving Funds for your project too, as you surely know, these are low interest loans for infrastructure. Great question about the “poorer community” and “special deal.” Some of us would argue we deserve even lower interest than we got and shorter terms so we aren’t paying for infrastructure that has long failed after 40 years in the ground. It is estimated the long term and interest rates applied will add approximately $12,000,000 over the life of project.


Affordable housing is a complex issue, no doubt. The irony that HASLO is getting $100,000 to help people while at the same time hurting the very people these funds are intended for is the point here.


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HASLO is getting 100k to prevent evictions and help with those hefty security deposits. It isn’t to offset the sewer bills of low/modest income people ALREADY housed. HASLO was given this money for a specific purpose, to keep struggling families in their homes. To get this funding, these families will have to prove they really need the help, that the cause of the money problem(s) that have led them to the potential eviction were/are temporary (think illness, job loss), and a solid plan is in place to make sure the family will not turn around and be “needy” again in a few months. They will also make sure another agency does not have the ability to assist.


HASLO, PSSH, other agencies are TRYING to house people. Just off the top of my head, I can think of the Courtland Street Apartments recently built in Arroyo Grande, a 36 unit complex. I personally know of a person living in a 2 bedroom apartment there and paying $700/month. Ground has been broken and active construction is being done on Senior Housing in Morro Bay. I believe that is for 20 apartments; 16-1 bedrooms and 4 2 bedrooms. Also in construction is the South Street Apartments, 43 units. Also, the Section 8 lottery is set to open up sometime at the end of summer, which will give about 500 “randomly chosen” people a Section 8 voucher. HASLO is in charge of processing section 8 applications and notifying “winning” families.


Agencies like HASLO that receiving monies, subsidies, grants have very strict guidelines as to policies and procedures they must follow. They are even told by the government how much they can and MUST charge a family for rent.


I am going to post a link with the proposal to the senior housing currently being built in Morro Bay. The apartments are not all being rented out for the same amount of money per month; even if every single 2 bedroom is exactly the same, the rents will not be. It is based on a formula representative of the population of SLO county I am told. If 5 residents in a 20 unit “normal rate paying” apartment complex spend 55% of their income on rent, then it is only fair that that 5 residents in this complex spend 55% of their income on rent and no more, no less. This is why you will see the breakdown in percentages and number of apartments.


http://www.treasurer.ca.gov/ctcac/staff/2014/20140611/014.pdf


So, if i haven’t made myself clear enough, HASLO isn’t allowed to gouge and raise fees even if they wanted to. The rent guidelines are very clear. I hope this information was helpful.


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CentralcoastRN, I’m not suggesting HASLO is passing on “sewer bills.” It’s “sewer related costs”. The lien that is on the property; and the cost of demolition of septics and new laterals is a capital cost being passed on now.


My concern is these steep increases will trigger the inability for these people to pay and become the very people needing eviction funds. It’s a bit of a Catch 22.


Your statement, “HASLO isn’t allowed to gouge and raise fees even if they wanted to” is very interesting. Who enforces it?


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The Department of Housing and Urban Development is responsible for the oversight of local housing authorities. I could go in to extensive detail about what they are SUPPOSED to do, but it is easily searchable on HUD’s website. However, I am aware that HUD is a giant government agency, and as such can be ineffective. This means the tenant needs to keep all their records and be ready to complain repeatedly.


As a side note, some of HASLO’s housing includes a subsidy for basic utilities. Specifically, their rent costs include all basic utilities, which is all but phone and cable. I don’t think People’s self help housing, the HOME program, or other subsidized programs do this, but HASLO tenants seem to have all included in one price, and that price (even utilities) is established by government guidelines.


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Who is footing the bill for all of these subsidized housing projects? The property owner, who is forced to accept less than market rents, also affecting the value of the property, in exchange for their investment. Another restriction on Liberty in the US.


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I think the answer to this depends on a variety of factors.


There are different housing programs with different guidelines governed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).


The new apartments in Morro Bay looks to be funded/financed by the City of Morro Bay, various federal housing programs, and a non profit Developer based out of San Diego, CA. The developer will probably be responsible for ongoing maintenance of this rental anyway.


There are private owners that do partner up with government agencies to provide low incomes housing to families. The “deal” is that private owner agrees with government to a price of xxx dollars per month for the rental. The family pays their portion to the landlord, the government pays the rest. The perk for the landlord is guaranteed rent paid by the government, weatherization programs paid by government, constantly occupied dwellings. The obvious potential downside is tenants still not paying their portion of rent, thrashing the rental, and dealing with government inspections, etc.


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That is true in some cases, but, please do some research on new housing projects and the extortion demands made by local authorities for property owners to provide “low cost units” as part of the development package. What you described in the last paragraph is HUD Section 8. As far as the reference to Morro Bay, that is all being done because the developer of those homes was forced to provide Low Cost units in addition to the homes that they have built there. The City, State, or Federal Government has no business telling property owners what to do with their property or subsidizing the developers to make it work. My question originally, who pays for that, was mostly rhetorical. In the case of the Morro Bay project, your answer clearly tells me that the Property Owner and taxpayers are paying for it, so, my money and yours is being confiscated to pay for housing for others and to subsidize the developer, who was the property owner before development to do so. Had government stayed out of this, the Developer would have achieved the profits that they sought and our tax dollars would not be subsidizing it. We need to stop the Victimization of Dependency.


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