LAKEWOOD TENANTS ORGANIZATION, INC



LAKEWOOD TENANTS ORGANIZATION, INC.

2009 ANNUAL GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Dear Member:

Welcome, and thank you for coming out tonight. We hope that by coming here you will obtain useful information, make your voice heard, and make a difference for many others who could not make it tonight.

Lakewood’s rental market is once again in a crisis. The scarcity of rentals, especially for larger 3 to 5 bedroom dwelling units, due to the bottlenecking of home sales, is causing rents to escalate rapidly. And the end is nowhere in sight. With the current credit crunch, and mortgages nearly impossible to obtain, most families cannot buy a home despite the declining prices. This forces them to stay longer in the rental market, further straining this market, already strained by Lakewood’s population explosion.

The LTO was founded in 1972 in direct response to escalating rents resulting from a similar rental market shortage. It was established by local tenant activists to win the local battle for improved housing conditions as well as for affordable housing. On the affordability front, the LTO initially focused in 1972 only on gaining passage of a rent control ordinance. Building on that success, later, in 1977, we realized that this was insufficient. The LTO, with the Lakewood Township Committee’s help and sponsorship, initiated the HUD-funded Section 8 rental assistance program. This housing initiative soon became known as LTRAP, the Lakewood Township Rental Assistance Program. Beginning locally with just 80 families in 1977, the Sec. 8 housing program today helps about 2500 Lakewood families to meet their housing costs, enabling them to obtain decent, affordable shelter in a very tight rental market. LTO-LTRAP helps almost 1100 families through the Sec. 8 program, the Lakewood Housing Authority another 800 families, and the rest are assisted by the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, (DCA), Rental Assistance Program, operating its Section 8 program county-wide out of their Toms River office. But despite these remarkable gains, affordable housing remains out of reach, especially for many local low-income families, the elderly and the disabled. Lakewood’s rent control ordinance needs to be revisited, and updated to meet today’s challenges.

LTRAP is now in its fourth decade trying to cope with the crisis of out-of-reach affordable housing. In the 37 years since LTO was founded, it has grown and changed with the times, always seeking more resources and better solutions. As more and more renters would like to realize the American Dream and move to homeownership, we found the resources and tools to make that happen. LTRAP is one of the first in the State of New Jersey to develop the Sec. 8 homeownership (mortgage subsidy) program for first time homebuyers, empowering renters to become homeowners. We became the Lakewood Township Residential Assistance Program, rather than the Lakewood Township Rental Assistance Program, keeping our acronym, LTRAP. Now more and more of our program participants are moving from renting their home to homeownership, under LTRAP’s new HomeRunTM Program, the Section 8 Homeownership Program.

The LTO has grown because more and more residents like you decided to ACT to protect their interest, to SHARE their experience, but most of all to UNITE in solving their common problems. Because of your participation, LTO has grown stronger and is now better able to represent the common concerns of renters and homeowners across town for the benefit of Lakewood residents from every religious, ethnic, racial, and national background, from every walk of life and from all age groups. Tonight, I ask you to support the slate of officers and Board of Trustees members, which LTO's Nominating Committee is presenting to you. This slate is the official LTO slate, and consists of the following:

Name Position Term

Moshe Sofer Board Member 12/31/16

I ask for your support and affirmative vote for this slate. Again, I thank you all for coming here tonight, and for your ongoing support. I, and my colleagues on the Board of Trustees, look forward to working with you and for you in the future as we have in the past.

____________________

Meir N. Hertz

President

Section Eight Voucher Reform Act of 2009: An Update

After failure to be passed in 2007 and 2008, on June 25, the Section 8 Voucher Reform Act of 2009 (SEVRA) was introduced for the third time in the House of Representatives by Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) as H.R. 3045. During the 110th Congress, similar legislation passed the House by a strong bipartisan vote, and a companion measure was introduced in the Senate.

Housing Choice Vouchers are the leading form of low-income housing assistance, serving nearly two million households, including families with kids, the elderly, and people with disabilities. SEVRA would reform the program for the first time in ten years and will help the program continue to provide affordable housing to millions of households, while using federal resources more efficiently.

SEVRA would streamline the Housing Choice Voucher program and permanently address a formula problem that led to the loss of 150,000 vouchers over three years. Under SEVRA, funding for vouchers would be based on each public housing agency’s actual spending for vouchers in the previous year. Any public housing agencies with large unspent balances would have some of their reserves reallocated to agencies that could immediately assist families on their waiting lists. If a public housing agency faced a shortfall, it could temporarily borrow from the following year’s allotment. The bill would also reform the financing of “portability” moves, so that families could more easily exercise their right to move with a voucher and agencies could save burdensome paperwork and avoid cash-flow problems.

SEVRA simplifies the rules governing the calculation of rents in public housing, project-based Section 8 properties, and the voucher program. Tenants would still be required to pay 30 percent of their income toward the rent, but the bill would streamline the process for determining tenants’ incomes and deductions. Income of families on fixed income would only have to be recertified every 3 years. SEVRA also includes some modest changes in housing inspection rules designed to ease burdens on agencies and encourage landlords to offer apartments to voucher holders.

Latest News:

On July 23, the House Financial Services Committee voted to approve SEVRA. The committee adopted a manger's amendment by Representatives Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Barney Frank (D-MA) related to the Housing Innovation Program, the next iteration of the Moving to Work demonstration program. The amendment would allow select public housing agencies to experiment with efforts to promote self-sufficiency. The legislation is likely to be considered by the full House after the August recess.

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