VELLIE DEMANDS ANSWERS ON FAIRFAX PUBLIC HOUSING BOONDOGGLE

County allows families earning $216,000 to live in taxpayer-subsidized housing: “I was among the needy, and this type of abuse is disgraceful”

ANNANDALE, VA (September 30) –Mason District Republican nominee Vellie Dietrich-Hall today expressed “outrage” that Fairfax County bureaucrats have allowed families making as much as $216,000 a year to live in taxpayer-subsidized housing, with 1 in 10 residents of low-income housing earning more than the Fairfax County median income of $94,500.

A Washington Post article this morning by journalist Amy Gardner revealed that hundreds of residents of public housing in Fairfax County make too much to be eligible, with some households earning as much as $216,000 a year. According to the Post, 25 residents of taxpayer-funded public housing earn more than $75,600 a year, and 11 households make more than $94,500.

Asked about her department's decision to continue underwriting the rent of a woman and her two sons, both college graduates with full-time jobs, who earn a combined $216,000, the director of the county's Department of Housing and Community Development, Paula C. Sampson, speculated that "maybe it's time for the boys to leave the nest and go off on their own."

The Post also found that more than a third of the households in the Fairfax rental program make more than half the median income, and more than 10 percent earn more than $75,600 a year. County records uncovered by the Post found that 28 households in the program make more than $94,500, with one family making $184,376 a year, another
$145,349 and a third $140,962. The rental program makes apartments and townhouses available at below-market rates to 1,190 households, according to the Post.
What the Post doesn’t talk about is the truly needy people who are turned away from public housing because Fairfax County bureaucrats choose to subsidize the rents of those whose biggest problem is how much to sock away a 401(k). When I came to this
country, I was among those needy persons, and to me, this kind of abuse is especially disgraceful. While the bureaucrats underwrite the top 5 percent of wage-earners, Fairfax County police officers, firemen and teachers can’t afford to live in the communities they work. That’s not what taxpayers signed up for when they were asked by the Board of Supervisors to support affordable housing to the tune of $20 million a year.

Vellie noted that Fairfax County’s Board of Supervisors “dragged their feet for years” before imposing any income threshold for public housing, despite being permitted to do so by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“When the Board finally imposed an income ceiling on public housing last year, it set the threshold at a whopping $94,500“ hardly what anybody would consider "low income," Vellie noted.
The County’s housing bureaucrats seem to have chosen to turn their backs on massive abuses of the housing program, and taxpayers deserve to know if they had the support of the Board of Supervisors in doing so. There must be accountability for bureaucratic failures and neglect of taxpayer dollars, and the County Board of Supervisors and the bureaucrats at the Department of Housing and Community
Development ought to be called to task for this.

Vellie pledged that if she is elected Mason District Supervisor, she will introduce legislation to require participants to notify county officials when their incomes exceed the income ceiling, and to seek other housing arrangements when that happens. If they failed to do so, they should be required to repay the county for the amount of their subsidy and face possible criminal prosecution for fraud, she said.

Time for change? Go to http://www.votevellie.org/