The Bloomington Housing Authority is seeking a new executive director to lead the agency that manages federal public housing.
Jeremy Hayes, the BHA's executive director since 2018, left the position April 15. Kristine Glover, the agency's director of finance and administration, is serving as interim executive director during the search for a replacement.
Hayes was with the agency for more than 10 years. BHA offers vouchers for subsidized housing, access to public housing units and more — an often complicated process with long waitlists.
In a Q&A on WGLT's Sound Ideas, Hayes echoed a common refrain that's gone through the Twin Cities for the past few years: In an affordable housing crisis, adding any rental housing in the area would alleviate some of the pressure on people with low incomes.
Hayes: There's a lot of pressure on the rental market and that has filtered down through all segments of the rental market. At the housing authority, we really work with mostly the lowest income renters, but they are in competition with those who are further up the income scale. So, people who have higher incomes are able to absorb fast-increasing rents, but it's made it quite stressful for low-income renters.
WGLT: That's not a fair playing field to be on.
Hayes: No. In my view, that also leads to a conclusion that any additional rental housing in the community is helpful to the lower-income renter. Even if you have new development that is not directly serving low-income renters, it takes pressure off that total market.
WGLT: I think one of the last times you sent out a press release was when a [Section 8] application period opened and I remember there being a waiting list that extended for years. Has it been this way for a long time?
Hayes: I would say one of the things that I'm proudest of in the last five years that I've been executive director is reworking our policies and procedures related to that Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher waitlist.
We went for some very long periods without the wait list opening up — it was not even accessible to people who would potentially qualify just because of the way that our policy was set up. So, the waiting list would open and a couple thousand households would get added all at once. ... We had a 7-8 years' worth of [people] on that waiting list.
We switched in 2022 to a new set of policies that allowed for people to apply electronically — so there's no more taking a day off work and standing around the housing authority waiting to fill out an application.
We set up a preference point system that prioritized people who were already residing in McLean County, and those who were disabled, elderly, those employed — a series of factors that allowed us to target the assistance.
So, we controlled and reduced the number who would be coming on the list, but then open that list more frequently. Now we're on a path such that every 1-2 years, we're going to be opening those waiting lists so there's more accessibility to it. It's just a much more efficient system.
WGLT: If you think back over the past 10 years that you've been working in this arena, have you noticed any trends?
Hayes: It's obvious that the rent increases that renters are being asked for have been really, really hard on them. I think, at one time, people in communities like Bloomington-Normal could look to the coastal markets, the bigger cities and say, 'Well, if you're trying to find affordable housing in San Francisco or Washington, D.C., or New York City, that's one thing, but here in Central Illinois, it's more reasonable.' It still remains more reasonable, but I think seeing the kinds of rent increases that tenants are being asked for has made people relate to the kinds of stories we see... about how tough it is for low-income renters.
For many of our public housing tenants, paying 30% of rent has pushed their rent up considerably. It's not uncommon for people in public housing to be paying $500, $600 or $800 a month in rent because their incomes have grown — it's just that getting a two-bedroom or three-bedroom apartment for say $800 or $900 has now become very, very difficult.
WGLT: The issue of high rents is still playing out today for people seeking assistance.
Hayes: I think it is. There's still folks in the voucher program who are... still seeing increases. Our local response to that has been to adjust what's known as the payment standard — we're at the maximum of what we can set as our payment standard here locally.
[The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] releases statistics called the fair market value rent each year and we can set our payment standard anywhere between 90-110% of that. We're at the top end of that — and that used to not be the case.
The philosophy 7-8 years ago was to keep that at the lower end so that we could assist as many households as possible. Now, we see that just in order for our voucher holders to find a unit and get leased up, we need to have those payment standards as high as they can be locally.
WGLT: If you had had the proverbial magic wand and could have done anything as BHA's executive director, what would you have done?
Hayes: Our housing stock is aging. If we could snap our fingers and renovate the buildings that were built in the 1950s and 1960s, that's probably the first thing that comes to mind. We have buildings that we have reinvested in, but it's an arduous task to go through everything that we have to go through to do building renovations. It's a costly, time-consuming process.
WGLT: What's a fact that you want people to know?
Hayes: Nationally, for every person who has a housing choice voucher, there's 3-4 additional families who would qualify for that assistance, if it were available. A lot of people out there struggle to pay rent, or they're paying more than 30% of their income towards rent, but only a few fortunate people out of that population actually receive the assistance.
