Lehman Students Fear Their Rent Will Triple if HUD Bill Passes
By Juan Vasquez
Ben Carson during his 2016 Presidential Election. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
A new bill from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) calls for a threefold increase in rent for Americans least able to pay. Ben Carson, the Secretary of HUD, presented the bill on April 25. If passed, it will affect fifteen percent of people living in federally subsidized housing, according to the Washington Post. The paper also stated that Carson suggested changes in housing law that would make it easier for housing authorities to create work requirements that tenants be employed to receive such benefits. The proposal has some Lehman students worried it will hurt them or their peers and families if it becomes law.
“I believe that raising the rent will limit the chance of students trying to graduate,” says Steven Gonzalez, a psychology major at Lehman. “I know quite a few people that have to take breaks just so they can focus on their jobs in order to pay for the classes they need, not mentioning the bills that they pay for housing.”
English major Rhue Alice, a senior, told the Meridian “a lot of [students] would lose housing, and have to scramble for alternative living arrangements. I know a few people who in the past have had to drop out of school in order to work so they could live somewhere.”
“A lot of [students] would lose housing, and have to scramble for alternative living arrangements.”
- Rhue Alice, Lehman English major
According to the 2017 NYCHA Fact Sheet, over 204,000 Bronx residents rely on subsidized housing. And while rent under subsidized housing is capped at 30 percent of the household’s income, only 47 percent of those households actually earn income. This means that if any sort of rent increase were to come into place, more than half of those living in subsidized housing would not be able to afford to live in their homes. This bill has not yet reached the Senate.
“If there is a need to gain more money, taking it from the those considered working class is a terrible idea,” computer science major Adrian Moore remarked. He also stated that “such a change would without a doubt affect the tenants who would have to work under a new system like that.”