Hundreds Try for Spot on North Adams Housing Authority List
 At least a 1,000 people were expected to apply for housing vouchers at the North Adams Housing Authority by the 4:30 p.m. deadline on Wednesday. |
But officials weren't prepared for hundreds of out-of-towners hoping to get the federally funded vouchers.
"I hired one police officer for four hours; we had five here at one point," said the authority's Executive Director Jennifer Hohn, during a lull at the Housing Authority office in the high-rise on Ashland Street.
The officers came for crowd control and stayed to help make copies of birth certificates and other documents and stamp forms for the lines of people, most from Holyoke and Springfield. The authority had to rent a copier and grab one from another office to keep up with the influx. "We've had three copiers going all day," said Hohn.
And that was at 1 p.m.
By that time, the crowd was more manageble but the morning was "a riot," said Hohn. Some applicants had been waiting since 4 a.m.; longtime staff member Valerie Zwiercan said she'd heard that at least one family had arrived at 1:30 in the morning and slept in their car. One woman took it upon herself to take down names in the order of arrival, handing Zwiercan a list of 65 before the doors opened at 8 a.m.
"That's a sign of desperation, it's a sign of what's happening with the economy," said Hohn.
A Spanish-language radio station reportedly picked up on local advertisements announcing the opening of the list for one day on Wednesday. But it's unlikely that the applicants will get anything for their efforts.
"We have a local preference established and we are fully utilized," said Hohn. "Even people who live or work locally will not be getting issued a voucher for quite some time. ... What causes us to issue a voucher is somebody gives up their voucher, or if somebody moves and the other Housing Authority absorbs that voucher.
"The government only gives us the subsidy for 313 and that's what we're locked in at. We can't ever increase the amount of vouchers that we have."
The waiting list was opened to be replenished; there's usually between 100 and 200 names on it. Zwiercan and Hohn estimated about 1,000 people total will have applied for vouchers on Wednesday, maybe 20 percent of them local.
Most of the larger housing authorities are part of the state's Centralized Waiting List for 80 different agencies. The Springfield authority, which has more than 2,300 housing units and oversees another 2,600 vouchers, participates in the centralized list.
Several people said the wait for Section 8 vouchers in the Springfield area could be up to 10 years. Isabel Serrazina, executive department manager for the Springfield authority, said she couldn't speak to how long the wait would be because it depended upon the authority.
"There's one consolidated waiting list," she said. "It is quite lengthy ... there are 20 or more housing authorities participating."
According to the Massachusetts Centralized List website, the waiting list is purged every two years; the most recent purge was this spring.
Maricely Cruz of Springfield said she drove her friends to North Adams in hopes of gaining a voucher. Cruz had had luck six years ago in applying in North Adams and getting her voucher transferred to the Springfield area.
The two-hour drive was worth it, she said, because people could wait more than five years to get a voucher. Still, Cruz didn't hold out much up hope for her friends.
"They think they are going to get the voucher, but they're not going to," she said. "They are going to be disappointed."
