For Needy, Home Is Years Away

Originally published in the Gloucester County Times on October 22, 2006.

The temporary residents of the Mayfair Motel spend their days waiting.

A young woman named Nicole is waiting for social services to help her find a place.

She is waiting for her turn on a public housing list that exceeds 3,000 applicants.

She is waiting for the birth of her second child, which she expects to have within a month.

“The place we have here is for 30 days,” said her sister Veronica, who applied for a public housing waiting list two months ago.

“I have a long way to go,” she admits, but explains “I am not going to get comfortable here, I don’t like living in a motel.”

The Mayfair Motel, like countless others throughout Gloucester County, is a place for people who are in between. It is a room and a bed, a place only one step from the street and a long way from a home, a haven for the down-and-out population, whose numbers are growing.

Suffering under continual budget cuts, county housing authorities have seen waiting lists for public housing and section eight vouchers grow over the past six years, with little hope of relief.

For a two-bedroom unit in Gloucester County sized for a family of four the waiting list is close to 10 years. The Gloucester County Housing Authority currently has 3,129 applicants waiting for public housing. Its section eight voucher list, a program that can provide subsidized housing to those in need, has 3,063 applicants awaiting help.

In 2004, when applicants faced a wait in excess of two years, the housing authority decided it was time to close the list.

“We were exceeding a two-year (wait) and we thought we didn’t want to send a false sense of hope to the families,” said Kim Gober, assistant executive director of the Gloucester County Housing Authority, of the decision to close the list.

Making matters worse, the housing authority has not been allocated funds to build new housing in the past six years, explained Sam Hudman, executive director of the Gloucester County Housing Authority.

“The population of lower-income families has not gone down (but) we haven’t received money for new housing since 2000,” he said. “In 2007, we anticipate that the Congress will only appropriate 75 percent of what we are entitled to. We are in late October and we don’t know what is going to happen in January.”

Budget cuts compound the shortage, forcing the housing authority to lose 165 low-income units in 2004, only some of which they have been able to purchase back.

Tired of the housing shortage, Eric Messar gave up waiting in 2004 after a four-year wait for public housing with no reward.

A former graphic artist, Messar was hit by a drunk driver in 2000, herniating two discs in his spine. Unable to work, Messar lost everything he had before disability kicked in.

“I never ever thought about welfare,” he said. “I was making $70,000 a year. I had a house.”

For the past six years, Messar has lived out of motel rooms, doing what work he can to scrape by. A staple at the Mayfair Motel, he has become accustomed to the revolving door of new faces, of sad stories and uncertain futures.

Life is hard for the residents of the Mayfair Motel, many who face the possibility of life on the street in a week’s time, but that hasn’t stopped them from bringing a few luxuries of their old lives with them.

Chairs line the wall outside red hotel doors. A bike leans against a metal pole supporting the motel’s awning, a length of white electrical wire knotted as a make-shift bike lock. Halloween decorations of ghosts and jack-o’-lanterns adorn one door.

Messar himself has few mementos of his former life. A single cardboard box holds his clothes, three winter jackets draped across its lid. Somewhere in his room is a portfolio of his work as a graphic designer, photos of designs for DuPont, Rolex and Bayer Pharmaceuticals.

“I lost most of it,” he said. “My stuff is gone. I had it in storage, (but) my mother died (and) I spent the last of my money on her funeral.”

The reality of what has become his life has taken its toll. He is a man with a thin face, the accident has forced his shoulders into a permanent shrug, pronouncing a slight paunch that fills out his torn T shirt.

His driver license photo, taken back before the accident when work was steady and food was plentiful, shows a different man, one with round cheeks and a smile.

“I used to be 350 pounds,” Messar said. “Rice and beans are a staple of what we eat (now).”

Nationally, public housing programs are facing the threat of losing some $283 million in funding, explained Arnold Cohen, policy coordinator for the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey.

“The threat here is that the cost you have, if you have less funds coming in, how are they going to balance the books?” he asked. “We are going to lose the housing stock. If people lose those homes where are they going to go?”

For Messar, the housing shortage meant the loss of a chance to rebuild his old life.

“I know it would be (a help),” he said of public housing. “I would be able to get my life together. I would be able to get back to graphic design.”