Denver public-housing residents have been fulfilling federal requirements to perform community service by reading at the library; visiting the zoo, botanic gardens or art museum; and attending the ballet or symphony.
Those activities wouldn’t qualify with other housing authorities nationally, officials say. And a former congressman who sponsored legislation creating the rule questions Denver’s liberal interpretation of it.
Denver Housing Authority officials defend the practice. They say getting residents to put in eight hours of community service or self-sufficiency activity each month is so difficult – statistics show that barely one in six residents does – that practically any activity is acceptable.
For instance, helping a senior citizen who lives in public housing play bingo can be counted toward community service.
“At least it’s getting them into the outside world,” DHA Director Sal Carpio said of the non-traditional activities. “This enhances their quality of life, and for people that don’t or won’t leave their units or the complex, it’s progress.”
Advocates for the poor agree, saying any activity that can help improve someone’s life should be enough, even if it’s as simple as reading a book.
“People in need have a host of issues that need addressing, and any type of positive activity that can help fulfill that is better than nothing,” said John Parvensky, director of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. “Anything that is a piece toward self-improvement is useful to getting their lives back together.”
But DHA admits it doesn’t know whether such activities are contributing to the community or self-improvement. No one monitors the quality of activities, only attendance.
It’s unlikely residents gain community service credit by reading a library book to themselves, Carpio said. Rather, it’s presumed the book is read to a child. Same with the museums. Or they could share a book with other tenants.
Those not complying can lose housing
More than 500 DHA residentsare required to perform community service or, alternatively, take part in an activity that encourages or leads to self- sufficiency, such as job training or employment counseling. It’s a requirement that began in 2003, and those who don’t comply can be refused a new lease. Denver is the first housing authority nationally to start removing tenants for non-compliance. Two have been sent packing already, and more are expected in coming months, DHA officials said.
“That’s not right, going after me before the others,” evictee Marla Big Horse said last week, just hours after a judge signed eviction papers tossing her from her home of 19 years. She owed about 100 hours of community service, she said.
“I wanted to do the community service, but was sick and couldn’t,” Big Horse said. “Now they say it’s too late, get out. I didn’t even bother arguing.”
While a few tenants brush up on their English or computer skills, several others work with the homeless or with troubled youth – all acceptable activities under the community-service rule. Volunteering at local churches tops the list of activities. Yet dozens more have logged hundreds of hours reading books, watching animals, and observing plants and paintings, according to DHA records and interviews.
Since January, DHA residents have been credited with more than 700 hours of community service at the Denver Public Library, ranking it third among the most popular compliance activities behind churches and schools, authority records show. “It could be a head of household who takes a child to the library, reads a story or sits in on one,” DHA spokeswoman Stella Madrid explained. “Or they’d go to the museum to an exhibit, bond with a child, work on their parenting skills.”
HUD doesn’t specifically define community-service or self-sufficiency activities. The decision is left to the local housing authorities, but a HUD directive said the aim of the program is to ensure that public-housing residents “give something back” to their communities or “improve their own economic well-being.”
Housing officials in St. Paul, Minn., said they’d be hard-pressed to agree with Denver’s assessment.
“We follow the HUD regulations on eligible activities pretty closely, and I don’t see the connection to libraries or museums,” said Al Hester, housing policy director at the St. Paul Public Housing Authority. “Maybe a resident could show that the library-museum trip was part of their participation in an economic self-sufficiency program, in which we’d count it. Or the resident could volunteer at the library or museum, which would certainly count.”
Sponsor: Denver’s not tough enough
Denver library officials were startled by the community-service hours reported by housing tenants since January because library records show half that amount over the last 18 months. The discrepancy: Residents who read a book – some say to themselves, DHA says to someone else – were getting credit right along with volunteers who worked a book sale or helped straighten shelves.
But reading books and visiting museums isn’t exactly what lawmakers had in mind when Congress passed the controversial 1998 law that the U.S. Housing and Urban Development began enforcing in late 2003, according to its sponsor, former Rep. Rick Hill, a Helena, Mont., Republican.
“The purpose of this was to help make sure people have an opportunity to gain skill sets, to put them to work and become self-sufficient,” Hill said from Helena. “What Denver is allowing doesn’t get to the point, which was to have you do something that helps the community, helps them get a job or to volunteer to make things better.”
In Philadelphia, housing officials treat community service as a group activity and often schedule massive cleanup days where residents pick up trash and spiff up the surroundings.
In Seattle, the HUD rule is interpreted in a more “traditional manner,” according to John Forsyth, administrator of the Seattle Housing Authority’s community services division. “It’s for the public benefit of the community. Reading books just wouldn’t do,” Forsyth said.
In Denver, tenant advocate Tina Sanchez said she has little sympathy for anyone unwilling to comply with the community-service rule.
“I think they’re just lazy, and this is supposed to get folks out of it,” said Sanchez, tenant board president at Quigg Newton Homes, where 80 percent of the required residents have not complied with the rule, among the highest at DHA properties.
Staff writer David Migoya can be reached at dmigoya@denverpost.com or 303-820-1506.
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