Home in Mastic funded by Southampton Town Section 8 money shut down

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he residents of a home in Mastic, whose rent was being paid by Southampton Town’s Section 8 program, were kicked out in December after their neighbors complained of drug dealing, public drunkenness and domestic abuse at the house.

The incident spotlighted issues with the town’s management of the Section 8 program—one administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to pay the rent for qualified people in need—and both where the funds are used and how closely the properties are monitored.

Last week, Suffolk County Legislator Kate Browning of Shirley accused Southampton Town officials of not sufficiently inspecting and maintaining the property at 197A Patchogue Avenue and said that the town did not follow other regulations in the federal housing program that required the housing vouchers to be transferred to Brookhaven Town.

“If they’re sending tenants to a home in Brookhaven, then they should be notifying Brookhaven,” Ms. Browning said Monday. “I am disappointed and disgusted that Southampton Town feels it’s okay to shove a Section 8 family into Brookhaven, especially in a substandard home.”

But Southampton Town Services Management Administrator Richard Blowes, who oversees the town’s Section 8 program, said HUD guidelines allow the town to provide Section 8 vouchers to people living outside of its borders, as long as those people are within close proximity to Southampton—close enough for the town to conduct inspections. Mastic is about a 10-minute drive from Eastport, the western border of the town.

Even so, he admitted there is some question about whether Southampton Town’s program has been properly transferring the housing vouchers as it should.

Mr. Blowes said that the town’s former housing program supervisor, Anthony Gee, who retired more than a year ago, did not always transfer the administration of Section 8 vouchers to the municipalities in which the families were living, a formal process called “porting.” “There are a number of vouchers for clients living outside the Town of Southampton that have not been ported, but should have been by now if the agency was willing to take them,” he said.

People who receive Section 8 benefits, which are funneled through local governments, typically must live in the municipality that issues their voucher for at least a year, said Sandra Cirincione, the assistant town services management administrator, who now runs the Section 8 program. After that, the municipality the recipients actually live in must issue a new voucher—if it has the resources to do so—or the voucher must be ported, or transferred, from the original municipality. Porting happens when the second municipality does not have a new voucher to issue, Ms. Cirincione explained, or when a Section 8 client uses a voucher for housing that is too far away to be inspected by the original municipality. HUD regulations require that properties be inspected at least annually.

Southampton, Ms. Cirincione noted, currently ports vouchers to New York City, Virginia and California.

Once a voucher has been ported to another municipality, Southampton gets 20 percent of the fee from it, and the other municipality gets 80 percent. For 2010, Southampton was scheduled to receive $298,000 in administrative fees from HUD to cover the cost of running the program, which is expected to funnel about $3.9 million in subsidies and vouchers.

Southampton Town has 288 Section 8 vouchers in use, Mr. Blowes said. He noted that of those vouchers, 73 are being used outside the town. Of those 73 vouchers, 27 have been ported to the outside municipalities. Mr. Blowes said he does not know why the voucher for the home on Patchogue Avenue in Mastic had not been transferred.

Southampton Town revoked the Section 8 vouchers for the family living in the Mastic home in December and canceled its contract with the landlords, Jean and Richard Albano of Dix Hills, Mr. Blowes said. Ms. Browning said the Albanos own other properties in Mastic and are absentee landlords.

The Albanos did not return phone calls placed Monday seeking comment.

Deputy Southampton Town Supervisor Frank Zappone said the town’s files on the Albano home contain records of violations at the property, located just south of the railroad tracks in Mastic, dating back to April.

The home on Patchogue Avenue is not the only one causing a blight on the Mastic area, according to Ms. Browning. She said that a family with Southampton Town Section 8 vouchers is occupying a home on Washington Drive, and it has also been the source of complaints from neighbors. The legislator said children residing in the Washington Drive home tore the shingles off another structure in the community.

Mr. Blowes confirmed that a Southampton Town section 8 voucher holder resides in the Washington Drive home but said that he was not aware of the youths misbehaving and has no record of code enforcement issues there.

Mr. Blowes said that he and Ms. Cirincione have been auditing the Section 8 program’s files and are making sure that all vouchers that can be ported have been. Once that audit is complete, the town will most likely farm out the administration of the entire Section 8 program to an outside agency, possibly by the end of this year, he said.

“Before we find another agency to administer the program, we need to make sure that our house is in order,” Mr. Blowes said. “Then we’ll look and reach out for someone to administer on our behalf.”

Despite the town’s plans for the future, and its current audit work, Ms. Browning said that Southampton should have alerted Brookhaven officials about the presence of the family using the vouchers. She said that the family had moved in by the time Brookhaven knew about them, and that Brookhaven officials would have never permitted the family to move into the home because it was in disrepair.

“Why did they move a family to the area when this home was not approved by Brookhaven as a Section 8 home?” Ms. Browning asked. “They moved them in before Brookhaven even inspected it. If Brookhaven inspected it, they would have not allowed them to move there.”

Ms. Browning added that many of the problems at the home were not only due to its poor condition, but also the behavior of the inhabitants. She said that neighbors of the house said that there was drug and possibly gang activity there.

The identity of all people accepting Section 8 vouchers—such as the family formerly residing at the Patchogue Avenue home—must be protected according to Section 8 rules, Ms. Cirincione explained.

All people receiving vouchers are thoroughly screened by the town, Ms. Cirincione said. The screening process includes a criminal records check, income disclosure, family history, and other personal details, she said.

Ms. Browning, exasperated at the poor conditions in her community, lashed out one last time at Southampton Town, and the federal government system in general.

“The people I represent understand that people need somewhere to live,” Ms. Browning said. “But you cannot put every social service program in the same community over and over again.”