Residents of Troubled Hacienda Housing Complex to be Given Voucher to Move Out

Residents living in Richmond’s Hacienda public housing complex will soon be receiving Section 8 vouchers and will be able to move out, city officials said today. The public housing complex, operated by the Richmond Housing Authority, came under fire last year after a series of stories produced by the Center for Investigative Reporting, in partnership with the San Francisco Chronicle and KQED, detailed allegations ranging from squalid living conditions to financial mismanagement.

The Richmond City Council in March approved a motion to relocate all of the tenants from the building with Section 8 housing vouchers provided by the federal government. The vouchers allow residents to rent on the private market. Since then, Richmond Mayor Tom Butt said the city has worked with U.S. Housing and Urban Development staff to expedite its “Inventory Removal Application” -- basically, an application to remove residents from a housing development either for renovations or demolition.

After Butt was elected mayor in November, he said he made it one of his “highest priorities” to ensure that residents secured the housing vouchers. Butt said the issue had become a “political football” in Richmond and an object of criticism by “people who are prone to look for ways to criticize the city.” “It was a festering sore,” Butt said, adding he thought it “would be good to move on to something more important.”

Butt has long contested the allegations in the CIR series and wrote a lengthy rebuttal of the news articles. However, public officials have recognized the need for improvement. Congressman Mark DeSaulnier, who represents Richmond in the House of Representatives, said residents of Hacienda were in “dire need of safe and improved living conditions.”

“I am pleased to have assisted the city of Richmond in expediting the issuance of vouchers which will allow individuals and families to immediately begin finding and settling into a better housing situation,” DeSaulnier said in a statement. The RHA will be helping residents with costs associated with packing, moving, and security deposits and is opening a relocation office within the housing complex to help tenants relocate. “At this point in time, there are no impediments to the process other than identifying the people to work with and identifying the places to move to,” Butt said. “The burden is not all on (the tenants). There’s a consultant to sit down with them and hold their hands and walk them through the whole process.”

City officials and DeSaulnier are expected to officially announce the distribution of the Section 8 housing vouchers at a 3 p.m. press conference on Friday at the Hacienda complex, located at 1300 Roosevelt Avenue near Barrett Avenue.

By Bay City News

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