NLV Housing Authority wants to place working families

The North Las Vegas Housing Authority is proposing changes to its selection process that could help move more working families through the waiting list and into public housing.

The draft of the five-year North Las Vegas Housing Authority plan for fiscal years 2000-2004 includes five new preferences for admission to public housing.

The only admission preferences required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development have been involuntary placement, victims of domestic violence, and homelessness. But those preferences were eliminated in 1998.

The ongoing process for those on the waiting list has been the state preferences for veterans and veterans' families and the housing authority's required broad range of income policy.

The broad range of income policy is designed to integrate people of different income levels by bringing higher-income tenants into lower-income projects and lower-income tenants into higher-income projects.

Once a balance is reached, the remaining applicants are chosen strictly by the date and time they applied.

The Housing Authority is proposing five new preferences to be given priority instead of falling under the broad list of applicants: the three former federal preferences of involuntary displacement, victims of domestic violence and homelessness, and two new preferences for working families and residents who have lived in Nevada for at least six months.

"In Section 8 (housing), what had happened was people in California applied and then they go back to California. They could get help first before Nevada people, and that's not quite fair," said Ingred Cabrerra, deputy director for the Housing Authority.

Brian Brooks, director of the Health Care for the Homeless program, under Nevada Rural Health Centers Inc., said the new classifications for Nevada residents and the homeless is only fair.

"It will help quite a bit," he said. "Otherwise, if they go on the bottom of the list they become homeless again. We should take care of the people who have been here first."

A public hearing on the draft will be at 5 p.m. March 30 at 1632 Yale St., near Tonopah Avenue and North Fifth Street.

Diana Sahagun covers North Las Vegas for the Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-2320 or by e-mail at [email protected]

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