By STACI YOUNG
Assistant to the Mayor, City of Warsaw

WARSAW — The Warsaw Housing Authority administers the Housing Choice Voucher Program, which is federal dollars from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to assist families under 50 percent area median income in paying their rent and utilities. For the program to work, landlords within the community need to participate in the program to provide rental units for the families to live in, because the housing authority doesn’t have public housing units like they do in metropolitan communities.

A landlord wants to protect his investment in a property from damages and needs to have the rent paid on time as not to lose his or her investment. The families on the program dictate the success of future families finding housing units to rent. If a landlord rents to a family on this program and they don’t keep the unit up, they tend to stereotype any other families who request to rent with vouchers.

The HCV program also addresses safety issues in a unit. For instance, if the housing inspector finds the smoke detectors not working, the family is not keeping up on their responsibility to keep the unit up to housing standards.

For the families that treat a rental unit as if they owned it: keep it clean, report problems timely to the landlord, and do not damage the unit, they earn a Good Housekeeping Award from the inspector. The landlord is notified of the award which lets him or her know that the tenant is keeping the unit nice. This assists future families in having more choices of units to rent in the future.

The rules of the program also state that if a family damages the unit, they are responsible for the repairs or the cost of the repairs made by the landlord. If they are not made or they do not pay the landlord for the repairs, they lose their right to have a housing voucher.

This year, 35 families out of 170 received Good Housekeeping Awards. The housing authority’s goal is to increase that number each year.

Each family received a certificate signed by the Housing Inspector and Mayor Joe Thallemer. What they didn’t know was that Max and Mary Jones, owners of Rock Bottom of Warsaw, agreed to have a drawing at the end of the year for the recipients who received a Good Housekeeping Award, where one recipient will receive a new mattress and box springs. Rock Bottom of Warsaw commends these families for being good neighbors and taking pride in their homes.

“Warsaw Housing Authority had the Good Housekeeping Program years ago,” shared Warsaw Housing Authority Executive Director Pam Kennedy. “We stopped the program when nearly 100 percent of the families were winning the award. In 2015, we were able to bring to program back with this fantastic support from Rock Bottom of Warsaw.”