I’m Ruth roofless. I’ve been unsheltered in the City of Los Angeles continuously since 2017. I write about corruption and housing policy from the streets and host live Displacement X Spaces discussions on Sundays at 7pm PST on Twitter, where I’m @rooflesser.

Federal Housing Choice Vouchers “HCVs”, also called “Section 8” are our country’s #1 “safety net” against mass homelessness. In the City of Los Angeles, a planned opening of the decade-long waitlist for housing subsidies turned into a trap that left applicants, including my partner and I, in even worse shape than we were in before.

After applying for Section 8, our private data was in the hands of professional hackers demanding a ransom, making us virtual hostages.

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2017 Lottery

“We are very pleased to be opening our Section 8 waiting list after 13 years…”

—Douglas Gunthrie 10/2/17

When we applied for Section 8 in October 2022, J and I had been living together in the City of LA’s outdoor public spaces, such as under the highway and underground in storm drains continuously since October 2017, which also happens to be the previous time the City’s Section 8 waiting list opened. Before 2017, the City’s Section 8 waiting list had been closed since October 2004.

The 2017 occasion, celebrated by Mayor Eric Garcetti and HACLA President and Chief Executive Officer “CEO” Doug Gunthrie, seems like it was nearly identical to the 2022 opening.

“The application for the waiting list lottery is scheduled to open starting Monday, October 16, 2017 at 6:00 AM until Sunday, October 29, 2017 at 5:00 PM. Applications are available only online through hacla.hcvlist.org.”

There doesn’t appear to be much public information about the 2004 event. But on August 4th, 2017, LA Sentinel’s Sentinel News Service reported CVP Associates, Inc. (CVP) won a competitive bidding process to handle an estimated 600k incoming applicants and manage the City’s Section 8 waitlist. CVP seems to be Customer Value Partners, Inc. (CVP), a consulting firm that boasts partnerships with Amazon Web Services “AWS” and Google Cloud.

“At the end of the application period, HACLA will use a computer-randomized lottery to select up to 20,000 applicants for placement on the Section 8 Waiting List. As funding is available, HACLA will contact applicants for program eligibility determinations.“

—HACLA.org 10/2/17 announcement

Anirudh Kulkarni is the founder and CEO of CVP and previously worked as a founder at Answerthink $HCKT . CVP acquired Atlas Research (Atlas) in 2021. Atlas, founded in 2008, boasts the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs “VA” as a client, where it won a role in fulfilling a 10-year, $1B Veterans Health Administration’s “VHA” Integrated Healthcare Transformation “IHT” contract.

2019 VASH cut off

“A preference for assistance will be given to applicants who live or work in the City of Los Angeles and to applicants who are veterans or have a household member who is a veteran, released from such military service under conditions other than dishonorable.”

—HACLA.org 10/11/22 statement

Last year, I wrote about how the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing “HUD-VASH” vouchers for veteran families evaporated in 2019 in “Somehow at some point”, which was originally published by CityWatchLA.

When Heidi Marston left the Veterans Administration “VA” for LA’s Homeless Services Authority “LAHSA” in February 2019, a program in Echo Park that had helped veterans utilize vouchers shut down and reopened as a LAHSA family shelter. Since that happened, the HACLA has not met HUD’s VASH utilization requirement of 70% or higher, and therefore the City of Los Angeles has been effectively cut off from receiving new HUD-VASH vouchers. The HACLA received only one allotment of 250 vouchers since 2019, or 50 vouchers per year, on average.

The HACLA and LACDA, LA County’s Development Authority, combined, used to get over 800 vouchers per year, on average. Had the HACLA managed to lease-up more veteran households on VASH in 2019, Los Angeles could have received enough vouchers for every homeless veteran in LA to have permanent housing on the private market by now, assuming there was enough physical housing.

“The opening of HACLA’s Section 8 Wait List lottery will help thousands of families who struggle to pay for housing on a fixed-income.”

—Doug Gunthrie, The HACLA’s then-president and CEO

Too often, government departments like the VA and our PHA seem to work with each other to deprive beneficiaries of entitlements. For example, until recently, veterans’ benefits counted as “income”. This caused veteran families to be ineligible for subsidized housing, and may have contributed to the low HUD-VASH utilization rate.

Since the government is responsible for paying many “fixed incomes” like VA benefits, Social Security, disability and welfare, public housing authorities “PHAs”should be the voice of their tenants and applicants. PHAs could lobby for higher payments that allow recipients of benefits to afford rent without having to rely on multiple bureaucracies.

2021 3,365 EHVs

“Rental subsidy programs reduce poverty, housing instability and homelessness...”

Until 2021, Section 8 had never specifically sought to relieve recipients of homelessness by bringing people from the street indoors. Then 2021’s American Rescue Plan “ARP” funded 70k HUD Emergency Housing Vouchers “EHVs” targeting unsheltered households. Los Angeles received more than 5,000 with 3,365 coming to the HACLA on July 1st, 2021, and they had to be assigned to a household for leasing by September 30th, 2023. EHV applications were not accepted by HACLA directly and had to come from LAHSA, subjecting them to gatekeeping of nonprofit service providers, whose workers claim they are housing insecure themselves.

Ultimately, the vouchers got leased up, but not quickly enough, causing Los Angeles to forfeit its chance at getting another allotment. EHVs are supposed to expire on September 30th, 2030.

Last month, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department “HUD” sent a letter to public housing authorities around the country explaining that final payments would be made this month and they will likely last through the end of 2025. It explains that the funds don’t technically expire until September 30th, 2035, but that no more money will come in after this last payment, so landlords are going to stop getting paid, possibly in 2026, and people are going to be evicted.

✉️ Read the letter from HUD.

2022 LAUSD ransom

On March 10th, 2022, LA Unified School District “LAUSD” released a memo about multi-factor authentication “MFA”, but failed to implement it for six months. On Labor Day, September 5th, 2022, LAUSD was subject of a ransomware attack. Later that week, it decided to finally implement MFA. Ransom negotiations went on for about a month, with LAUSD flatly refusing to pay and the hackers eventually publishing a limited amount of data, giving the appearance that they were exaggerating the amount of information they possessed. It could be said that this attack led to positive changes within the department, and the solution was a practical one which isn’t likely to open a new “back door” for hackers.

2022 Lottery

“It’s been five years since we last opened our Section 8 waiting list and the need for rental assistance has grown…Our goal, with the reopening of HACLA’s Section 8 Waiting List Lottery is to help thousands of families who are struggling financially to find stable housing.”

In October 2022, my partner J and...