VINCENNES, Ind. — Agencies across Indiana are dropping flood insurance, scaling back on free meals for the elderly and reducing the number of Section 8 housing vouchers they provide as funding shrinks because of automatic federal budget cuts.
The cuts known as the sequester were designed as a deadline to force a deal to reduce the federal deficit. Instead, Congress and the White House failed to agree, and the cuts kicked in March 1.
That’s forced many agencies that rely on federal money to make cuts of their own.
In Seymour, that means fewer free meals at the Seymour Senior Citizens Center. For cities like Vincennes and Fort Wayne, it has forced changes in a housing program for the poor.
“We just have to learn to make do with what we have,” Carol Gee, director of the meal site at the Seymour Senior Citizens Center, told The Tribune.
The center has scaled back the number of days it offers meals from five to three. The city also has cut back on its meal program for people who are homebound, offering hot meals three days a week and frozen meals the other two.
Vincennes officials have decided to drop flood insurance to help cover the cuts.
According to the Vincennes Sun-Commercial, the Vincennes Housing Authority took out the policy two years ago amid concerns about the Wabash River levee and its accreditation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
But repairs to the levee have diminished concerns about whether it would pass FEMA’s recertification process, and officials decided the risk of catastrophic flooding was worth taking.
Linda Fredrick, the housing authority’s executive director, said she expects the housing authority to get about 82 percent of its usual appropriation from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. A subsidy the authority receives for capital improvements, usually about $500,000 a year, will be cut in half.
The $18,000 that the flood insurance would have cost this year is needed elsewhere, she said.
“We’ve had increases in our utility costs,” she said. “And while we can’t do raises for employees right now, we do want to keep their health insurance coverage.
“More than anything, we need this money for the upkeep of our properties.”
Frederick said the authority has 372 housing vouchers available but is only using about 300 of them. The agency also will likely have to increase the rents it charges, she said.
In Fort Wayne, where nearly 3,000 people receive Section 8 vouchers, housing officials are trying to absorb as much of the cuts as they can before eliminating people from the program.
Maynard Scales, executive director of the Fort Wayne Housing Authority, told WANE-TV the agency hopes to be able to serve more people, but at a lower rate of assistance.
Scales said the agency has implemented a hiring freeze and has shifted some personnel in response to the cuts.
“The service level will go down dramatically, there’s no question about that,” Scales said. “The repairs, the renovations of the properties, keeping them in good shape, that will suffer. That’s where it’s going to show up. The shelter, the roofs will be there, but sooner or later, those roofs will have holes in them, and will we be able to repair them?”
