HUD Targets Aid for Rentals to Relatives

As a landlord in a controversial low-income federal housing program, Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury receives $639 per month of taxpayer money to rent a house to his 77-year-old mother on his Ojai ranch property.

Bradbury’s mother, Marie, receives rent subsidies through the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 8 housing voucher program, designed to provide affordable housing to those who would otherwise be unable to secure decent accommodations.

However, the nationwide program in which Marie Bradbury participates is now under attack in Washington, and reforms due to take effect in September zero in on landlords who rent to family members on government assistance.

The rental subsidy program works like this: Low-income tenants rent dwellings from participating landlords, paying no more than 30% of their income for housing. The government pays the rest of the rent.

To qualify, Marie Bradbury cannot live under the same roof with her son, his wife and their 1-year-old son.

Since July 1995, she has lived in a house on her son’s four-acre ranch. The dwelling sits next to Bradbury’s five-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot main house. The entire ranch was assessed last year at $558,000.

The district attorney said he sees no personal conflict in taking the rent subsidy because his mother has been receiving it for more than 20 years, long before she began renting from him in 1995. He said it allows her to feel she contributes to the family and is not being a burden on them.

“That’s a major consideration for this woman because she has a great deal of pride and has worked hard all of her life,” Bradbury said.

“This money is not important to us,” added Bradbury, who earns an annual salary of $131,804. “It’s important to my mother.”

But Bradbury’s participation in the federal housing subsidy program drew mixed reactions last week from housing officials and taxpayer advocates in Ventura County, as well as from the county’s two U.S. representatives.

“I don’t think that family members making that kind of money should make use of public funds to assist family members,” said Sal Gonzalez, executive director of the Oxnard Housing Authority, which administers Section 8 funds. “We have such a tremendous housing need that the money needs to go to those who can least afford [it].”

Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) said he doesn’t know a lot about HUD’s housing subsidy program, but he defended Marie Bradbury’s right to receive rental help and said her son’s income should not be an issue.

“Here’s a case where an individual is subsidizing his mother,” Gallegly said. “If he didn’t care about her, he could rent the house out for several hundred dollars more than he is getting.”

Marie Bradbury’s HUD payment contract states that her current monthly rent is $850 a month. Under her contract agreement, she is supposed to pay her son-landlord $211 toward the monthly rent, while HUD picks up the remaining $639.

But Bradbury said his mother does not pay the tenant portion of the rent.

Doug Tapking, executive director of the Ventura County Area Housing Authority, said there is nothing in the regulations that specifically deals with landlords being required to collect the tenant portion of the rent.

Critics of the Section 8 program’s rules say that landlords who rent to relatives should shoulder that burden without government help.

“You want to create and foster a culture that says welfare is for those who need it,” said Rep. Brad Sherman (D--Thousand Oaks). “Where people are closely related and get along well together, everything should be done by the family to prevent one of them from needing Section 8 or any other welfare programs.”

Speaking specifically of Bradbury’s case, however, Sherman said: “If there is fault here, the fault is not with the Bradbury family. It is with HUD regulators.”

Despite the rental subsidy his mother receives, Bradbury said he and his wife, Heidi, pick up most of her living expenses.

Although Bradbury said he does not need the HUD funds to take care of his mother, he also said that “it’s a big leap, a big assumption” to view him as wealthy. “I live from paycheck to paycheck, the only assets I have are my home and my retirement,” he said.

Asked if his reputation as a law-and-order Republican clashes with his involvement in the HUD Section 8 subsidy program, Bradbury said:

“It’s always a big assumption that I’m conservative on issues other than law and order. People tend to make that mental jump without knowing where I stand on a lot of issues.”

So far, Bradbury has been paid about $15,000 from the HUD voucher program. He is one of thousands of family members nationwide who receive an estimated $200 million a year to provide dwellings for relatives.

Under new federal regulations, which take effect next month, tenants renting from relatives who are already in the subsidy program will be allowed to continue. But new tenants will have to verify that they are not related to their landlords, unless the tenant is physically or mentally disabled.

“We are committed to eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in all HUD programs,” said Kevin Marchman, HUD’s acting assistant secretary for public housing. “Given the constraints of our budget and the great need for affordable housing and housing assistance in this country, we haven’t a dollar to waste.”

“Housing assistance should be provided to those who are truly in need--those who are poor, or those who are elderly or disabled with limited ability to pay the rent,” Marchman said. “Housing assistance ought not go to those who don’t truly have that kind of need. That is why HUD has moved to ban the practice of allowing relatives to rent to relatives under Section 8--it’s a potential abuse of the program and could allow Section 8 to be used by those who don’t truly need it.”

Asked what he would do once the new regulations take effect, Bradbury said it is up to his mother to decide if she will continue in the program. His mother was unavailable for comment, Bradbury said.

Bradbury’s involvement in HUD’s Section 8 program surfaced during a review by The Times of Ventura County Area Housing Authority records. The authority, the largest disburser of Section 8 funds in the county, covers the cities of Camarillo, Fillmore, Moorpark, Ojai, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks. Bradbury was the only elected local official listed as a HUD landlord.

Area housing officials said they could not estimate how many families in the county are paid to house their relatives.

In all, there are about 5,400 tenants here who receive Section 8 rent subsidies, and about 6,900 more are on waiting lists that are three to five years long. So many poor people are waiting for help, in fact, that the county’s Area Housing Authority was forced to close its waiting list last August. Officials don’t see it reopening for three more years.

Unlike most other participants, records show that Bradbury’s mother did not have to work her way up a waiting list in Ventura County because she transferred her federal housing voucher from Lassen County. Housing officials say such transfers are common.

The wife of former Susanville Police Chief Floyd Bradbury, Marie Bradbury raised her three sons in rural Lassen County in Northern California.

When her husband died in 1969, Marie Bradbury went to work as a nurse at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute in Los Angeles because the police pension she received was not enough for her to live on.

But shortly after her husband passed away, she was injured on the job. She moved back to Susanville and into an apartment where she first began receiving housing assistance.

“On one of my visits to see my mom, I just realized that she had been getting so old and her ability to care for herself was deteriorating,” Bradbury said. “I decided I wanted to bring her back to live with me.”

Marie Bradbury transferred her housing subsidy to Ventura County two years ago. In June, when she was recertified for eligibility, her income was listed at $11,376 a year from Social Security and pension benefits, about half of the $21,400 allowed for a single person in the program.

Rep. Phil English (R-Pa.) has led the call for reform. He introduced the Housing Fraud Prevention Act in 1996, which he said was intended to close the relative-as-landlord loophole in an otherwise valuable Section 8 program.

English said officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development “freely conceded that this was not what Section 8 was for,” but initially balked at changing their policies.

After reviewing its Section 8 regulations and under continuing pressure from English and others, HUD officials agreed to change its policies next month.

Times staff writers Carlos V. Lozano and Daryl Kelley contributed to this story from Ventura and Melissa Healy reported from Washington.