Consolidating Housing Vouchers

By Brennan Smith

Consolidating Housing Vouchers

July 18, 2011 Updated Jul 18, 2011 at 11:34 PM EDT

Binghamton, NY (WBNG Binghamton) What city leaders call a redundancy in city government is consolidated Monday evening.

In a work session, the City of Binghamton votes to transfer the city's Section 8 Program to the Binghamton Housing Authority.

The program provides housing vouchers to low-income families to help pay rent and mortages.

Right now, the Town of Union, City of Binghamton and its Housing Authority receive federal dollars from HUD to accept the vouchers.

The consolodation makes the Housing Authority in-charge of all of these vouchers for Binghamton.

"We're running into flat administrative revenue generated through the program. We realized to make it more cost effective in delivery of service and to improve the service for the client, it made a lot of sense to move our program over to Binghamton housing," said the City of Binghamton's Director of PHCD, Tarik Abdelazim.

To make the move, four positions in the City of Binghamton will most likely be eliminated. The Housing Authority will most likely hire two additional workers.

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