Northeast Kansas CAP asks Atchison County for up to $5,000 amid possible federal CSBG cut

Christy Morey, housing director for Northeast Kansas Community Action Partnership, and Jason Gibson, the organization’s fiscal representative, told the Atchison County Commission on Tuesday that the nonprofit is asking each of seven counties to consider a one-time budget line of up to $5,000 if federal Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) funding is cut.

The request covers administrative support for the regional housing authority operations that NECAP administers for seven counties outside the city limits of Atchison. "We are just going around to all 7 counties just asking, for kind of up to $5,000 in assistance," Morey said during the presentation.

Why it matters: NECAP said the Housing Choice Voucher program that serves those rural areas is federally funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, but CSBG dollars currently subsidize indirect or supportive costs for NECAP’s local administration. With CSBG listed as at risk in federal budget discussions, NECAP asked counties to budget contingency funding to preserve local administrative support should those CSBG funds disappear.

During the roughly nine-minute presentation, Morey explained NECAP does not operate inside the City of Atchison (the city has its own housing authority) but covers the surrounding county and six other counties through a cooperative agreement formed in 1989. She said the program operates tenant-based rental assistance and other supportive efforts including a homeownership track and a Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program.

Gibson and Morey gave an approximate current administrative budget figure: "the administrative, in total, ... was somewhere, but, kind of around 190 to 200,000 for the housing choice voucher plus the FSS," Morey said when commissioners asked about scale. Morey told the board NECAP would only seek the county contribution if federal support were cut: "If we're funded and things like that, we would not be needing the assistance."

Commissioners asked how many counties had been contacted and whether any had declined. Morey said most counties asked questions; a small number remain to be contacted and none had definitively said no. Commissioners also pressed on program eligibility and scope; Morey said most participants are very low income and that roughly three-quarters of voucher holders are at or below 30 percent of area median income, with assistance usually available up to about 50 percent of median income.

No formal action was taken by the commission at the meeting. Commissioners asked NECAP to provide any written budget materials or documentation they have and indicated staff and individual commissioners would follow up with questions.

The presentation clarified that the requested county support would not be distributed within Atchison city limits (the Atchison housing authority covers the city), and that NECAP’s request is meant as contingency planning during uncertainty in the federal budget process.