180 FAMILIES LOSE FEDERAL RENT SUBSIDY LAWBREAKERS THROWN OUT OF MUCH-NEEDED PROGRAM.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

LANCASTER - More than 180 households have lost government rent subsidies in the Antelope Valley over the past 13 months during a crackdown on fraud and abuse in the so-called Section 8 federal rent subsidy program.

Los Angeles County officials said 148 households were terminated from the Section 8 program during 2005 and another 36 got termination notices in January as a result of violations ranging from not reporting all their income to selling drugs.

``There's been far too many people that have chosen to abuse the program and who are not looking at it as a helping hand but are looking at it as an entitlement,'' said Norm Hickling, an aide to Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich.

At Antonovich's urging, county supervisors last week asked county Housing Authority officials to look for new funding sources to finance the increased Section 8 enforcement and to ask the federal government to boost its own funding for enforcement.

Supervisors also voted to develop a policy to mandate that Section 8 landlords evict tenants immediately on discovery of drug dealing, serious crimes, sex offenses or probation violations.

The Section 8 program lets low-income individuals and families pay about 30 percent of their monthly income for rent, with the rest of their landlord's standard rent charge paid by the federal government.

About 3,200 Antelope Valley households receive Section 8 aid, or about 3 percent of the population. That is up from about 2,100 in 2001, but down from the 3,400 recipients in 2004, when the crackdown on abuses started.

The local crackdown started after Lancaster's newly created Lancaster Community Appreciation Project unit of sheriff's deputies concentrating on crime in rental housing found that many of the complaints they investigated involved Section 8 aid recipients who were violating the program's rules.

Many problem Section 8 tenants had transferred with rental subsidies to the Antelope Valley from Los Angeles, where county housing officials said city officials had not been checking applicants' claims that they had no criminal background.

Antonovich agreed to provide $75,000 that year to hire additional Housing Authority investigators. Lancaster contributed $50,000 and Palmdale $25,000. The Housing Authority investigators work with the LanCAP deputies in Lancaster and Palmdale's Partners Against Crime sheriff's detail.

About 47 percent of the people who lost their Section 8 aid over the past year had been granted the aid originally in Los Angeles, county Housing Authority investigator Bob Nishimura said.

Another 44 percent were granted the aid through the county Housing Authority, which covers Lancaster, Palmdale and dozens of other smaller cities around the county. The remaining 9 percent of the violators came from elsewhere.

Officials said the terminations do not indicate that a majority of Section 8 recipients are abusing the rules. The violations were found at apartments and rental homes that deputies and housing investigators checked because of complaints from neighbors or others, Nishimura said.

Violations included having income not reported when applying for the housing aid, as shown by investigators finding big-screen televisions or expensive cars at homes. Violations also included taking in unauthorized tenants, some of whom paid rent to the Section 8 recipient or who were on parole or probation, officials said.

In one case, a Section 8 recipient let a registered sex offender live with her, Antonovich's staff said.

In five cases from 2005, people have been charged with grand theft for fraudulently receiving Section 8 aid, they said.

During January, investigators arrested another 34 people at Section 8 apartments for unrelated offenses, including drug possession, parole violations and outstanding warrants.

Taking away subsidies from the 148 households in 2005 will free up about $1.2 million annually to go to law-abiding families on the county's Section 8 waiting list. The wait for the aid is about 10 years, Antonovich's staff said.

The Housing Authority's Section 8 abuse toll-free hotline number is [phone].