Priced out: Silicon Valley’s most vulnerable face devastation from sequester cuts

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BY SILICON VALLEY DE-BUG



SAN JOSE— Automatic spending cuts to certain federal programs, or sequester cuts, are now hitting Silicon Valley’s elderly, disabled and low-income families especially hard. In one of the costliest places to live in the nation, Section 8 tenants are seeing rents skyrocket as a result of the sequester, and many now face homelessness.









Some 17,000 tenants on the Federal Section 8 housing program in Santa Clara County recently received rent hikes of 10 percent or more due to the spending cuts triggered at the beginning of 2013 after elected officials could not reach an agreement on reducing the federal deficit. As a result, some families in Silicon Valley have received rent increases of $900 or more.

Fifty-seven percent of Section 8 voucher holders in Santa Clara County are seniors or disabled, and 61 percent are on fixed incomes. With no way to pay, many will find themselves homeless.

A group of affected tenants in Silicon Valley is calling for the government to immediately halt the sequester, and for allocation of adequate affordable housing funds to meet the needs of the American people. Local members of Congress have been invited to attend and receive the petitions of the tenants, who will be protesting the rent increases caused by the federal sequester at noon Thursday. Watch the video testimonies from some of the Section 8 tenants impacted by federal sequester cuts, produced by Silicon Valley De-Bug in collaboration with the Community Homeless Alliance Ministries.

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