A housing program seemed too good to be true for Mass. mother; now she helps advise it
Written by Juliet Schulman-Hall, originally published in MassLive on July 20, 2023.
Growing up in public housing in Dorchester, Sabrina Nunez-Diaz learned from her parents not to trust most things, especially if they were free.
After graduating from University of Massachusetts Boston in 2018, Nunez-Diaz, who now lives in Quincy, struggled financially. She didn’t have a job and was a single mother relying on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits to keep afloat while living in Metro Housing Boston.
So she began looking over options that could help her.
Sabrina Nuñez-Diaz and co-parent Alyssa King, with their two sons Zion and Adrien. Photography by Paulina McGrath.
Nunez-Diaz found the family self sufficiency program, a five year federal program that helps families living in state voucher or federally funded public housing units save money. Often people living in public housing have rent tied to their income, so when their income increases, the rent does, too. The self-sufficiency program allows people in public housing to save money as their income increases rather than having to pay more in rent.
But Nunez-Diaz said still wasn’t sure it would work.
“I still didn’t like trust that it was free money,” Nunez-Diaz said, adding that she felt like she needed financial advice. “I felt like I didn’t really have much to offer.”
It took Nunez-Diaz’s mother vouching for the program’s legitimacy for her to take it seriously as a potential option for her and her family. She enrolled in the program in 2020.
As housing prices increase, the cost of living in the United States has become more untenable. According to Bankrate, more than one in five Americans have no emergency savings.
For many in federally funded public housing units or state housing voucher programs, increasing their gross income by getting a job or getting a raise is a double-edged sword, often forcing their rent to go up as well.
“It has this unintended consequence of making it really difficult for families to save or even move forward because as their income goes up, they’re paying more rent,” said Markita Morris-Louis, Chief Executive Officer of Compass Working Capital, a nonprofit that works with public housing organizations mostly in Massachusetts to run the federal program.
At the same time, they could also be losing income-based benefits such as food assistance, Morris-Louis said.
A path forward
Despite all of Nunez-Diaz’s apprehensions about the legitimacy of the family self sufficiency program, she said she has always been a “finance nerd.” Nunez-Diaz majored in community development with a focus on economics in college. Once she enrolled in the federal program, she found a job with a $50,000 salary working for the Unitarian Universalist Association doing their budgeting and finance.
The jump from no salary to a $50,000 salary would’ve drastically raised her rent — state housing voucher recipients like her generally pay between 30% and 40% of their income in rent. But Nunez-Diaz was instead able to use that additional rent money and put it in her escrow account.
Because Nunez-Diaz’s housing authority is also partnered with Compass, Nunez-Diaz had individualized coaching throughout the program.
Compass provides financial coaching, manages paperwork, sets up policies and procedures and provides technical training assistance to housing organizations such as Boston and Cambridge housing authorities, among other services.
With the help of a Compass financial advisor, who Nunez-Diaz called her “cheerleader,” she was able to save $25,000 and build her credit score.
“I don’t want my kids to work as strenuously as I have to,” Nunez-Diaz said.
Nunez-Diaz graduated from the program early in August of 2022 and has since used her savings to pay off some of her debt and put money into investments and a retirement account.
Nunez-Diaz also became the chair of Compass’ program committee, initially from her financial coach recommending her and then from all of the members on the committee electing her. The committee, which is made up of current program participants and graduates across the United States, runs quarterly meetings to discuss how the family self sufficiency can be improved.
She has also been creating a business of her own called Abundantly Funded Mind, focused on financial literacy for Boston youth who are Black, Brown or Indigenous.
Much of the inspiration for creating the organization came from growing up in poverty and seeing the way her parents moved “in fear” around financial institutions or programs and how unequal financial literacy is across families of different incomes.
Sabrina Nunez-Diaz at a podium speaking to Compass partners and supporters in Fall of 2022.
“It’s not just like a typical financial literacy program where you learn to know how — but you also learn personal development, like how do you find your true self? How do you heal your own self?” Nunez-Diaz said. “So that you have the capacity to then extend it to your community and also ... actually apply it.”
Part of the money she saved while in the federal program she gave back to youth who helped her start the business, providing them with stipends to allow them to have and improve upon their own financial literacy and management.
“It’s kind of like this narrative — you know you make it when you leave the hood. And kind of growing up and going through all my experiences and jobs and everything is like — why do I have to leave home to have greatness? Like why can’t we heal here?” Nunez-Diaz said.
What sets Massachusetts apart from other state-run programs?
The family self sufficiency program runs across the United States, but the graduation rate is quite low — only 25%. Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, programs run between state voucher or federally funded public housing programs and Compass have graduation rates of at least 75%, according to Morris-Louis.
Part of the reason why the graduation rate is so high is because the burden of running the program isn’t placed solely on the public housing programs but rather is supplemented by Compass.
Compass, which was given $150,000 in a local housing program earmark by Massachusetts, also works with the authorities to check in with participants to make sure the goals each participant sets for themselves at the beginning of the program are attainable, helping with graduation rates.
“We are less focused on compliance and more focused on compassion, how do we support families in achieving their goals, and then recognizing, even midstream, if a goal they set initially is no longer the right goal for them. Then they get the right to change their minds and set a new goal,” Morris-Louis said.
Of those who are enrolled in the state program, 240 families are also a part of the family self sufficiency homeownership track, which provides targeted training and education for families who have identified homeownership as a goal, according to the Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities.
Seventy families are also enrolled in a savings match homeownership program which provides higher income households with the opportunity to have their individual savings matched.
There are 118 families who graduated from the family self sufficiency program since 2014 that have bought homes — with an average purchase price of $262,000, according to housing and livable communities.
Working with Boston Housing Authority since 2019, the authority’s program has grown from 130 families or the 47th largest family self sufficiency program in the country to just over 1,400 families currently in the program — becoming the third largest program in the country. The current combined savings of participants is $4.5 million, the housing authority said.
“Because we were able to sort of bifurcate the responsibilities there, we were able to really market the program strongly,” said Kelly Cronin, director of rental assistance programs for leased housing at the Boston Housing Authority.
Morris-Louis estimates around 2 million individuals nationwide qualify for the housing program but there is a gap in who actually enrolls because many believe the program is too good to be true or too arduous of a process to go through.
There are estimated 75,000 households in Massachusetts that are eligible for the program.
“They may seem innocent, but they create barriers, right?” Morris-Louis said, referring to the process of enrolling in the program. “We would love to eliminate all of that.”
While Compass has created an online enrollment portal to speed up the process for families, she said there is more that needs to be done.
Nunez-Diaz said she thinks having a representative from the program would be helpful to have in each housing authority so that individuals could trust the program more and ask the representative any questions they may have.
Morris-Louis is attempting to take things one step further, working with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to allow for any family who qualifies for the program to be automatically enrolled. The department has included the automatic enrollment as a recommendation in their budget to Congress but Congress would need to approve it, Morris-Louis said.
“I think one of the limitations to not having more people participate is just educating our participants about the program and how amazing it is and what opportunities it can provide,” Cronin said.