Residents will still be able to mail or drop off rent checks to building management. That will end in June, when everything but rent payment itself goes all-digital. Residents of OUB Houses have always received mailed monthly statements that show the amount of rent owed, any past-due balances, and previous payments, including Section 8 subsidy payments. “If I wanted to, I probably could do it,” Velez said through a translator. Like many other elderly residents, Velez receives a Section 8 subsidy and does not have an email address, which is required to sign up for the company’s online payment app. They fear delays and headaches when it comes time to re-certify their Section 8 status, a process that requires proof of past rent payments.
The elderly residents who are not comfortable using the internet worry they won’t have ready access to monthly statements, and they might not notice if a subsidy isn’t coming through. Most residents of OUB Houses receive Section 8 subsidies for their rent. In late March, the management company notified residents in a letter that as of June 1, it “will no longer be distributing rent bills.” That’s why she and other elderly residents of the Mitchell-Lama complex are concerned about the recently announced plans of their building management company, Distinctive Affordable Housing Solutions, to switch to online-only billing.
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Velez, 76, doesn’t know how to access websites and has no email address. But if she gets logged out of her Facebook account or otherwise loses the page, a younger neighbor has to sign her back in. Velez has a tablet that she uses to play games and look at Facebook. Velez gets the station through her cable package, which also provides her with broadband internet. In Rosa Velez’s apartment in the OUB Houses complex in Mott Haven, parakeets chirp as a silent flat-screen television shows a concert on a Spanish-language channel.
Photo: Trevor Boyer Management’s conversion to online rent collection will confuse elderly tenants, say advocates Rosa Velez in her apartment at OUB Houses in Mott Haven.
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