Some public housing residents read The Voice. Others think it’s only good for lining bird cages. Either way, the Seattle Housing Authority is going to have to find a new way to pay for its monthly tenant newsletter: On April 10, a committee of SHA tenants voted to yank the housing authority’s entire budget for The Voice — $65,000 — after tenants balked at SHA using their Resident Participation Fund to pay for it.

The fund, which totals $130,000, comes from a $25 subsidy that U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development kicks in for each public-housing unit. The money is intended to foot the bill for resident council activities, interpreters, leadership training, and other programs that promote community involvement. But in the wake of federal cutbacks a few years ago, SHA started using half of the resident fund for The Voice, which it pays an outside editor to produce on a contract that ends Sept. 30.

Using the fund for The Voice had been approved each year by a tenant committee made up of council presidents from each SHA building. But two years ago, says resident activist Lynn Sereda, tenants started getting more organized and reading more of the HUD regulations, learning that they didn’t necessarily have to pay for a newsletter that many see as the voice of SHA, not residents. “The perception of the residents is that the newspaper is controlled by SHA and a lot of people don’t read it; it ends up in the recycling bin,” Sereda says.

In the past two years, SHA has tried to encourage more resident participation in The Voice, says Virginia Felton, the agency’s communications director. Now she’s trying to find new funding or figure out another way to communicate with tenants after Sept. 30. After years of tenants simply signing over their money to SHA, Sereda says, “I’m really excited they stood up.”