POLITICS-US: Housing Fund Seen as Grassroots Victory

[nosmokes]

Nice to see a victory for the good guys now and then.
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original-ips

POLITICS-US: Housing Fund Seen as Grassroots Victory

By Matthew Cardinale and Jonathan Springston



WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (IPS) - Advocates are calling a new national trust fund to preserve, rehabilitate and build affordable housing, including public housing, a major grassroots victory and key step in addressing the needs of low-income people in the United States.

There are 9.0 million extremely low-income households in the United States and only 6.2 million homes renting at prices they can afford, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC). This is a gap of 2.8 million units for extremely poor households.

Some 37 million households spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent or mortgages, according to NLIHC data.

"We had the broader foreclosure crisis and housing crisis. I think that sort of awoke the larger affordable housing crisis to the rest of America, not just for the effect on extremely low-income households, but a broader sense throughout the country," said Greg White, a policy analyst for NLIHC.

The Trust Fund Campaign consisted of thousands of individuals and organisations at the local, statewide, and national levels. The NLIHC lobbied of members of Congress in Washington, while community-based groups, such as homeless shelters, homeless advocacy groups, and religious organisations, also created local campaigns calling on their respective members of Congress to act.

"They have been working on it since pretty much 2000," White said. "The coalition was founded to make sure the lowest income people weren't on the street and had a voice for federal housing assistance."

In recent years, housing authorities across the country have been demolishing thousands of units of public housing, citing a lack of federal funding for renovations. The availability of new funding could undermine the agencies' arguments that demolitions are justified.

"Housing generally as an issue was enjoying a boom for many years," White explained. "The fact there was an affordable housing crunch, I don't think it was on too many people's radars, but when the crisis started affecting other people, that's when other people started to pay attention to the problem."

In late July, the U.S. House of Representatives passed HR 3221, or The American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008. The Senate passed the resolution shortly thereafter, and Pres. George W. Bush, who initially expressed opposition, signed the legislation on Jul. 30.

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