News Round-Up: No Time for Cuts

The number of renters grows, as does the cost of housing, but Congress may be on the verge of making solutions even more scarce.

Rental housing is a topic of the D.C. city council race, as candidates consider how to ensure renters, who are the majority in the District, can afford housing. Rent control and workforce-affordable housing are on the table.

Apartment Therapy discusses the impact of high-cost housing even on those with good educations and more-than-full-time work. San Francisco may be a great place to have a career, but it’s also the most expensive city to rent in the U.S., according to this year’s Out of Reach.

A report from Knox County, Illinois shows us what’s happening at the opposite end of the income spectrum. The average renter there only ears about half of what it takes to afford a two-bedroom apartment there. The article notes that poverty was already on the rise in the county before the Great Recession, and now 20% of the population lives in poverty.

HUD and USDA affordable housing programs are part of the federal government’s strategy to ensure all Americans have access to safe, decent affordable housing. Affordable Housing Finance reports, however, that if Congress does not act to prevent sequestration from occurring, hundreds of thousands of low income families and individuals will find themselves without the support they need to put a roof overhead.

News Round-Up: Past, Present, Future

This week’s news round-up shows the impact of present-day policy on the future of housing, and of our country.

Illinois Public Media tells the story of the Danville, Illinois public housing stock. Under scrutiny by HUD for its fair housing practices, the city is attempting to move forward with a plan to demolish a significant portion of its public housing.

Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) recently introduced legislation, endorsed by NLIHC, to catch America up to the past by increasing the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour. In the segment on her program dedicated to this subject, Melissa Harris-Perry notes that in no state does the minimum wage allow a household to afford a decent apartment.

A Conversation on Federal Advocacy

This is a cross-post from the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance blog. Many thanks to our state partner in Washington for inviting Sheila Crowley to speak, and for allowing us to publish this post!

On May 31, the Housing Alliance welcomed Nan Roman, President and CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, and Sheila Crowley, President and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, who joined us from D.C. for an engaging conversation around affordable housing and homelessness issues and the broader legislative and political environment at the national level.

Probably to no one’s surprise, budget issues and the upcoming elections dominated much of the conversation. The presidential elections, as well as what may happen with the House and the Senate, will dictate much of what happens for the next 2-4 years. In addition to the elections, at the end of the year we will see the expiration of a very costly tax breaks for the very wealthy and the expiration of other controversial tax related matters; another debate on renewing the debt ceiling; and also the possibility of $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts as part of the Budget Control Act. All of these critical and very controversial issues will be left in the hands of the post-election, lame-duck Congress. With so much left on the table for the last minute, the bottom line is that, right now, we really don’t know what is going to happen at the end of the year.

Nan and Shelia shared that the atmosphere in D.C. is even more polarized than normal and that this polarization is making it nearly impossible to get anything done.  But the good news about having the do-nothing Congress that we have right now is that the really, really bad stuff that has been proposed will also have a very hard time getting through. Because of this, Congress and the Administration most likely won’t try anything that requires legislation until after the elections are decided. However, the appropriations bills have to move forward. Nan Roman said that in terms of advocacy, the appropriations bills are where we should be targeting our efforts.

The budget proposals we’ve seen could have been much worse, Sheila Crowley pointed out, and in some ways, are much better than expected. Both Sheila and Nan took pains to point out that this is largely thanks to Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), who has used her position Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development — as well as her position on the budget supercommittee — to fight for funding for affordable housing and homelessness.

Nan Roman said that the housing community has been hearing that upcoming budget proposals will “protect the vulnerable,” but we haven’t seen details about what that will actually entail. The job for us as affordable housing and homelessness advocates, Nan said, is to make the case that it is “penny-wise and pound-foolish” to not take care of the needy while working to ensure that enough funding is provided for critical safety net services. She suggested that we can do this by marrying the stories we hear from people in our communities with a strong, data-driven case for our programs, and by linking housing outcomes to other outcomes we care about such as health care, mental health, veterans’ homelessness, and education.

Nan shared that she sees a lot of energy and political will on both sides of the aisle to address homelessness, especially for veterans. Domestic violence and its links to housing policy, as well as youth homelessness, are both areas that are starting to receive additional attention and are places where our stories and advocacy can achieve real results.

In the meantime, both Nan and Shelia agreed that our top priorities should be advocating around the appropriations bills to ensure that we meet the President’s mark on HUD Homeless Assistance, VASH, USDA Rural Housing Programs, and also to ensure that any tax bill that ends up moving forward includes $1 billion for the National Housing Trust Fund.

This is an interesting time for advocates, and we definitely have our work cut out for us. We at the Housing Alliance can’t thank Nan and Sheila enough for joining us, and for the candid conversation about the challenges and opportunities that are in store for homelessness and affordable housing advocates.

News Round-Up: Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s recent off-mic remark that he might eliminate HUD if elected president sparked much speculation in the news about what would happen if that agency were to disappear. Advocates agree that for the 2.5 million people helped by HUD-administered housing aid, HUD has a very meaningful impact.

Meanwhile, a profile of new NLIHC board member Emma “Pinky” Clifford shows the great need for decent, affordable housing in rural America and on tribal lands.

Of about 3,000 homes in Shannon County on the reservation in 2010, nearly 400 did not have full plumbing, and 330 did not have full kitchens, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. More than half of the homes — 1,875 — used some form of bottled gas for heat, and only 681 homes were connected to electric or utility gas heat. Most of the homes were worth about $18,600, according to the Census Bureau, and 54 percent of Shannon County residents lived below the poverty level.

Even when the need is so great, and the obstacles to meeting it can be so challenging, Pinky says she remains undaunted. “‘I love housing,’ she said. ‘It’s hard work, but when you see people in homes, and they’re in a safe and affordable home … it’s worth it.’”

It’s No Time to Cut Housing

An editorial in today’s New York Times chides lawmakers for considering cuts to HUD programs and asks Congress to “shor[e] up the precious few federal programs that provide affordable housing for the poor, the elderly and the disabled” in this time of record homelessness and continuing economic instability.

The Times outlines the challenges facing public housing and other HUD programs: a $25 billion backlog in repair that has been building since the 1990s; the House funding proposal for HUD which would make deep cuts to vouchers and other programs; and the funding bill debated by the Senate last week which would make even deeper cuts to programs serving extremely low income households.

Cuts to Tenant Based Rental Assistance (vouchers) and Project Based Rental Assistance are of particular concern. As we reported in Memo to Members, the Senate bill “would not provide sufficient funding to renew all vouchers in use in the Tenant Based Rental Assistance program,” and “would also cut TBRA Administrative Fee to $1.4 billion, which is $250 million lower than the President’s request. The National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials reports cuts in Administrative Fees will force PHAs to reduce staff, which could result in slower voucher processing, decreasing the number of vouchers in use and, ultimately, a loss of vouchers.”

Project Based Rental Assistance would fare no better, with insufficient funding provided by the Senate bill. A too-low level of funding means “HUD would either have to fund some contracts and not others, or would have to provide short-term contracts instead of full-year contracts. Providing short-term contracts diminishes participating property owners’ confidence in the program and encourages contract opt-outs.”

Cuts to HUD programs of the magnitude proposed would have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable individuals and families in our community. In the long term, continued cuts of this nature would cripple the decades of investment our nation has made in ensuring our lowest income neighbors have access to safe, decent, affordable housing. We must let our Members of Congress know that this is no time to abandon those in the greatest need.

National Housing Trust Fund: How It Works

We talk a lot about the National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF) on this blog, but don’t always give you the nitty gritty details of the program. Today’s post delves into those details with an excerpt from an article on the NHTF from the Advocates’ Guide.

The purpose of the National Housing Trust Fund is to increase and preserve the supply of rental housing for extremely low and very low income families, including homeless families, and to increase home ownership for extremely low and very low income families.

The NHTF is a permanent program with dedicated sources of funding not subject to the annual appropriations process. Funding sources under consideration will not compete with annual HUD appropriations. Some of the NHTF’s most important features are:

• At least 75% of the funds for rental housing must benefit extremely low income (ELI) households (those with incomes below 30% of area median income, or AMI), or households with incomes below the federal poverty level.
• All funds must benefit very low income (VLI) households (those with incomes below 50% of AMI).
• At least 90% of the funds must be used for the production, preservation, rehabilitation, or operation of rental housing.
• Up to 10% can be used to produce, preserve, or rehabilitate housing for first-time homebuyers, or to provide them with down payment, closing cost, or interest rate buy-down assistance.
• No more than 10% of a state’s annual grant may be used for overall administration and planning of the program.

The NHTF is a block grant to states. The amount that each state will receive is based on a statutory formula containing factors reflecting the number of ELI and VLI renter households with severe cost burden (paying more than 50% of their income for rent) as well as the shortage of rental properties affordable and available to ELI and VLI households, with priority for ELI households. No state or the District of Columbia can receive less than $3 million.

A proposed allocation formula mirroring the statutory factors was published in the Federal Register on December 4, 2009 and included in proposed implementation regulations on October 29, 2010. NLIHC has calculated the percentage of an allocation of $1 billion that might be distributed to each state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the other territories. A chart with these amounts is available here.

States must designate an agency (such as a housing finance agency, housing and community development entity, tribal designated housing entity, or any other qualified agency) to administer the NHTF grants. Each state must prepare an annual Allocation Plan following basic public participation requirements, which include:

• Notifying the public that an Allocation Plan will be drafted.
• Providing the public an opportunity to make comments about the plan.
• Considering public comments.
• Making the completed Allocation Plan available to the public.

The Allocation Plan must indicate how the state will distribute NHTF resources based on its priority housing needs. It must also indicate how the state will select applications for NHTF projects by giving priority for funding based on six factors:

• Geographic diversity.
• The applicant’s ability to obligate NHTF dollars and undertake funded activities in a timely manner.
• The extent to which rents will be affordable in the proposed project, especially for ELI households.
• The length of time rents will remain affordable in the proposed project.
• The use of other funding sources in the proposed project.
• The merits of an applicant’s proposed activity.

Eligible recipients of grants from states are organizations and agencies (nonprofit and for-profit) that demonstrate:

• The experience and capacity to produce the kind of housing called for by the program.
• The financial capacity to undertake the eligible activity.
• Familiarity with federal, state, and local housing programs.
• Funds must be committed within two years; uncommitted funds will be reallocated to other states.

All assisted projects must comply with laws relating to tenant protections and tenant rights to participate in decision making regarding their residences. The NHTF program must comply with the overarching laws pertaining to fair housing and to accessibility to federally assisted housing, including Section 504 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

NHTF funds cannot be used for political activities, lobbying, counseling, traveling, project administrative expenses, or endorsements of a particular candidate or party.

The statute requires each state to submit an annual report to HUD that describes the activities assisted with NHTF money and that demonstrates compliance with the state’s Allocation Plan. This report must be available to the public. States must ensure that recipients submit periodic financial and project reports, and conform to audit and record retention requirements.

Want to learn more about the NHTF? Check out the full article on the program in the 2011 Advocates’ Guide to Housing and Community Development Policy, page 6, or visit the NHTF Campaign website.