INSIDE WASHINGTON/Bill seeks funds for affordable housing
City officials across the country are rallying behind federal legislation that would create a dedicated funding stream to help alleviate the nation’s affordable housing crunch. The National Affordable Housing Trust Fund Act of 2003 was introduced by Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in March and has attracted the tri-partisan support of 186 co-sponsors. The bill would “provide for the development, rehabilitation and preservation of decent, safe and affordable housing for low-income families.”
“An increasing number of working families, veterans, the mentally ill and the poor are living in their cars, in homeless shelters or simply out on the street,” Sanders says. “This crisis must be addressed.” A similar bill to Sanders’ is expected to be introduced in the Senate later this year. Efforts to pass a national housing trust fund in Congress failed last year.
Sanders’ legislation would use surplus Washington, D.C.-based Federal Housing Administration (FHA) funds to help build and rehabilitate affordable housing units as well as provide subsidized rental assistance for low-income workers. Currently, the FHA’s excess funds are returned to the Treasury, where they typically are spent in areas unrelated to housing. In the next seven years, the FHA’s profits are expected to be more than $34 billion, according to New York-based Deloitte & Touche.
Sanders offered the legislation at the same time that Congress is negotiating the 2004 budget and President Bush’s economic stimulus plan. City officials argue that establishing the housing trust fund would help jumpstart the economy by providing jobs and shelter for people. In fact, the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Community Change estimates that more than 180,000 jobs would be created if the federal government spent $5 billion to build affordable housing units.
“Economic development is a real key part of it,” says Columbia, S.C., Councilmember Anne Sinclair, the chair of the Washington, D.C.-based National League of Cities (NLC) Community & Economic Development Steering Committee. “It provides a stable housing base for our citizens, and it provides an opportunity to reclaim neighborhoods that have fallen into disrepair.”
Local officials already have established 280 individual housing trust funds that dedicate specific tax revenues to help build affordable housing units in their respective communities. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino estimates those local- and state-run trust funds collect and spend at least $750 million a year on affordable housing needs. But Menino and other city officials say that is not enough to address the country’s affordable housing crisis and are actively urging the federal government to establish a national housing trust fund.
“Establishing a national housing trust fund would renew the waning federal commitment to affordable housing, address critical housing needs, put people to work and provide a boost to an important sector of our economy,” says Menino, who also is president of the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM).
“We need to keep our housing money in our housing system,” says Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., a lead co-sponsor of the legislation. “The fund offers the freedom of knowing that our citizens will not tomorrow be on the street looking for shelter.”
More than 4,000 organizations and individuals have endorsed the creation of a dedicated national housing fund, according to the Washington, D.C.-based National Housing Trust Fund Campaign. The organizations supporting the fund range from NLC and USCM to the Baltimore-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Washington, D.C.-based United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The author is Washington correspondent for American City & County.
