File this under: "Stuff I Like" - Obama's Budget and Affordable Housing

[Political Heretic]

From http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3123|Center on Budget and Policy Priorities>

Obama Budget Includes Major Plan to Preserve Needed Affordable Housing
Proposal Would Provide More Adequate and Sustainable Funding, Expand Housing Choices for Low-Income Families

The President’s $350 million Transforming Rental Assistance (TRA) initiative, outlined in his fiscal 2011 budget, would enable local housing agencies and private owners to more easily preserve affordable housing, in part by giving them more adequate and sustainable funding to operate it. As a result, TRA would help preserve an estimated 300,000 affordable apartments (both publicly and privately owned) in its first year and more in later years. Most of these apartments house low-income elderly people and people with disabilities, and without TRA many of these units would eventually become uninhabitable or be lost as affordable housing in other ways.

In addition, TRA would make other improvements to rental assistance programs (including public housing) that would give families with housing subsidies the choice to rent housing in a wider range of neighborhoods, which would allow them better access to employment or educational opportunities. TRA also would streamline administration of these programs.

Public housing preservation: Of the 300,000 apartments that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimates TRA would reach during its first year, as many as 280,000 would be in public housing, which now assists 1.2 million units. The federal government has consistently provided less funding for public housing than agencies need to operate and occasionally renovate it. As a result, more than 165,000 public housing units have been demolished or otherwise removed from the available stock in the last 15 years, and the remaining units have a backlog of unmet renovation needs of at least $20 billion (and possibly considerably more).

To address this problem, TRA would give agencies the option to convert public housing units to a new type of long-term housing subsidy. That would help preserve the units for the long term in two main ways:
--Sustainable funding levels. Of the $350 million that the President has requested for TRA, $290 million would boost subsidies for underfunded public housing developments to a level that is adequate to sustain them in good condition over time.
--Greater ability to leverage private investment. The rules governing the new subsidies would allow housing agencies to more easily borrow private funds to perform needed renovations. HUD estimates that TRA would enable agencies to obtain $7.5 billion in private financing.

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I figure, since I'm such a strong critic on many fronts, I need to point out the things I stand behind. This serves as a not enough, but better than zero kind of policy that I support even though its not perfect.

[blondeatlast]

1. Nice--a good way to help americans AND the economy.

I like. k/r

[Political Heretic]

2. Nobody likes my posts that aren't contrarian :P