Housing Crisis Pushing Up Homelessness

The National Low Income Housing Coalition, with 40 other policy groups, is urging Congress to enact a $45 billion proposal to create permanent housing with support services for the mentally ill and to provide housing vouchers or low-income housing to homeless families. According to The Nation, the plan calls for a minimum of 400,000 new rental vouchers as well as a $10 billion infusion over two years in the recently created National Housing Trust Fund---“a move that would jump-start construction of badly needed low-cost homes.”

The plan also urges expanded aid for foreclosure victims, $15.4 billion to upgrade and improve the energy efficiency of neglected public housing, and to devote $2 billion to homelessness prevention. “Taken together, these initiatives will help more than 800,000 vulnerable households and create more than 200,000 jobs,” Markee writes.

“Cleaning up the wreckage of three decades of failed federal housing policy will take more than one stimulus,” he concludes, as “these measures are just the beginning of what’s needed. But if change is the order of the day, dismantling the Reagan-Bush legacy of modern homelessness would be a promising way to start.” A-humanity.

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(Sherwood Ross formerly reported for the New York Herald-Tribune and the Chicago Daily News. He currently directs a public relations firm that serves colleges, non-profits, and publications. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com)

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