Housing Comes First

Don't Look To H.U. D. For Leadership On Housing Issues

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, an article by Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution points out the obvious for everyone working on housing issues--innovative programs and policies are not coming out of H.U.D. Mr. Katz was the Chief of Staff for HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros in the early 1990's.

It's not as if housing isn't a serious issue. According to the nonprofit Center for Housing Policy, more than 14 million households in the country—one out of every eight—now pay more than 50 percent of their income for rent or mortgage payments and/or live in physically dilapidated housing.

Leadership on housing issues is largely being done by other agencies in D.C. and on local and state levels by both governmental agencies and community activists. Katz points out that six times the number of families get the Earned Income Tax Credit from the Treasury Department than there are families getting a HUD housing voucher. He also describes the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (also a Treasury program) as "the principal driver of subsidized rental housing production."

As for more local programs: "states, cities and counties, for example, are experimenting with a range of housing innovations including Housing Trust Funds, progressive zoning efforts and regulatory reforms that promote infill and density. Business and university leaders in places like Philadelphia, Long Island and Chicago are implementing new employer-assisted housing efforts to woo new employees and reward existing ones."

Katz longs for an administration and a Congress that cared enough about housing to provide leadership on the issue. All the programs he mentions are important, but no one is doing the kind of systematic planning that would pull all these efforts together and put a real dent in the problems with America's housing.

posted by Phil @ 11:11 AM