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Out of Reach

September 8, 1999

To the National Low Income Housing Coalition:

I appreciate your efforts to bring "Out of Reach" and its important  findings into the public eye. This report provides the type of invaluable  information and analysis that must inform the housing debate as Congress  considers important housing funding legislation in the weeks to come.
 
This report is the most recent in a series of studies that shows that  the economic surge that is reaching historic heights has had the unintended and  ironic effect of tightening housing markets and driving up rents, often much  faster than increases in wages.  As a result, we often see a widening  affordability gap among renters, even as homeownership rates reach historic levels.  Disturbingly, the number of apartments affordable to the poor,  including the working poor, actually declined significantly between 1993 and  1995.

Indeed, according to HUD, working families are experiencing the greatest increase in "worst case" housing needs.  These families, who pay half their incomes in rent or live in housing that is literally falling apart around them,  are on the desperate edge of homelessness.  One unforseen problem -- a sick child, spouse or parent, a bout of unemployment, a broken down automobile that causes them to miss work -- and that family can find itself on the streets.

The sad truth is that work is no longer a tenable solution to this kind  of desperate housing need, as your report so vividly demonstrates.  Even as we have restructured our whole social welfare system to demand work, we have failed to ensure that work pays enough to provide a decent standard of living for all Americans.  As more and more welfare recipients move off of public assistance and into work, many are finding the daily challenge of survival more difficult than ever.  The high cost and low availability of decent housing is a primary cause of this distress.

As "Out of Reach" points out, "nowhere in the United States -- in no state, metropolitan area, county, or New England town -- is the minimum wage adequate to afford the two bedroom FMR."  Last year, public housing legislation that I helped move through the Congress provided for about 90,000 new housing vouchers that would go to the very families with the greatest need.  Moreover, we authorized an additional 100,000 new vouchers for the next 2 years.  Even this, while a significant improvement over prior years, is small in comparison to the need.  According to HUD, 5.3 million families continue to suffer from worst case housing needs.
 
Yet, despite the authorized funding levels, the House Appropriations Committee recently moved to cut housing assistance by $2 billion compared to the President's request.  The Republican-passed budget calls for even deeper cuts in the Senate.  These cuts have human consequences. The proposed cuts would mean:

*       100,000 homeless people, including 35,000 children, being denied services including housing, job training, mental health counseling and drug treatment;
 
*       6,800 persons with HIV/AIDS would be lose housing assistance and the chance, often the lifesaving chance, to have a stable and safe home environment;
 
*       900 homes, housing 600 children, would not receive lead abatement assistance.  We know from the study "Not Safe At Home" by the Doc4Kids Project of the Boston Medical Center that lead continues to threaten the health of millions of children nationwide;
 
*       65,000 fewer families would get the assistance necessary to become homeowners; 1,800 elderly people would lose assistance; up to 20,000 jobs in inner cities would not be created; and 300,000 public housing units would start to develop increasingly severe physical problems.  All this at a time when the number of families waiting for public housing in Boston alone has grown by 17 percent in just one year.
 
We need increases in housing assistance immediately, because we need to ensure that working people, the elderly, and children all have a decent place to live.  I hope that this report will play a role in securing these increases, and I am looking forward to that fight in Congress.

Sincerely,
John Kerry
U.S. Senator
 

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