Fighting Cuts to HUD

During his State of the Union Address on January 25th, President Obama stated that the federal budget should not be balanced on the backs of the nation's poorest, most vulnerable citizens.

But Congress doesn't seem to be heeding his advice.

One of the final acts of the 111th Congress was the issuance of a continuing resolution which mandated that all departments of the federal government be funded at their 2010 levels until March 4th, 2011. Now the 112th Congress has ordered the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to reduce all non-defense discretionary budgets to their 2008 levels, effective March 4th. If enacted, this could result in the loss of 750,000 units of HUD housing nationwide.

Tenant organizations nationwide are planning to go to the local offices of their congresspeople to voice their concerns about the loss of affordable housing, Section 8 vouchers and public housing. They hope that the stories of poor, elderly and handicapped people who will become severely rent-burdened (paying at least 50% of their income in rent) or homeless will get through to the Democrat-controlled Senate and the Republican-controlled House of representatives, but they don't expect to make much headway in the House. Locally, Washington, DC stands to lose at least 5,000 of its 11,000 HUD vouchers, adding drastically to the 7,000-person homeless population in this city of 600,000.

HUD was faced with budget cuts in the mid-1990's, resulting in the loss of 150,000 units of housing. With the department having only regained that housing stock in recent years, they now stand to lose five times that amount.

In 2006, Washington, DC used money from its HUD-issued Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) to fund a local housing program that is similar to Section 8 in order to keep people housed who would have otherwise been made homeless due to cuts in federal funding. Other cities have also used discretionary federal funds as well as local funds to save Section 8 vouchers and public housing stock. However, local governments seem to be less capable of doing that in these tough economic times.

HUD can mitigate this situation in several different ways. They can reduce the number of vouchers. Or they can reduce value of vouchers, leaving tenants to pay a higher percentage of their income toward rent. Another route is simply not to re-issue vouchers of families that exit the program - to take that voucher out of circulation rather than giving it to another family in need. They can also seek Federal Housing assistance (FHA) funding. Depending on how HUD decides to deal with this crisis, people could lose their housing immediately or evictions might start as late as June.

There is reason to believe that HUD favors the idea of allowing evictions to begin immediately, and there is an uncanny wisdom in that decision. Congress has a tendency to cut funding to social programs as a way of forcing those programs to shift monies within their departmental budgets in order to make ends meet.

All too often, those programs figure out how to make do with their decreased budgets. This enables Congress to justify funding these departments at the lower levels the following fiscal year, leaving more tax dollars to go toward war and world domination. The only way for HUD to reverse this logic is by failing to effectively navigate this round of budget cuts. If large numbers of people were to become homeless suddenly, that would create a crisis that would almost force Congress to replenish HUD funding.

We must stand up and speak out.

While the administration of HUD might be doing all that they can to save public housing, they still need us to raise our voices and demand that Congress not balance the budget on the backs of the poorest, most vulnerable citizens. So, join a protest near you and sign this petition.

Photo: Andrew Ciscel