Weekly update from the National Housing Conference

Greetings!

Last week, I had the pleasure of experiencing Acadia National Park in Maine with my wife, Hayley, and our labradoodle, Annabelle. Sleeping in a tent under the stars is a privilege that many Americans like us enjoy. It’s something I love to do and the rest of my family loves that I love it. But thousands of other Americans sleep in a tent every day because they have no other place to live. There are a wide range of reasons why so many of our fellow Americans are homeless. In some cases, mental illness can make people more susceptible to factors that can lead to homelessness. For many others, job loss, the lack of affordable housing or bad luck and no savings force them onto the street. Some of them bounce back, pulling themselves up by their “bootstraps,” but you can’t pull yourselves up by your bootstraps if you don’t have boots. And without a job or an appropriate affordable housing unit, transitioning from homeless to housed is impossible for too many.

 

The full continuum of America’s affordable housing crisis extends from the two-earner couple of a nurse and teacher in Chicago who can’t find an apartment near a good school, or afford to buy a home of their own; to the retail worker who can’t afford a one bedroom apartment; to the extremely low-income family, who spends 70 percent of their income on rent; to the homeless mother and her children who fled their home because sleeping in a park or under an overpass was safer than staying home with an abusive partner. Affordable housing is a national crisis and should be a national priority.

Last week in Washington, D.C., an unusual thing happened. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators including Todd Young (R-Ind.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Angus King (I-Maine), along with Senators Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Doug Jones (D-Ala.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), introduced the “Task Force on the Impact of the Affordable Housing Crisis Act.” This bill seeks to better understand and respond to America’s affordable housing crisis by creating a bipartisan affordable housing task force. As Sen. King said, “the need to find affordable housing isn’t just about keeping a roof over your head – it’s about building a foundation for every other aspect of your life…. For someone without safe, decent and affordable housing, every other challenge becomes more difficult, whether it’s pursuing an education, taking care of your health, or seeking out new economic opportunities. This isn’t a partisan issue, or one that is limited to just large cities or small rural towns – it affects everyone and requires a strong bipartisan effort to identify how we can improve quality of life for people across the nation."

At NHC, we couldn’t agree more and strongly support this initiative. The fact is that we are not short on solutions, we are short on commitment and compromise. We look forward to working with Congress to pass this important legislation, and to working with the Task Force to help its work make a difference.

Sincerely,

David M. Dworkin

President and CEO