• Housing Here and Now!
• New York City: Housing First!
• New York City: New Housing Marketplace
• Congress: Millenial Housing Commission
• Congress: National Housing Trust Fund Legislation

Housing Here and Now!
Organized four years later after Housing First!, Housing Here and Now came about in anticipation of the 2005 mayoral election. A citywide coalition of community organizing and housing groups, they have a platform of five demands of elected officials:

• Keep the Promise — use Battery Park City money to build and preserve affordable housing.
• Guarantee housing for low- and moderate-income people in neighborhoods being rezoned.
• Win back New York City’s right to determine our own rent laws
• Provide permanent housing for homeless people living with AIDS
• Support legislation to strengthen tenants rights to a healthy home through better inspections and tougher penalties.

New York City: Housing First!
Coalition Calls for $10 Billion Committment from City:

A broad range of New York City groups has joined together to form the Housing First! coalition to call upon the City of New York to committ to a 10 year capital investment of $1 billion per year to create 100,000 new housing units and preserve hundeds of thousands more. According to the group, the City currently spends less than half of what it did a decade ago to build and preserve affordable housing.

The coalition, whose motto is “Affordable Housing for All New Yorkers,” is a collaborative effort or non-profit and for-profit housing developers, business and financial institutions (such as JPMorganChase and Fannie Mae), advocates and community-based organizations, (including the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition and ACORN).

The platform statement of Housing First! addresses many aspects of New York’s affordable housing crisis, including the fact that more than a fourth of all renters pay more than half their income on rent. It also addresses the connection between the housing crisis and chronic health problems and quality education.

The $10 billion comprehensive solution to the crisis would build on a number of principles, including: programs that create not only housing but safe, sustainable mixed-income neighborhoods; a combination of rental, homeownership, co-op, and employer assisted housing developments through renovation and new construction with use of public and private investments; a balanced and targeted program to address the needs of very-low income through middle income families including supportive housing for the homeless; and a substanial committment of City Capital funds, as well as other common sense reforms.

For more information, or to join the coalition, visit the Housing First! website at www.housingfirst.net or email info@housingfirst.net.

New York City: The New Housing Markeplace

New York City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development under commissioner Shaun Donovan and Mayor Bloomberg has outlayed a plan to create and preserve affordable housing. To read about the New Housing Marketplace, visit HPD's website.

Congress: Millenial Housing Commission
(Excerpted from www.mhc.gov)
The United States Congress created the bi-partisan Millennial Housing Commission to help them fashion proposals to improve the housing opportunities in this country. The Commission issued its report to Congress in March 2002. It's mission was to identify, analyze, and develop recommendations that highlight the importance of housing, improve the housing delivery system, and provide affordable housing for the American people, including recommending possible legislative and regulatory initiatives.

In order to achieve this mission, the Commission should consider undertaking the following activities.

• Identify the role and importance of housing as it relates to:
  • the validity of neighborhoods and neighborhood services;
  • the economy, economic development, and jobs;
  • education, health care, crime, and safety policies; and
  • the interplay between state, local, and federal housing policies and actions.
• Analyze existing federal, state, and local housing programs, and private sector delivery systems, and:
  • provide better housing opportunities for families, neighborhoods, and communities;
  • find ways to increase the role of the private sector in providing affordable housing;
  • explore overlaps with other federal initiatives in the areas of tax policy, health care, education, and public safety;
  • examine the housing finance system;
  • explore the links between federal, state, and local housing mechanisms;
  • and review the importance and opportunities of evolving technologies.
• Develop specific recommendations including legislative and / or regulatory initiatives, especially focused at the federal level, but including linkages between federal activities and action at the state and local level.

Click here to read UNHP's comments to the Millenial Housing Commission in .doc format.

National/Congress: National Housing Trust Fund Legislation and Campaign
(Excerpted from www.nhtf.org)
The National Housing Trust Fund Campaign is working to establish a National Housing Trust Fund that would build and preserve 1.5 million units of rental housing for the lowest income families over the next 10 years.

The affordable housing crisis is affecting every part of the country. In the absence of place to call home, it is foolhardy to expect people to succeed as citizens. Yet in no jurisdiction in the country can a full-time minimum wage worker afford the fair market rent. On average, families across the country must earn $12.50 an hour—more than twice the minimum wage—to afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent.

The lack of housing in our communities also affects economic development—businesses simply will not locate in communities where their workers cannot live.

Trust funds are a proven way to build needed housing. More than 170 state and local housing trust funds have produced hundreds of thousands of units across the country. The time to pass a national housing trust fund is now.

The housing crisis in America is not intractable. We can and must do better. With hard work and commitment among all the sectors of the housing movement, together we can make the most of this moment in time and make real progress in solving the housing crisis. Please join the National Housing Trust Fund Campaign to make a National Housing Trust Fund a reality.

Read more at www.nhtf.org