Good heavens, the housing crisis for the nation’s poorest families keeps getting worse.
Here’s the latest: In 2015, 8.3 million households had worst-case needs, up from 7.72 million in 2013 and approaching the record high of 8.48 million in 2011, according to the Worst Case Housing Needs report released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
These households are very low-income renters who don’t receive government housing assistance and who spend more than half of their income on rent, live in severely inadequate conditions, or both.
The grim news comes as lawmakers begin negotiating a fiscal 2018 budget for HUD and other agencies. Maybe the timing of the report is serendipitous, calling attention to the need for additional housing resources.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration laid out an extreme budget request that eliminates the popular Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and HOME programs. Fortunately, House and Senate committees firmly reject those drastic cuts in their budget proposals.
The White House also proposes cuts to other programs, including tenant-based rental assistance, which could mean 250,000 of the lowest-income people losing their housing vouchers, putting them at immediate risk of eviction and, in worst cases, homelessness, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
In July, we saw that 51 senators wouldn’t cross the line on a scaled-down proposal to repeal parts of Obamacare without much process or a replacement plan. The 49–51 vote on the “skinny repeal” dramatically defeated an effort to overhaul the Affordable Care Act that would have increased the number of uninsured people by an estimated 15 million.
It makes one wonder where the line is for housing. When does the housing crisis get too big to ignore? There are at least 8.3 million reasons for standing firm against HUD cuts and supporting the expansion of the low-income housing tax credit and other housing programs.
