Keeping the roof over low income heads

Chairman Barnett “Barney” Frank (D-N.J.) emphasized the importance of affordable housing preservation and protection of low income tenants to curb the rising number of homeless people in America at a hearing held before the House Financial Services Committee.

According to Representative Al Green (D-Tex.), a quarter of all homeless people are veterans. Green said that the Section 8 Rental Voucher Program which seeks to increase affordable housing choices for low income families by letting them choose privately owned rental housing did not meet the needs of the people. He said that authorities would suspend the housing waiting list such that people who urgently needed housing would not have empirical records of how long they had been without housing. Green said that one-for-one replacement was important especially in places like New Orleans and Louisiana.

Witness Shaun Donovan, commissioner of the City of New York Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said that America now faces the problem of housing availability. Donovan called for the commitment of the federal government. He also mentioned that around 35,000 housing units were nationally covered by Rental Assistance Payment (RAP) and Rent Supplement programs but when those contracts expire in the next ten years, that significant number of affordable housing units would be lost.