Last Sunday’s New York Times contained an editorial stating “with nearly 3.3 million families with children living in “worst case” situations — spending more than half their incomes on housing or living in hazardous buildings — more must be done to create affordable housing, through rehabilitation or new construction.
For starters, that means finally putting money into the National Housing Trust Fund, which was created by Congress in 2008 but was never financed because of the recession. This should be an early order of business for the new Congress. ”
Unlike their editorial on the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program a few weeks ago, this round of words has a more nuance on that challenges of funding low income housing, stating “One of the problems with affordable housing projects generally is that they often segregate the poor. The trust fund would encourage healthy, mixed-income communities. For instance, a development of mainly market-rate apartments that set aside, say, 10 percent of the units for low-income families would receive a subsidy proportionate to that investment. In addition to creating housing for the poor within sound communities, the fund would stimulate construction of multifamily rental buildings at a time when they are greatly needed.”
Editorial Full Text is available here
