Threatened cutback in rental assistance lousy
'family values'
The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
07/13/2004
Showdown time is nearing for a vote in
Congress, expected this fall, on a proposed cutback in rental
housing assistance that could hurt hundreds of local
low-income families with children, the disabled and the
elderly.
They stand to be the losers if Congress goes along with a
Bush Administration proposal to cut $1 billion in 2005
funding for the Housing Choice Voucher Program that emerged
from the former Section 8 housing program.
The Lorain County Metropolitan Housing Authority would suffer
an estimated reduction of nearly $2 million in rent subsidy
voucher funds under the plan. With less money to serve the
current population, either 327 families could lose their
rental assistance, or families could have to contribute more
than the current 30 percent of their income toward housing Ð
an estimated $721 more in rent money coming out of their own
pockets annually, according to an analysis done by the social
action commission of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland.
The cutbacks were proposed amid alarm that the rental
assistance program was growing excessively. But the growth
has been driven by Congress expanding the program to aid more
families and because of the growing gap between family
incomes and rental costs, notes the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops.
An essay by local Catholic Charities president J. Thomas
Mullen urges Congress to fully fund the rent voucher program
and to resist other proposed changes that would make
recipients pay more than 30 percent of their income and would
make such assistance a block grant, allowing assistance funds
to fall behind the pace of rental costs.
Rental assistance makes economic sense. Putting families up
in homeless shelters costs more than twice as much as
providing rental assistance, according to the Lorain County
Homeless Task Force.
Lorain County has seen tough times economically, and is
likely to lag behind the national economic upturn that seems
to be under way. This is no time for the federal government
to yank the rug from under the feet of 327 of this
community's most-vulnerable families. By 2009, that figure
would rise to 784 families.
The predicament facing Section 8 recipients in Lorain County
is a small piece of the overall damage potential. Six million
Americans across the nation could lose the rental assistance
that keeps a roof over their heads, or keeps them in a decent
neighborhood; they could be forced to ratchet down to living
in more-downtrodden neighborhoods if the cutbacks are
enacted.
''Family values'' is emerging as a presidential campaign
theme. We'd like to forcefully remind the candidates for the
White House, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S.
Senate that pushing people into homelessness or forcing them
into seedier, more-dangerous neighborhoods demonstrates lousy
''family values.''
©The Morning Journal 2004