Affordable housing advocates rallied outside Portland's City Hall May 25 raising awareness about the dearth of affordable housing across the state.
The event was the third annual Housing Justice Day and featured Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams, Community Alliance of Tenants leaders Mary Latourette and Steve Weiss, community food security activist Dena Spear and Habitat for Humanity homeowner JD Spyker speaking out against proposed federal housing policy that would cut essential programs that serve working families, veterans, seniors and people with disabilities.
The event is organized by the Affordable Housing NOW! coalition, Community Alliance of Tenants, Community Development Network, Elders in Action, Independent Living Resources, Mental Health Association of Oregon, NW Pilot Project and the Portland Habilitation Center.
According to the American Community Survey, low incomes and high housing costs make Oregon the second-least-affordable state for renters in the nation. One in four Oregon renters pays more than half their total income in rent each month. Federal housing programs have historically provided needed relief to low-income working families and people on fixed incomes.
In the past four years the Congress and the president have made significant cut to the Section 8 housing assistance program, slashed the highly successful Community Development Block Grant and HOME programs, restructured U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rules for housing authorities to bait them into no longer serving the most economically vulnerable, and reduced funds to public housing programs serving the lowest income seniors and people with disabilities.
At the same time, the Bush administration is proposing cuts to existing housing programs, in the counties of Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington, there are nearly 18,000 income qualified households on waitlists of at least three years for the Section 8 housing assistance program.
Planned reductions in the 2007 budget would including a 20 percent cut to the Community Development Block Grant which helps fund housing for low-income people; a proposed 26 percent cut to the Section 202 housing program for the elderly; and a cut of 50 percent to the Section 811 program for people with disabilities.
"Why is the Bush administration cutting housing programs for the most vulnerable people in the country? Because it's the most convenient way for them to fund the president's tax cuts for his rich friends and to bankroll an increasingly unpopular war" said Steve Weiss, a founding board member of the Community Alliance of Tenants. "Doing this sort of thing at the expense of the poor is a hallmark of this administration."
Affordable Housing NOW! is a movement of affordable housing advocates and tenants whose goals are to secure new resources for affordable housing for the Portland Metro area by building a movement large enough to make funding for affordable housing for low-income people a political priority in the Metro area.