By John Leschak
According to The Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. up to 3.5 million people, including 1.35 million children, experience homelessness each year. On any given night, there are approximately 38,000 people homeless in New York, according to the Coalition for the Homeless.
Much of this homelessness can be attributed to the process of gentrification – the transformation of working-class neighborhoods to serve the needs of upper-class people. An example of gentrification is the conversion of affordable housing into luxury housing. The conversion raises the cost of living, often resulting in the displacement of the low-income people who previously lived there.
Sometimes poor people manage in gentrifying neighborhoods. However, most of those who remain are only able to by virtue of government support, like federal housing vouchers, also known as Section 8 housing. The voucher program contained in Section 8 of the U.S. Housing Act of 1937 was established “for the purpose of aiding lower income families in obtaining a decent place to live and of promoting economically mixed housing.”
Unfortunately, since the 1990s, thousands of Section 8 housing units have been converted to open market or unsubsidized units. The loss of rent-stabilized units is part of the process of gentrification. This year, even more rent-controlled units will be eliminated due to a $2 billion budget shortfall at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In the 2008 federal budget, the Bush administration requested only $6.1 billion to operate project-based Section 8 this year, but an estimated $8.1 billion is needed to keep all current Section 8 projects funded.
Public housing is also being threatened right now in Louisiana. Last December the New Orleans Town Council voted 7 to 0 to demolish 4,500 government supported apartment units. As Louisiana civil rights attorney Bill Quigley explains: “HUD is spending $762 million in taxpayer funds to tear down over 4600 public housing subsidized apartments and replace them with 744 similarly subsidized units – an 82 percent reduction. HUD plans to build an additional 1000 market rate and tax credit units – which will still result in a net loss of 2,700 apartments to New Orleans – the remaining new apartments will cost an average of over $400,000 each. Affordable housing is at a critical point along the Gulf Coast. Over 50,000 families still living in tiny FEMA trailers.”
In New Orleans, there are also an estimated 12,000 homeless people. In other words, one in 25 New Orleans residents is homeless. The demolition of public housing and its replacement with expensive private housing is gentrification at its sickest extreme!
Some people think that subsidized housing is unnecessary because the market will provide decent, affordable housing for everyone, and that government housing subsidies go mostly to “undeserving” low-income renters in urban areas. But these beliefs are myths.
In fact, the market, without regulation, will increase poverty because incomes are not keeping up with the rising costs of renting or purchasing decent housing. Furthermore, according to the Washington, D.C. National Low-Income Housing Coalition, most government housing subsidies do not go to poor people. Instead, the majority of federal subsidies for homeownership goes to middle- and upper-income households in the form of homeownership-related tax deductions. There is no sound reason for demanding the demolition of public housing in the midst of such a severe housing shortage.
What is happening in New Orleans is not just a local problem because housing options are scarce, unaffordable and of substandard quality all over the country. Homeownership is becoming unobtainable for millions of middle- and low-income people, including University graduates. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the recent decline of the housing market does not mitigate these concerns either because the costs of renting have consistently exceeded inflation for several years, even when the economy went into a recession.
Decent housing should be available to all hard-working Americans. Yet, as a result of gentrification, there is a severe shortage of affordable houses. To combat this shortage the U.S. Senate should pass Senate Bill 2523, the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund Act. This act would create a Housing Trust Fund with ongoing, permanent, dedicated and sufficient sources of revenue to build, rehabilitate and preserve 1.5 million units of housing for low income families over the next 10 years.
John Leschak is a first-year law student. You may e-mail him at [email protected].