Faith leaders call for affordable
housing
By TERESA MALCOLM
NCR Staff
As Congress considered cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban
Development, more than 300 religious leaders and faith-based organizations sent
an open letter to President Clinton, calling attention to the critical need for
affordable housing funding.
We have become a nation of those who have homes and those
who do not, the Sept. 9 letter said. The latter group has grown
ominously in recent years. Our nations children and their families are
suffering the most from this growing tragedy.
Divine Providence Sr. Bernie Galvin, director of Religious Witness
With Homeless People, said, Churches and faith organizations have
historically provided shelter and services for those in need, but we cant
do it alone. Too many families today are having to choose between paying for
rent and food. Were urging the federal government to step up to the
plate.
Religious Witness With Homeless People and Housing America, both
based in San Francisco, coordinated the letter to Clinton as part of a larger
campaign to mobilize interfaith support for affordable housing. Among their
goals are to increase the number of Section 8 vouchers by 200,000 and to secure
$100 million to preserve the nations existing affordable housing.
The income of working people is not keeping pace with the
cost of living, and the supply of housing is not keeping up with demand,
the religious leaders said. As the demand for affordable family housing
steadily grows, the supply of such housing has fallen by nearly 1.5 million
units during the past two years.
The letter said the federal government has drastically reduced the
availability of Section 8 housing vouchers. The government provided an average
of 230,000 new Section 8 vouchers annually from 1978-84, and 126,000 from
1985-95. However, the letter said, it provided no new Section 8 vouchers until
1998, when it added only 90,000.
Among the signatories to the letter were the National Conference
of Catholic Bishops; the Leadership Conference of Women Religious; the Catholic
Conference of Major Superiors of Mens Institutes; the American Jewish
Conference; the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA; and the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Seventy-eight individual bishops
representing Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran and Methodist churches also signed
the letter. Other faith groups represented included Baptists, Unitarians,
Buddhists, Presbyterians and Quakers.
All of our traditions insist on the spiritual imperative
that every human being has a sacred right to decent housing, the
religious leaders wrote.
The letter was released Sept. 9, as Congress was set to vote on
the budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The bill
included a $1.6 billion reduction to the HUD budget.
HUD released a report Aug. 26 that said the proposed budget cuts
would have a devastating impact on poor communities. According to HUD secretary
Andrew Cuomo, the cuts would deprive 97,000 people of jobs, 156,000
families of affordable housing, and 16,000 families and individuals who are
homeless or have AIDS of vital housing assistance.
National Catholic Reporter, September 17,
1999
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