The new budget proposal shifts the responsibility of funding affordable housing from the federal government to local governments and the private sector Home prices and rents are regularly hitting new all-time highs. The share of Americans who spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing is rising. Private sector home builders are catering to the high-end market, not low-income families.
The result is an affordable housing shortage that?s quickly becoming a crisis, and yet instead of increasing investment in the federal programs that can give low-income families housing stability, President Trump?s budget proposal unveiled Monday guts them at time when they?re needed most.
?We?re in the worst affordable housing crisis in generations,? said Sue Popkin, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. ?We already have a situation where only one in five households eligible for housing assistance gets it. This is only going to make that worse.? Trump?s budget request for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) eliminates two block grant programs in their entirety that state and local governments use to fund affordable housing and infrastructure projects. The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program allocates $3 billion annual to such projects, while the HOME Investment Partnerships program gives communities a little less than $1 billion annually.
The administration?s rationale for cutting these programs is that they?ve ?failed to demonstrate...