Mr. Boden is dead on here, but he's left out one important component of affordable housing; assistance in the form of vouchers or exemptions to those who have zero income that helps pay for the "affordable" housing unit. The fact is, it doesn't matter how "affordable" a home is, if one has no income, it's unaffordable at any cost.
Now before some of you roll your eyes and tell me you're not going to pay for housing for drunks, bums, vagrants and any other slur used to describe so many of the chronically homeless in our country, let me put forth that you're already paying, and paying dearly, my friend.
The cost of homelessness is incredibly expensive and it is clear that here in Nashville alone, for what we spend on chronically homeless individuals each year we could put them into the most expensive hotel in downtown Nashville, feed them three hot meals a day from any restaurant within walking distance, and still have a substantial cost saving by the end of the year.
It's getting over the "entitlement" mentality that I suspect is the hard part for many; when I mentioned this to my lovely better half, the first thing she said was "and how do you think those of us who go to work every day to support ourselves will feel about the fact that folks who don't work at all get more benefits than we do? And second, what's to stop the rest of us from saying 'to hell with work' and simply put ourselves on the dole as well?"
Both good points, indeed, but hardly realistic, since those of us with real poverty experience - and I mean LIVED experience, can tell you that being poor sucks, whether you've got a roof over your head or not. Any of us who've made a few bucks and enjoyed some of the finer things life has to offer, and here I'm simply talking about being able to get into a car and drive somewhere versus having to walk or ride the bus, or being able to stop in buy a good meal when we feel like it, go to the show, take a vacation, you know, the simple pleasures of the middle classes, will never give those things up simply to obtain "free" housing. Ain't gonna happen, nohow, noway.
My dear friend Clifton Harris often states that there's plenty of housing available in Nashville, what's not available is the money needed to rent it. He's right on point there, and that's my point as well; affordable housing will sit just as vacant as a McMansion and just as much out of reach of those who have no income.
Need for affordable housing greater than ever
Paul Boden
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." - Barack Obama (Feb. 5, 2008)
During President Barack Obama's first year in office, we learned that change could come very quickly when a financial crisis was imminent, but what about the tens of millions in human crisis? Our change is still rattling in the bottom of our cups.
Almost 40 million Americans live below the poverty line - 43 percent of them in deep poverty. Homelessness increased 12 percent from 2007 to 2008 in cities across the country. More people are being pushed into the street. If ever this country has seen a need for change, it's now.
Affordable housing is the only solution to ending homelessness. After years of community organizing by hundreds of groups nationally, we have seen some success when legislation creating the National Housing Trust Fund passed in 2008. The House has already included funding for $1 billion in a jobs bill passed in December, but the Senate now needs to follow suit. With that money, housing developers could produce tens of thousands of new affordable housing units and jobs.
Instead of recognizing the true cause of homelessness - the absence of affordable homes for very poor people - the conventional wisdom continues to portray homelessness as a problem of individuals: their dysfunction, laziness, mental illness or substance abuse. This myth ignores the reality of families doubled-up or living in a hotel, the working poor who can't afford a full month's rent, seniors who lost their housing due to gentrification, which reduced the supply of affordable housing.
Today , hundreds of organizations and thousands of concerned people up and down the West Coast are converging in San Francisco to evaluate our gains and our losses, and to organize for what must happen next. As a start, President Obama needs to provide significantly increased HUD funding in the federal budget.
Join us as we celebrate the one-year anniversary of the election of Barack Obama and become part of the change we voted for!
Paul Boden is the director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project in San Francisco.
