What would $6 billion in budget cuts mean for public housing?
Funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development helps reduce homelessness, fund infrastructure, and enhance community services, data suggest. But how would cuts to HUD’s budget affect the families and communities that use those services?
snip
For advocates, budget cuts are a way to trim the budget deficit and reorient government spending toward other priorities, such as national defense. Fair housing advocates, however, see the proposed cuts as the latest in a series of cost-reduction measures that have stretched the beleaguered agency beyond its capacity. They emphasize how valuable these programs are for families and communities, and suggest the importance of maintaining that value.
snip
Children are more likely to attend college, much less likely to become single parents, and enjoy higher salaries when they start work, Mr. Rice says. By some alternative census measures looking at the impact of in-kind benefits, he adds, federal rental assistance helps to lift 4.1 million people – including 1.4 million children – out of poverty each year.
But in an era of tight budgets and budget deficits, HUD has been underfunded “for a number of years,” says Robert Silverman, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Buffalo, N.Y., in a phone interview. Estimates suggest that just 1 in 4 eligible people are currently receiving HUD rental assistance because of funding limitations.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2017/0310/What-would-6-billion-in-budget-cuts-mean-for-public-housing
= new reply since forum marked as read
