A special preview edition of the publication was released last week in time for housing to be included as an issue in this fall’s political campaigns and so that its policy recommendations will be waiting for the new Congress and Administration.
Cisneros said that he hoped the book would serve as a guide for the White House in the transition period starting in January “on where housing should be.”
The panel’s recommendations focus on “a continuum” of housing issues, Cisneros said, starting with solving the problem of homelessness to meeting the needs of middle-class, move-up home buyers.
Colton noted that wiping out homelessness has been a priority of the Bush Administration. The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which has been charged with meeting this challenge, estimates that there are approximately 150,000 chronically homeless people in the country who need permanent supportive housing.
For the past several years, the panel reports, 30% of McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance funding has been set aside for supportive housing in the annual HUD appropriations bill. Making this funding permanent could provide up to 15,000 new units for the homeless annually over the next 10 years, the panel says.
Colton headed up a presidential commission under HUD Secretary Kemp that was assigned to tackle the issue of removing regulatory barriers to affordable housing, and several of the commission’s recommendations have been embraced by the bipartisan panel.
Calling housing “the most regulated industry in the U.S.,” Kemp said the panel wants to use funding and tax incentives, not penalties, to encourage communities to eliminate regulations that are cutting off substantial numbers of households from the economic and social benefits derived from affordably priced housing.
The panel proposes providing bonus funding within transportation programs and the HOME and Community Development Block Grant programs to states whose land-use planning required localities to consider current and future workforce housing and transportation needs. All of these plans should be required to include a barrier-removal strategy.
At the local level, the panel said there are several approaches to facilitate barrier removal, including modifying zoning codes to increase densities and streamlining the building approval process.
The panel also recommended charging HUD with leading an interagency barrier-removal initiative that would identify federal regulations that add directly or indirectly to housing costs and convening a public-private initiative to develop model state-enabling legislation and model local codes, and promote the adoptions of those codes at the state and local levels.
To confront the Not-in-My-Backyard (NIMBY) syndrome head-on, Kemp said that the government needed to take a harder look at the Endangered Species Act, wetlands regulations and other barriers to ensure that they don’t take an unnecessary toll on housing at the same time as they continue to provide the environmental safeguards for which they were established.
Among the panel’s other recommendations:
- Enacting a flexible federal homeownership tax credit for low-income borrowers. The tax credit would be allocated to and administered by the states.
- Providing tax incentives to encourage employers to provide housing assistance
- Addressing the problem of predatory lending while preserving housing finance opportunities for sub-prime borrowers
- Redefining the affordable housing mission of the government-sponsored enterprises
Retsinas said that the panel also supports vigorous enforcement of the nation’s fair housing laws and instituting university-based programs to train professionals in housing and community development.
The panel also recommended continued funding for HOPE VI, which is needed to demolish or replace at least 47,000 distressed public housing units.
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