The Spring 2013 issue of Tenant Talk, a publication of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, contains a moving essay by Gloria More about organizing her fellow tenants of the Eastwood Terrace, a property in Nacogdoches, Texas: The view outside my window painted a dismal scene. I closed my eyes and tried to picture the […]
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Westchester NY county executive agrees to source of income protection under fair housing settlement – ProPublica
April 25, 2013 
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Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino submitted legislation today to ban discrimination against people who pay their rent with government assistance, a day after the U.S. Department of Justice threatened to haul the county into court over the issue. In a letter to the county’s Board of Legislators, Astorino wrote, “In light of all of the […]
Read more HUD closing Dallas and Lubbock field offices to cut costs
April 25, 2013 0 Comments
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Wednesday announced a series of restructuring and systemic changes within its Office of Multifamily Housing Programs and the Office of Field Policy and Management (FPM). The changes, which include consolidating Multifamily hubs nationwide and closing 16 smaller offices, affect approximately 900 of the Departments’ 9,000 employees. HUD […]
Read more We’re proud to be a Texas partner of the National Low Income Housing Coalition
April 21, 2013 0 Comments
The National Low Income Housing Coalition is dedicated solely to achieving socially just public policy that assures people with the lowest incomes in the United States have affordable and decent homes. Get involved and join today
Read more Fair Housing Act is 45 years old today. LBJ: “We have come some of the way, not near all of it. There is much yet to do.”
April 11, 2013 1 Comment
The words in the headline are President Johnson’s on April 11, 1968 as he signed the Fair Housing Act. They remain true today, 45 years later, with regard to the state of fair housing in the United States. President Lyndon Johnson made the following remarks as he signed the Fair Housing Act, less than one […]
Read more Franklin the Fair Housing Fox… seriously?
April 7, 2013 2 Comments
April is Fair Housing Month, the time of year for cities to pass resolutions that no one reads solemnly proclaiming their support for fair housing, the time for elementary school art classes to conduct fair housing drawing contests for children, and the month that Franklin the Fair Housing Fox comes out of his closet at […]
Read more Map of the Day: Housing Units Lacking Complete Plumbing
March 29, 2013 0 Comments
The fine folks at the Housing Assistance Council released a report called “Taking Stock” a few months ago. Taking Stock, uses data from the 2010 Census and American Community Survey (ACS) to describe the social, economic, and housing characteristics of rural Americans, and includes great maps of the data. For example, above is the Texas […]
Read more NLIHC: Americans Support Mortgage Interest Deduction Reform
March 21, 2013 0 Comments
A poll commissioned by the National Low Income Housing Coalition finds that while most Americans do favor the mortgage interest deduction, majorities of Americans support proposals to make the tax break more targeted, and more than half want the savings from reform to be used to end homelessness. The mortgage interest deduction (MID) is a […]
Read more HUD Texas Sequester Letter
March 6, 2013 1 Comment
Below is a copy of the letter from HUD to Texas Governor Rick Perry regarding the impact of the sequester on Federally-funded housing programs in Texas. The bottom line losses: $ 3.4 Million HOME $50.5 Million Tenant Based Rental Assistance $ 4.5 Million Homeless $ 0.9 Million Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS $59.3 Million […]
Read more NLIHC: Shortage of Affordable Housing for Low Income Renters in Texas
March 1, 2013 0 Comments
The National Low Income Housing Coalition’sn new report, Housing Spotlight: America’s Affordable Housing Shortage, and How To End It, provides an in-depth analysis of the growing gap between the number of low income renters and the number of units that are affordable and available to them. This analysis comes from the 2011 American Community Survey […]
Read more An important milestone for civil rights: HUD issues final fair housing “disparate impact rule”
February 9, 2013 0 Comments
Years in the making, HUD yesterday issued the final rule on proving “disparate impact” under the Fair Housing Act. The rule is a reaffirmation of the established standard widely used to prove a civil rights violation has occurred when the perpetrator is not caught in an overt act. Let me say first that I am […]
Read more NYTimes Endorses Funding National Housing Trust Fund
January 17, 2013 0 Comments
Last Sunday’s New York Times contained an editorial stating “with nearly 3.3 million families with children living in “worst case” situations — spending more than half their incomes on housing or living in hazardous buildings — more must be done to create affordable housing, through rehabilitation or new construction. For starters, that means finally putting […]
Read more NYTimes on housing tax credits gets it right on funding, targeting poor, wrong on promoting segregation
December 29, 2012 1 Comment
A Tax Credit Worth Preserving – NYTimes.com. We think the New York Times editorial on housing got it two-thirds right and one-third way wrong. In a December 20 editorial the New York Times called for the Low Income Housing Tax Credit retaining and enlarging as Congress and the Obama Administration considers changes to the tax code. […]
Read more The Affordable Housing Crisis – NYTimes.com
December 5, 2012 0 Comments
The Affordable Housing Crisis – NYTimes.com. Today’s editorial in the NYT calls for renewed attention to the nation’s rental housing assistance programs. Congress has not treated these housing programs kindly in recent years. Between 2010 and 2012, financing fell by about $2.5 billion, or nearly 6 percent, although some of this was mitigated by one-time […]
Read more HUD Secretary Donovan discusses fair housing with state housing coalitions
November 16, 2012 Comments Off
At a meeting this week HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan discussed HUD’s approach to fair housing with leaders of state low-income housing coalitions. Secretary Donovan told the state housing coalition leaders, including Chrishelle Palay of TxLIHIS, that HUD will be moving to a regional approach to fair housing. The Secretary said the HUD Sustainable Communities program is […]
Read more Post election soul searching yields important insights but seldom change
November 9, 2012 Comments Off
The soul searching that follows presidential elections often produces some valuable insights. Too bad they are usually quickly forgotten and people revert to their entrenched ideas. But the critical role of Hispanic, African-American and Asian voters may have some staying power in the parties’ political equations. New York Times columnist David Brooks tried to find […]
Read more Once again recovery from a hurricane bypasses the poor
November 9, 2012 Comments Off
A New York Times editorial laments the type of government neglect that public housing residents in Texas know all too well. “Ten days after the hurricane [Sandy] struck, thousands of people in New York City’s public housing are still without heat, water, electricity or food. Many people needed assistance after the storm, but the most […]
Read more 2nd installment of ProPublica Fair Housing investigation details Westchester, NY problems
November 5, 2012 Comments Off
The second article in a major investigative series titled “Living Apart: Fair Housing in America” about HUD’s enforcement of fair housing laws ran today in ProPublica. The subject of this second story is the stalemate in resolving a court ordered fair housing settlement agreement in the Westchester County, NY case that attracted national attention in 2009. The […]
Read more Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law – ProPublica
October 29, 2012 1 Comment
Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law – ProPublica. Nikole Hannah-Jones of the news service Pro Publica published a major investigative story today on the failure of HUD to carry out provisions of the Fair Housing Act requiring states, counties and cities to “affirmatively further fair housing” as they spend funds using […]
Read more HUD Secretary Donovan discusses tension between place-based and mobility in housing
June 14, 2012 Comments Off
Secretary Donovan provides a thoughtful discussion of HUD’s direction in the tension between place based housing and mobility in the following video of his address before the Poverty and Race Action Council.
Read moreMitt Romney at private fundraiser: I might eliminate HUD – The Washington Post
May 1, 2012 Comments Off
The Washington Post reports on a statement made by Mitt Romney about HUD. “I’m going to take a lot of departments in Washington, and agencies, and combine them. Some eliminate, but I’m probably not going to lay out just exactly which ones are going to go,” Romney told the audience. His words were heard by […]
Read more Labor Secretary hosts ceremony honoring Cesar Chavez while slashing funds for housing farmworkers
March 27, 2012 Comments Off
The recognition offered yesterday to leaders of the farmworker movement by US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was welcome. The event was marred however by the audacity of the Secretary to stand in front of the leaders of the struggle of the farmworkers and proclaim “Si, se puede!” after he approved a proposal to largely end the […]
Read moreCourt rules Texas Housing Tax Credit program violates Fair Housing Act
March 20, 2012 Comments Off
This morning a federal court ruled in a case filed by a Dallas fair housing organization that the way the State of Texas administers the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program has a disparate racial impact, violating §§ 3604(a) and 3605(a) of the Fair Housing Act (Civil Rights Act of 1968). Judge Sidney Fitzwater, chief judge of the Federal […]
Read moreOut of Reach: The Housing Wage in Context
March 15, 2012 1 Comment
Reblogged from On the Home Front: Yesterday, NLIHC released Out of Reach 2012: America’s Forgotten Housing Crisis. This report highlights the gap between wages renters actually earn, and what they would need to earn to afford the rent and utilities for a modest two-bedroom apartment in their state. As a part of our release, we held […]
Read more Latest data shows TX minimum wage earners can’t afford half the rent on a typical apartment
March 13, 2012 Comments Off
According to a national report released today, the Housing Wage for Texas is $15.88. The Housing Wage is the hourly wage a family must earn – working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year – to be able to afford the rent and utilities for a safe and modest home in the private housing […]
Read more The Poverty of an Idea – NYTimes.com
March 3, 2012 Comments Off
An Op-Ed by Maurice Isserman, a professor of history in today’s NYT frames the competing views of poverty in the US quite well. The conclusion is sobering and distressing: lack of continued popular economic analysis of poverty since the passing of Michael Harrington “We are left instead with the insistent, culturally determined arguments of Mr. Murray and […]
Read more HUD boss Shaun Donovan jumps into President Obama mortgage melee – POLITICO.com
February 22, 2012 Comments Off
A story in Politico on the deal with the banks and HUD Secretary Donovan’s role is worth a read. I have a lot of doubts about the deal the Obama Administration worked out with the banks not being able to produce the type of relief needed, but at least HUD is finally asserting itself on […]
Read more NYT picks up on public housing rent increase issue
February 22, 2012 Comments Off
I was surprised to hear from the New York Times editorial staff around noon Tuesday. They wanted to know about data sources for a blog post on Texas Housers last Friday about the Obama Administration’s proposed mandatory rent increases for HUD public and subsidized housing residents. I learned about this issue in a budget webinar hosted by […]
Read more $141M in Texas foreclosure settlement funds should be used to prevent more foreclosures
February 20, 2012 Comments Off
The Obama Administration and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced last week a $26 billion foreclosure settlement between the five biggest banks and federal and state officials. I’m not taking a position on the merits of the settlement. I am worried about how the State of Texas will spend the funds it receives. Part of the […]
Read more HUD plays Grinch with its poorest tenants
February 17, 2012 1 Comment
A single mother with two children in Texas is potentially eligible to receive $260 per month from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). She might be able to get Food Stamps to help feed the kids. But the $260 per month has to cover the other living expenses. There is basically no option except to […]
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