(Community Matters) story below from Mike Allen’s Playbook. I’m not trying to pile on w/ affordable housing opponents. Anyone who knows where I’ve prioritized my time during the previous 15 years knows this includes helping launch an affordable housing land trust as well as substantially contributing on teams that have raised money (7 figures) for new affordable housing projects plus the renovation of existing homes for low income, elderly East Austin residents. And, this is why I’m particularly sensitive to inefficiencies and waste in affordable housing – monies are too scarce and we’ve gotta show high, consistent ROIs for continued investment.
MEDIAWATCH – WashPost Ombudsman Patrick B. Pexton, “HUD’s tussle with The Post”: “One of the ingredients readers don’t see in a finished news story is the amount of head-butting that goes on between The Post and government officials. … One of these struggles is going on between The Post and the Department of Housing and Urban Development and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. The conflict is over a 9,000-word series The Post did in May about HUD’s HOME program, the largest federal block grant to state and local governments designed to build and renovate affordable housing for low-income households. … Donovan has said that the HOME series was inaccurate, sensationalistic and misleading. He has requested 16 corrections to the story. The Post has said no to the corrections, responding in detail to Donovan . … I’ve waded into the subject chest deep – reading scores of documents, Capitol Hill testimony and HUD inspector general reports, and talking with HUD officials, Jeff Leen, The Post’s assistant managing editor for investigations, and Debbie Cenziper, the series’ primary reporter. And now I think The Post made a good case that the HOME program has serious flaws. … The HOME program, passed with bipartisan support in 1990 and signed by President George H.W. Bush, has indeed helped fund, build and renovate hundreds of thousands of low-income housing units, using a combination of federal, state, local and private money. …
“HUD’s tools to oversee the HOME program are inadequate. And it’s very difficult, as The Post showed, to tell at any one time which of some 28,000 incomplete HOME projects at 650 local agencies are delayed significantly, are making progress or have been abandoned … This is why the opening of the story said the program ‘has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on stalled or abandoned projects,’ and that ‘nationwide, nearly 700 projects awarded $400 million have been idling for years.’ … I am persuaded by The Post’s shoe-leather reporting on 430 of the 700 projects that the series said were idled, delayed or abandoned. Cenziper spent two months calling 165 local housing agencies and visiting 10 cities to ask the status of individual projects. She found projects stalled for years, many abandoned, and empty lots where housing should have been. … I am persuaded by HUD data given to Congress this month, in which the agency acknowledges that 821 projects, funded at more than $100,000 each and at least 4 ½ years old, are in one way or another not closed out on its books. … HUD is correct to point out that HOME was designed to let local jurisdictions handle monitoring and oversight. Congress didn’t want an army of bureaucrats looking over the shoulders of local agencies. But in this era of online databases, HUD’s main computer program to track these programs is inadequate; the HUD inspector general’s office has repeatedly said so.” http://wapo.st/nN7tMK
The potential ROI on quality affordable housing projects includes a better ready workforce, better educated kids, financial literacy and projects which graduate families into self-sustaining/self-funded housing – in addition to real financial returns.
Community Matters 