Yesterday, Wednesday, October 10, 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives approved H.R. 2895, the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund Act of 2007, a bill to increase the supply of rental housing that low income people can afford. This is a huge victory for housing advocates!

The House voted 264-148 to pass legislation establishing dedicated sources of funding for the production, preservation and rehabilitation of 1.5 million affordable homes in 10 years. At least 75% of the funds will be for housing for households that are extremely low income, earning less than 30% of an area’s median income.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in coalition with the National Housing Trust Fund Campaign, has been working since 2001 on the passage of legislation to establish a national housing trust fund.

There is an acute lack of affordable housing in the United States. Nationwide, there are only 6.2 million homes renting at prices affordable to the 9 million extremely low income renter households -- a shortage of 2.8 million homes. Not a single Congressional district has enough rental housing affordable and available to extremely low income families. (Housing is considered affordable if it costs no more than 30% of household income.)

Bishop DiMarzio, in a letter to the House of Representatives before the vote, said “the Catholic Community, through our Catholic Charities agencies, dioceses, and parishes, serves tens of thousands of men, women, and children who struggle to avoid homelessness and maintain adequate housing. Besides sheltering homeless people who turn to us for help, we have built, and maintain thousands of affordable housing units across the country. Our experiences have taught us that homelessness and inadequate, substandard housing destroys lives, undermines families, hurts communities, and weakens the social fabric of our nation. Despite our efforts—and the efforts of so many others—there continues to exist a severe shortage of affordable housing nationwide.”

Our efforts to create a National Affordable Housing Trust Fund will now focus on the Senate where a bill has yet to be introduced; but legislation is expected prior to adjournment of this session, which will be sometime in November or December. We’ll keep you informed as the bill moves in the Senate.

Thanks again for all your help!

For more information:

Thom Shellabarger at the USCCB, 202 541 3189 or tshellabarger@usccb.org