More housing progress in the President’s budget: We were pleased to see that the HUD budget for 2023 again includes a significant proposed expansion of the Housing Choice Voucher program – by 200,000 additional vouchers, at a proposed cost of $1.5 billion, along with $445 million for mobility-related services to help families with vouchers make successful moves to low-poverty areas. The budget also includes increases in funding for public housing and the Rental Assistance Demonstration, and a proposed new $35 billion “Housing Supply Fund.” The Housing Supply Fund also includes a set aside of funds to address zoning and other barriers to affordable housing, which would be needed to avoid reconcentrating poverty with these new funds.
Source of Income discrimination updates: Fannie Mae has joined the fight against source of income discrimination with a pilot program in North Carolina and Texas (two states without source of income protections) that gives special financing incentives to multifamily properties that agree not to discriminate and to maintain a reasonable number of units within the Housing Choice Voucher payment standards. Also this week, the Housing Rights Initiative announced a settlement in one of their multiple defendant SOI discrimination investigations that commit several large property management companies to open up units to families with vouchers.
Honoring John Brittain:We were honored to be part of an (live!) event at UConn Law School in Hartford honoring UDC law professor (and PRRAC Board member) John Brittain for his many contributions to the civil rights movement, for his longtime tenure at UConn Law, and for his crucial role in the formulation and prosecution of the regional school integration case in Hartford, Sheff v. O’Neill.
Other resources:
CPD social housing report: The Center for Popular Democracy has added to other excellent recent literature on the social housing movement in the U.S. with its new report, Social Housing For All: A Vision For Thriving Communities, Renter Power, and Racial Justice.
The Othering and Belonging Institute has updated and provided a new instructional video for their interactive segregation mapping tool, intended to bring complex mapping data to lay advocates.
Housing and schools – interesting and provocative new research on the health impacts of school segregation and the potential gentrification effects of school closures.
