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For Immediate Release: February 26th, 2004 Contact: Contact: Jordan Isenstadt (c) 516.991.3842 (w) 212.490.9535 (f) 212.490.2151 ***PRESS
RELEASE*** State Senator Liz Krueger
Blasts President Bush’s Proposed HUD Budget; Fears Worst
for Section 8 Housing New York Could Lose 77,000
Vouchers by 2009 New York, NY – State Senator Liz Krueger
(D-Manhattan) condemned President Bush’s proposed Housing & Urban
Development (HUD) budget today as “inhumane and shortsighted.” The Administration’s proposed budget would
slash the housing voucher program, also known as “Section 8”, by close to 40%
by 2009. According to the Center for
Budget and Policy Priorities, nearly 250,000 families will have their housing
assistance cut by 2005 and up to 800,000 families by 2009. The housing voucher program currently
assists two-million low-income households, most of them low-income working
families, elderly people or people with disabilities. “President Bush’s proposal would not only
destroy the housing voucher program, but it would destroy the lives of
hundreds of thousands of families,” stated Senator Krueger. “This cut would be the most severe to a
low-income program since the early years of the Reagan Administration.”
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities indicates that
New York State presently authorizes over 200,000 vouchers. That number is estimated to be reduced by
close to 25,000 by 2005 and by over 77,000 by 2009. “The Administration’s proposed HUD budget and the housing
assistance cuts that New York’s families will have to endure are heartless,”
said Senator Krueger. “This is particularly
true given the lack of any coherent national housing policy. Such a policy must include the recognition
of the importance of governmental support for a variety of programs. These include both market based and
publicly funded housing construction.” President Nixon initially created the housing voucher
program in 1974 and it has received strong bipartisan support for three
decades. At the time, tenant-based
housing subsidies represented a bold new effort to use private markets to
deliver housing assistance that had previously been delivered through
government-owned projects. In 2001,
the congressionally chartered Millennial Housing Commission concluded that
the voucher program was “flexible, cost-effective, and successful in its
mission” and recommended that it continue to serve as the “linchpin” of
federal housing policy. “The Bush Administration argues that these cuts are needed
to manage an explosive escalation in program costs,” remarked Senator
Krueger. “Yet budget projections
prove that these increasing costs were merely an outgrowth of temporary
factors. In fact, according to the
Congressional Budget Office, if funding for Section 8 was maintained at its
present level, the cost growth would slow down by 2005. The proposed HUD budget is one of the
worst budgets that I have ever seen.” Beyond the proposed massive cuts to housing voucher
funding, the program would also be fundamentally altered. Specifically, Section 8 vouchers would
become a block grant to local housing agencies. Analysts, both Republican and Democrat, agree that block grants
are a bad funding model, as they have a historical tendency of being capped
or cut over time. In addition,
criteria for receiving vouchers would be significantly relaxed. Presently, those who earn up to 30% of the
local median income, or about $15,000 a year in New York, receive 75% of the
vouchers based on standards. The Bush
Administration plan allows for local housing agencies to distribute vouchers
to anyone earning up to 80% of the median income or $41,500 in New York. “HUD
contends that shifting vouchers from needier families to higher income
families is simply a matter of ‘efficiency’,” stated Senator Krueger. “I wholeheartedly reject the notion of
taking away essential services, such as housing, from the lowest income
families.” |
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