Housing

Our country has been told that a gargantuan government rescue of the private sector is necessary because the collapse of major financial institutions would lead to unthinkable outcomes for society. Almost as if by magic, our nation's leaders conjure up vast sums to respond to this crisis. Yet when advocates point out that our nation is facing an altogether different kind of crisis, one of soaring hunger and homelessness, and that a large-scale bailout is needed to prevent social service providers nationwide from buckling under the increasing load, we are told that the money these agencies need just doesn't exist.

From Seattle to Athens, Ga., homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation. Nearly 61 percent of local and state homeless coalitions say they've experienced a rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless. The group says the problem has worsened since the report's release in April, with foreclosures mounting, gas and food prices rising and the job market tightening. The phenomenon of encampments has caught advocacy groups somewhat by surprise, largely because of how quickly they have sprung up.

States, counties, and cities with high home-foreclosure rates - now poised to reap a windfall in federal aid to help them cope with the crisis - are busy laying plans for what, exactly, they will do with the money. So far, their blueprints are as varied as the places themselves. Some plan to use the money for demolition, some for rehabbing abandoned properties. Some even envision using the one-time bonanza to try to prevent future foreclosures. The money, $4 billion in all, is part of a larger housing rescue package that Congress approved and President Bush signed late last month. It will go to America's hardest hit communities - and even some that aren't so hard hit.

A $550 million trust fund, created under the nation's new housing law, is the first concentrated effort to establish affordable housing for renters in the lowest income brackets since the formation of Section 8 housing in 1974, experts say. Section 8 is a federal housing program that subsidizes housing costs for low income renters. Under the new trust, at least 75 percent of the money will go to extremely low income families, those that live below 30 percent of the median income of a state or below the national poverty line. According to the housing coalition at least 90 percent of the funds must be used to create, preserve, rehabilitate and operate rental housing units. The other 10 percent will be available for first time home owner activities, including assistance with down payments and closing costs.

At the end of May, the doors closed at Renaissance Village, the FEMA trailer park outside of Baton Rouge that had been home to hundreds of families, its end hastened by an official acknowledgment of unhealthy levels of formaldehyde in the trailers. Those who were left at the park at the end, most of whom were among the neediest of the evacuees, began moving out on their own. In light of the early promise that the recovery from the hurricane would provide the chance to address New Orleans’s social ills, the farewell to the trailer park might have been an opportunity for a fresh start, with families fortified by more than three years of government support and charity programs. But when the park closed earlier than expected, government planners said they were left unprepared.

If you were to ask Democrats Barney Frank and Chris Dodd -- the principal architects of the massive housing bill signed Wednesday by President Bush -- which of its many features pleases them most, the answer would surprise you. It is not the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the embattled mortgage giants, or the aid the bill provides for thousands of homeowners struggling to afford their subprime loans in a faltering real estate market. Instead, it is the section creating the National Housing Trust Fund, a creative way of meeting the chronic shortage of affordable low-income rental apartments -- a huge problem in cities and rural areas across the country.

The giant housing rescue plan President Bush signed Wednesday might help stanch the bleeding in the housing market, but experts on both sides of the political divide worry that it is, at best, only an emergency step. In addition to $300 billion in government guarantees to aid homeowners threatened by foreclosure, the administration got extraordinary new powers to backstop mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after their stocks plunged earlier this month.

The number of chronically homeless people living in the nation's streets and shelters has dropped by about 30 percent- from 175,914 to 123,833- from 2005 to 2007, Bush administration officials said on Tuesday. Officials also attribute much of the decline to a policy shift promoted by Congress and the administration that has focused federal and local resources on finding stable housing for homeless people suffering from drug addiction, mental illness or physical disabilities, long deemed the hardest to help in the homeless population. Under the strategy, known as "housing first," local officials have over the last eight years increasingly placed the chronically homeless into permanent shelter- apartments, halfway houses or rooms- and provided them with services for drug addiction, mental illness and health problems.

President Bush this morning signed into law the most sweeping housing legislation in decades, aimed at calming rocky financial markets and giving mortgage relief to up to 400,000 homeowners. In an unannounced White House ceremony attended by senior administration aides shortly after 7 a.m., Bush gave his imprimatur to a law he had long vowed to veto because of objections to some aspects of the legislation. The bill signing follows months of often contentious negotiations between congressional Democrats and the White House over how best to stabilize housing markets amid plummeting home values and a damaged credit system.

The child-welfare system is "broken." This harsh indictment has been a constant drumbeat in L.A.-area headlines for years. In the last few months, the tragedy of a 5-year-old subjected to horrifying mistreatment grabbed the public's attention. The pendulum started to swing, and demands mounted to address the crisis. But there are underlying challenges facing struggling families and overwhelmed child-welfare professionals that headlines and an ever-swinging pendulum don't and can't address. Consider just one part of the system: foster care. Los Angeles is home to nearly 30,000 foster youth. We collectively commit to watch over these children when we bring them into foster care, yet too many struggle mightily with the most basic of needs.