PRESERVING AFFORDABLE RENTAL HOUSING -- part 7

Crowley also called on HUD to provide help to maintain the aging housing stock that was created with its dollars.

“The federal government needs to put more money into this. A national housing trust fund would be a tool for reinvesting in affordable housing preservation,” Crowley said.

PRESERVING AFFORDABLE RENTAL HOUSING

The obstacles preventing affordable rental housing preservation could be further removed by: states and counties matching the dollars that come from HUD, affordable developers creating good community relations programs that erase neighborhood opposition and some sort of incentive or device that would assist developers in overcoming regulatory barriers at the local level.

Denise Muha, executive director or the National Leased Housing Association, said a lack of affordable housing rentals can result in problems ranging from an insufficient amount of service workers to keep an economy going to dangerous situations where 10 or more people are crammed into a tiny housing unit.

“Owners' decisions to renew the contracts or terminate their low income use are generally market based, but can be attributed to something we call ‘HUD fatigue,’ which she defined as owners “just getting tired of dealing with the HUD layers of rules and changing policies and recently HUD's inability to pay its bills - specifically, subsidy on Section 8 contracts.

Many owners have waited one or more months for their funds leaving them late in paying mortgages, etc.”