Mennonite Weekly Review

The strain many of us feel due to the recession allows a glimpse into what millions have been experiencing for decades: the inability to find and keep adequate, safe and affordable housing.

Warner

What for some may be only a current situation is for many a constant reality, with little hope for relief.

The recession has highlighted housing circumstances that are exacerbated, not caused, by the current economic stress.

In recent decades, the United States has shifted from subsidized rentals and public housing to subsidizing private developers and landlords renting their units to those in need. The goal is to integrate poorer individuals and families into less impoverished communities.

However, the resulting demolition of public housing units is problematic because there is no requirement that an equal number of units be built to replace them. Many residents are permanently displaced, often without resources to find a new home.

Voucher-driven programs, although important, are inadequate by themselves. More applicants with fewer units increases the market price and can make the voucher less attractive to the landlord, who can make a higher profit renting at market value.

These issues were addressed at a town hall forum in Washington with United Nations Special Rapporteur Raquel Rolnik. She visited the United States Oct. 22-Nov. 8 as an independent expert appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council to examine and report on the case of adequate housing as a human right around the world. She visited seven cities, including New York, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., New Orleans, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and Washington.

Rolnik noted that a drastic shift from public housing to subsidizing private developers and landlords can be exclusionary and severely limit the availability of affordable housing.

What’s more, such practices have spread internationally with the global economy. If the situation in the United States is grim, imagine what it is like in countries with fewer resources.

The Obama administration is taking steps to reduce the vast chasm between housing need and availability. One way to do this is through the National Housing Trust Fund, a permanent fund to build, preserve and rehabilitate housing units.