Sound Solutions for Tackling the Affordable Housing Crisis

With "nearly nine million households teetering on the verge of homelessness," and recent congressional cutbacks to the nation's key federal programs for providing affordable housing, "[t]he administration obviously needs to do better" to relieve the country's crisis in affordable housing. Public housing needs have "grown significantly" during the recession. "Last year, for example, 8.5 million very-low-income families without housing assistance paid more than half their incomes for housing — an increase of 43 percent from 2007. These families skimp on food and medical care to make the rent and tend to move often, making it difficult for their children to be successful at school. They are also more prone to homelessness, which is traumatic for them and extremely costly for the municipalities that run shelters."

Yet the deepening crisis has flown beneath the administration radar thus far. "President Obama’s budget for the 2013 fiscal year is not much of an improvement; given inflation, Congress would have to increase appropriations just to keep treading water, when, in fact, what the poor in this country need is a significant jump."

The Times editors make note of several policy changes that could help bolster the main federal programs design to help low-income families find housing - "traditional public housing, for which the government provides operating expenses, plus two different programs under Section 8 of the housing law, in which rents are subsidized in privately owned properties."