Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures, released in November 2006, documented the direct correlation between the advent of contemporary homelessness in 1982 and the draconian cuts to HUD and USDA affordable housing programs that began in 1979.
Our report has been downloaded over 30,000 times from the WRAP website. Advocates, community organizers, service providers and educators from across the country use it to reframe the affordable housing debate and to organize for smarter public policy that reflects the realities of homeless people’s experiences. Homeless Coalitions across the country have copied and distributed the report to their memberships and also to state and federal legislators and local city officials. (more…)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Last summer, police responding to complaints about campfires under a highway overpass found dozens of homeless people living on public land along the Cumberland River.
“HOPE VI has accelerated the loss of public housing,” House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity Chair Maxine Waters (D-CA) said in her opening remarks at a July 29 hearing, “Academic Perspectives on the Future of Public Housing.” Chair Waters spoke throughout the hearing on her concerns about the program, including that HOPE VI has resulted in a net loss of more than 50,000 public housing units, the displacement of public housing residents, and a low rate of return to the redeveloped public housing units by original residents. 
I was at the National Alliance to End Homelessness Conference in Washington, DC from July 28-31, listening to U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan sum up what’s been accomplished in recent years and what remains to be done to prevent and end homelessness.
The following organizations are calling on President Obama, HUD Secretary Donovan, and Congress to provide housing authorities with an immediate infusion of funding in the current fiscal year, to ensure that every current Section 8 tenant is able to keep their voucher.