WRAP Report Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For more information contact:

Paul Boden, 415.621.2533 / cell 415.430.7358 | (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | www.wraphome.org
Devin DiBernardo | 503.222.5694 x16 | (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | www.sistersoftheroad.org

PORTLAND (November 14, 2006) - The Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP), a coalition of west coast social justice-based homelessness organizations of which Sisters Of The Road is a member, released a report that documents how more than 25 years of federal funding trends for affordable housing have created the contemporary crisis of homelessness and near-homelessness.

“Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures,” documents the correlation between these trends and the emergence of a new and massive episode of homelessness in the 1980s which continues today.  It particularly focuses on radical cuts to programs administered by the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA), which administers funds for rural affordable housing.  Available at WRAP’s website, the report also demonstrates why federal responses to this nationwide crisis have consistently failed.

Created in partnership with five other organizations, the report uses federal budget data and other sources to document that:

• HUD’s budget has dropped 65% since 1978, from over $83 billion to $29 billion in 2006.
• The Emergency Shelter phenomenon was born the same year that HUD funding was at a drastic low point.
• In 1983, HUD’s budget was only $18 billion the same year that general public emergency shelters began opening in cities nationwide.
• HUD has spent $0 on new public housing while more than 100,000 public housing units have been lost to demolition, sale, or other removal in the last ten years.
• Federal housing subsidies are going to the wealthy.  In 2004, 61 percent of these subsidies went to households earning more than $54,788, while only 27 percent went to households earning under $34,398.
• More than 600,000 identified homeless students went to public schools in the 2003-2004 school year, according to the US Department of Education.
• Federal support helps homeowners instead of poor people.  In 2005, federal homeowner subsidies totaled more than $122 billion, while HUD outlays were only $31 billion – a difference of more than $91 billion.

According to Paul Boden, executive director of WRAP, “The Administration’s current ‘Chronic Homeless Initiative’ is just the latest in a series of inadequate flavor-of-the-month distractions from the real problem.  It does nothing to address the huge cuts to federal affordable housing funding that caused mass homelessness.  Housing is a human right, which a democracy should advance, not restrict.

Those on the frontline of homelessness – homeless people and the providers who serve them – are drowning in a sea of blame.  We have joined together to speak truth to power: until federal affordable housing programs are restored and expanded, homelessness will continue to grow.”

Staff members of Sisters Of The Road – a WRAP member in Portland, Oregon dedicated to working with the low-income and homeless community – will personally deliver the report to Portland City Commissioners and Multnomah County Commissioners to highlight its importance.

“We are really, really pleased to have such a comprehensive and engaging report that tells the truth about why so many people are homeless in Portland, Oregon and across the country,” said Monica Beemer, executive director of Sisters Of The Road.  “We hope that it will inspire the community to stop blaming people for their circumstance, and instead create real solutions and a real strategy to ensure that everyone has a warm, safe home.  This report ends the myth that the problem of homelessness is not systemic; it is, and we can change that if we work together and demand affordable housing as a basic human right.”

According to Michael Anderson with Affordable Housing NOW!, “Without Housing makes plain the connection between the lack of affordable housing and federal dis-investment in proven housing programs over the past three decades.  More importantly, this report shows that we can address our nation’s housing needs easily within our current Federal Budget.  As a community we must stand up and demand that everyone have a safe, decent place to call home.”

Vendors of street roots, a Portland, Oregon street newspaper, will sell $1 buttons and postcards with the web link to the report and the declaration, “Housing is a Human Right.”

The report was prepared by Western Regional Advocacy Project – in partnership with Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area (LCCR), National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness (NPACH), National Health Care for the Homeless Council (NHCHC), National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY), and Iowa Coalition for Housing & the Homeless (ICHH).

About WRAP

Headquartered in San Francisco, WRAP was founded in 2005 to connect local frontline service providers, advocates, and homeless people to each other and to create a national network committed to ending homelessness in the United States by addressing its root causes.  Sisters Of The Road is a founding member, along with 5 other organizations located in 3 western states.  Executive Director Paul Boden was a co-founder and longtime director of Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco (1988-2005), and is a former board member of National Coalition for the Homeless; he is currently on the board of National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness.