Alliance Online News: Affordable Housing ‘Out of Reach’ for Minimum Wage Earners

Alliance Online News View in browser www.endhomelessness.org Tuesday, May 26, 2015 spotlight on... Report: Affordable Housing ‘Out of Reach’ for Minimum Wage Earners in Every State Affordable housing is out of reach in every state for minimum wage earners working 40 hours per week or less, according to the annual report “Out of Reach 2015” released last week by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC). Among the findings in the report: a minimum wage earner would need to work more than 80 hours a week to afford a one-bedroom apartment and more than 100 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom apartment. In conjunction with the report’s release, NLIHC has launched an interactive website that highlights the report’s findings. Read the report » hill update Senate Committee Spending Bill Would Allocate $55 Billion for HUD and Dept. of Transportation On Thursday, May 21, the Senate Appropriations Committee released its fiscal year (FY) 2016 spending bill that would allocate $55.646 billion for the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (T-HUD) Subcommittee. This funding level is $376 million above the House spending bill that allocated $55.27 billion for the T-HUD Subcommittee. At this point in the budget process, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittees will begin marking up spending bills and the full House will consider their spending bill. Senate Appropriations Committee 302(b) allocations » Webinar Video: Ramping Up Rapid Re-Housing in Houston Harris County and San Francisco A video recording of the third webinar in a series examining how communities are ramping up rapid re-housing capacity is now available for viewing on the Alliance website. In the webinar, which originally streamed Tuesday, May 19, speakers described citywide efforts in Houston/Harris County, Tex. to expand and redesign the rapid re-housing system and the efforts by the Hamilton Family Center in San Francisco to improve the functioning of the city's homeless service system and eradicate waiting lists by increasing rapid re-housing capacity for families. Watch the video » Rapid re-housing webinars » from the blog Ending Homelessness Today the official blog of the national alliance to end homelessness The State of Homelessness in America: Trends in Populations at Risk by Liza Doran Why do people become homeless? This is a complicated question with numerous, complex answers. For some people, it may be because they lost a job or had an unforeseen medical crisis. For others, it may be because the cost of rent rose and they were unable to afford the payments. Every person who experiences homelessness has a unique situation. However, research shows that homelessness often is a result of two factors: economic problems and/or housing problems. Economic problems include poverty and unemployment. In other words, if you don’t have the money to pay for housing, you’re vulnerable to homelessness. Housing problems include severe housing cost burden—in which a poor household pays over half of their income in rent—and living doubled up—in which people live with family or friends. Housing problems generally stem from a lack of affordable housing. Read more » comments » | Here are 6 Places that are Using Medicaid to End Chronic Homelessness by Jayme Day As communities are becoming more advanced in their efforts to end chronic homelessness they are taking steps to secure funding in systemic ways and from a variety of sources, including Medicaid. Chronically homeless people make up just a small part of the overall homeless population (15 percent on a given night), but they are the hardest to help. All chronically homeless people struggle with serious physical or mental disabilities, including mental illnesses like schizophrenia and alcohol or drug addiction, that make obtaining and maintaining housing on their own extremely difficult. Read more » comments » | Family Homelessness 2.0 by Dan Brettler, Goron McHenry Jr., and David Werthheimer Those of us who have been engaged in efforts to end family homelessness over the past decade need to acknowledge one of two things: Either the work is extremely complex and difficult, or we’re not very good at our jobs. While both of these statements could be true, given the time, talent, and passion that so many have been focusing on this issue for so long, we conclude (and hope) that the first statement is more accurate. There are many different crises that can catapult a family into homelessness: Loss of a job, domestic violence, accidents or serious illness, and inter-generational poverty – to name just a few. In addition, despite efforts to coordinate, past experiences in responding to homelessness have shown us that, although admirable, fragmented, non-integrated efforts to solve this problem by organizations and systems working independently and on their own have not stemmed the tide of this crisis. Read more » comments » | homelessness in the media Mayor de Blasio’s Plan Aims to Spur More Affordable Housing in New York Medicine Hat mayor says city has ended homelessness, for now Trying to house L.A.'s homeless veterans is a complex, lengthy process