Housing Trust Funds have a long history of producing diverse affordable housing options at the local level.

Housing advocates have been working hard to bring this idea to scale and create a National Housing Trust Fund to build 1.5 million affordable units in 10 years. Most of the units would help people that pay over 50% of their income towards housing costs, something more and more Americans can relate to as costs of living rise.

But just as it seems we are inching close to securing much needed resources to build affordable rental housing, someone’s always got to throw a stumbling block in the way. As Monday’s editorial in the New York Times points out, the National Housing Trust Fund that has just emerged from Senate committee would redirect the first year’s pot of money to a foreclosure prevention program.

Sounds good, sure — but this is instead of the House’s version, which sends the money to rebuild much-needed housing on the Gulf Coast. The fact that the Gulf Coast’s own Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) is leading the effort to funnel money away from the Gulf is particularly painful, but would come as no surprise to those fighting to rebuild communities across the coast.

There is a severe need for funds to build affordable rental housing in the Gulf: in the most devastated parishes, Louisiana only has money allocated to rebuild 1/3 of the 82,000 units of rental housing destroyed; Mississippi has received waivers of low-income requirements on the vast majority of its recovery dollars and moved $600 million of its housing recovery dollars to rebuild their port; and Alabama currently only has the funding to help one-tenth of those that applied in Mobile County for help rebuilding their homes.

There is still a housing crisis in the communities of the Gulf Coast – almost 3 years out families are getting kicked out of trailers with formaldehyde fumes with nowhere to call home. One year of this Fund could significantly contribute to housing production in the Gulf Coast and help ease the immense need.

It’s unfortunate Gulf Coast residents are being forced to compete for money with those swallowed up in the foreclosure crisis. The politicians in Washington must figure out a way to handle both of these pressing housing crises with compassion and vision.

Photo of New Orleans’ Musicians Village by Flickr user Cherie’, used under a Creative Commons license.

Check out Harry Shearer’s recent piece in the Huffington Post, highlighting some of the progress in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans despite the lack of federal effort to help jumpstart the renovation and rebuilding of rental units in the city.

I’ve been amazed and inspired by the area’s signs of life. But it took this week’s tour, courtesy of the Preservation Resource Center, for me to realize just how false is the national media’s depiction of the Lower 9 as dead, derelict and devastated. There are streets — like the two blocks of Egania Street I happened onto last fall — and neighborhoods — like Holy Cross, where PRC is concentrating much of its restoration and rebuilding effort — that astonish with rebuilt, re-landscaped and re-occupied little (and not so little) homes, mostly restored in the vernacular styles of the area. The Lower 9 shares with districts as undevastated as the French Quarter the curse of streets badly in need of repair (a major road-repair program in the city was announced just this week, nearly three years after the floodwaters were pumped out)… Yet the recovery by homeowners, assisted by dedicated organizations like the PRC, continues, blessed, as I tell my friends there, by the absence of the illusion of leadership.

“Below the Line: The Changing Face of American Poverty”, the provocative series featured on the Tavis Smiley Radio Show, has profiled a vast range of people living at or below the poverty line in the United States. The series has critically examined what it looks like to be poor in America today, by telling stories as varied as the young, African American, single mother of two children who lost her job at Enron only to find herself making less than $10,000 a year as a nursing assistant; a young married couple, graduate student and carpenter, trying their best to sustain a family of five on the land by growing a community garden; and the Ethiopian immigrant working full time at a meat packing plant, and part time as a child care provider in rural Minnesota.

Angela Glover Blackwell frames each installment from a public policy perspective, while respective experts offer insight and strategic solutions for the foreclosure crisis, living wage, inadequate health care, homelessness, transitional housing, and ex-offender re-entry, along with other issues faced by a growing number of Americans.

Now you can catch the entire series right here on EquityBlog:

Episode One
The series begins with Terreal Grant of Baltimore who is coming out of poverty and drug addiction with help from the Thompson Mobility Program [PDF].

[17 minutes | MP3]

Episode Two
The second installment features Cici Youngblood, a college graduate who describes her path to poverty as “riches to rags” and Jeff Page, a former DJ who went from fame to a downward spiral into homelessness after cancer. Both profiles illustrate how poverty is compounded by health and how successful programs (e.g. Rainbow Apartments) in Los Angeles’s Skid Row community work to meet these challenges.

[17 minutes | MP3]

Episode Three
Reporter James Mills shares the story of Abeba Adella of Minnesota. Originally from Ethiopia, Abeba left an abusive husband, raises two children alone, and works two jobs to barely avoid poverty.

[17 minutes | MP3]

Episode Four
From Augusta, Georgia, reporter Charles Edwards speaks with two residents who struggle with less than the federal minimum wage. Richard Sparrow suffered a back injury and was shunned by employers as an insurance liability. Unemployed since 1996, Richard lives on less than 700 dollars a month, over half of which goes to medicine. Sunny Johnson, a former Enron employee, describes the sacrifices she makes with her wages from her day and night jobs.

[17 minutes | MP3]

Episode Five
New Orleans producer Eve Abrams brings us the story of Vanessa Nevilles, who is struggling to find a job with health insurance, and Keith Carter who was shunned from employment after an arrest and a lengthy legal battle.

[17 minutes | MP3]

Episode Six
Executive Producer Cheryl Flowers visits Mississippi to find two stories of poverty in small rural communities. Mississippi is home to one of the highest concentrations of poverty in America.

[17 minutes | MP3]

Wrap Up
Dr. Cynthia Duncan, Founding Director of the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire and Alan Jenkins, Executive Director of the Opportunity Agenda, joins Tavis Smiley and Angela Glover Blackwell for the series wrap up and analysis.

[53 minutes | MP3]

Audio courtesy of The Tavis Smiley Show from PRI. Check your local listings for more from Tavis Smiley.

Trouble the Water fills the cover of the New York Times Arts section this morning. Manohla Dargis calls it “One of the best American documentaries in recent memory,” and one of the strongest films in this year’s edition of New Directors/New Films, by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art.

Read all of Voice, Eyes and Camera of Katrina Survivors.

Or listen to New York Times audiocast available below:

The Guardian, the UK’s premier newspaper at covering in-depth issues in the States, today features an insightful piece on the “epic housing crisis” facing New Orleans. The article highlights the startling rental housing statistics researched by Annie Clark and Kalima Rose in the landmark PolicyLink report, “Bringing Louisiana Renters Back Home.” (pdf) The article features quotes from Ms. Clark, as well.

There are few incentives for landlords to renovate their rental properties. The Louisiana Recovery Authority’s “Road Home” program offers incentives for “small rental property owners” but it is not popular with mom-and-pop landlords, according to Annie Clark of progressive policy and research institute PolicyLink.

“A landlord says, ‘Yes I am going to rehabilitate my rental units,’” Clark explained, “but then he or she has to get a bank loan which is then paid back by Road Home. Banks are very hesitant to give loans to people this way.”

Clark added that Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has rehabilitated only about 1,500 units of the 4,600 units it has set aside for seniors, the disabled and poor working families in New Orleans. “HUD really has shirked its responsibility in these units,” Clark said.

The full piece is definitely worth a read to get a sense of the depth of the housing crisis still ongoing in New Orleans.

More than two years have passed since Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans. Although many parts of the city are back in business, other areas – including large swaths of the Lower Ninth Ward – remain under-populated, with far too many brownfields and vacant properties. Yet, a walk through the Lower Ninth Ward also shows the many efforts, by a roster of diverse people, underway to help breathe life back into the Crescent City.

One of the innovative efforts includes Global Green’s Holy Cross Project, which aims to be “to be a beacon of sustainable development for New Orleans and the world.” After the storm, Global Green USA – with Brad Pitt – issued a call for innovative solutions to design a zero energy affordable housing development. The winner, New York’s Workshop/APD, works with residents — including Pam Deshiell and the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association — to create housing that is healthy, affordable, and sustainable. “We aim for this project to meet LEED Platinum standards and carbon neutral,” said Beth Gallente, a member of Global Green project team. The project uses recycled wood for flooring, energy efficient appliances, HVAC systems, energy monitoring systems, and other green design principles. Global Green will build 5 single-family homes and an 18-unit apartment building. Currently, they’re completing a model unit that’ll serve as a prototype for the single-family units.

Check out the project for updates on housing availability and tips on how to make your home a greener place.

“It was estimated that if 50,000 of the homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina were rebuilt according to the green standards of set by the design competition, residents of New Orleans would save $38 million to $56 million in energy bills every year and eliminate over 1⁄2 million total tons of CO2 – the equivalent of taking 100,000 cars off the road.” — Global Green