Economic Stimulus and the two Americas

As you may have noticed, Congress and our new President have been pretty busy lately pulling together the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. For those of us who follow the political theatrics in Washington, D.C., the past couple weeks have taught a valuable lesson in how far we have yet to go before the change we all worked and voted for starts to materialize.

The bill that started out with great hopes of beginning a new New Deal has ended up looking disappointing and frustrating. Bold pronouncements were silenced and desperately needed funding was cut out of the bill’s earlier versions by discredited Republican Party stalwarts. We learned an incredibly important lesson. The change that turned us out in record numbers, that had us donating even though we are broke, that had us volunteering in spite of our crazy-ass schedules, will NOT magically materialize just because a new president gets sworn into office. And it’s not going to happen with e-mail alerts or voicemail messages on Congressional representatives’ answering machines. One example: 547 housing and community organizations sent Congress a plea for affordable housing and community development to be included in the bill, yet at the end of the day, only $13 billion of $787 billion (2%!!) of the stimulus funding will be directed to housing programs benefiting poor people.

Among the notable measures are the one-time $250 payment to Social Security beneficiaries, SSI recipients, and veterans; a 13 percent increase in food stamp benefits; $1.5 billion for emergency shelter, a couple billion dollars for tax credit financed housing projects trying to overcome the credit squeeze; and another couple billion for the redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed homes. There’s $4 billion to enable local public housing agencies to address a backlog in capital projects — a backlog that’s $32 billion long. Put these figures in the context of nearly three decades of budget cuts and recent increases in poverty and homelessness, and they appear as they are: only slightly better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

We must not stay silent while a nationwide economic catastrophe is supposedly averted with a stimulus plan that is blind to the needs of the poorest among us. It’s a plan that continues to see the housing crisis as affecting homeowners only. Once homeowners lose their homes, they seem to fall off the political radar screen. Have they become invisible or have our politicians become blind?

At the very least, we must demand support for local Community Development Corporations (CDCs) and Housing Development Corporations (HDCs) that already exist in many communities. These organizations have struggled to survive since the federal government all but abandoned them in the early ’80s, but by being of and not just in the communities they serve, survive they have. In spite of arcane, often arbitrary regulations and shifting mandates, the best of these organizations have managed to do amazing community empowerment work through developing permanent affordable housing, commercial space, open space, and parks, all with a local community hiring belief system.

Real housing development corporations will work in partnership with community members and organizations to combine a federal re-investment in affordable housing with economic stimulus activities that benefit everyone: street level space for creating new local businesses, job training connected to positions created in the development and management of the businesses and homes created, the use of (and training in) green technology in all developments. Those are win/wins for the whole community. Tax dollars invested through these projects stay in the local economy through paychecks, program support, and purchase of materials. Many of the jobs created remain long after the construction phase is complete. Each dollar invested becomes a three-for-one deal, with many unhoused people housed, many under or unemployed people gaining employment, and new local business opening up — perhaps an actual grocery store in a poor neighborhood!

The President and Congress have made it clear that a “major” housing bill is next on the agenda and the President is expected to lay out his parameters as soon as this week. So let’s apply the lessons we learned from the Stimulus Bill. Let’s each of us — every church, agency, neighborhood group, community organizer, small business, and local politician — join together to ensure that our federal representatives understand that housing is more than just a commodity. Housing is also about economic development and affordability. They need to know there is a 24 hours a day, seven day a week crisis for 3.5 million people a year with no housing at all, and for the growing number of people who are losing the housing they have.

WRAP’s member organizations and allies have worked for years to lay a foundation to bring the voices of local communities directly to Washington DC by connecting our communities to each other on our common issues of social justice for all of our neighbors. Join with us to help build this movement of direct local participation in federal decision making and we may have a chance to actually see the change we voted for.

By Western Regional Advocacy Project