Washington Post Follow Up

I commented on the Washington Post article on HUD's HOME program last week, and the National Housing Conference (NHC), a national non-profit organization focused on housing issues and advocacy, has also responded to the story on their blog, pointing to the overall success of HOME program.

NHC also provides some helpful graphs showing that the private industry, too, had slowdowns not only in housing starts, but also housing completions.  It provides helpful context.

I was reminded by NHC that the Washington Post article is part of a series of reports, including this puzzling one that does its best to imply something nefarious happened.

But I'm sensing a consistent trend in those stories-that the "government should've done something."  But it says nothing about the decades of cuts to staffing of HUD as well as the fiscal pressures often felt locally, which makes it difficult to hire and retain qualified staff to provide oversight. 

At no point does the articles say, "there is no need for affordable housing" which means that the collary is "there is a need for more administrative funding so HUD and local communities can provide adequate oversight."  Yet that does not seem to be what many people take away from those articles.  Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of the HOME program is successful, people see those articles and say, "HUD can do nothing right, therefore we must defund this." 

Which makes those kinds of articles so infuriating because, yes, we want programs to be operated efficiently, yes, we want fraud and waste identified, but we also know that exposure of problems in the media will lead to calls for cuts and defunding rather than improved efficiency.

In an e-mail sent out, Ethan Handelman, the Vice President for Policy and Advocacy, mentions that there is a "hearing now scheduled for May 31 in front of the full House Financial Services Committee at which Mercedes Márquez, Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development is expected to testify." 

The legislative majority of the House has been hostile to many programs as they search for ways to cut spending.  You can bet the Washington Post reports put a big red bulls-eye on the HOME program.