News
Out of Reach 2010 Published
Out of Reach 2010, was released on April 22, 2010 by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) and Oregon’s Housing Alliance. The report provides the Housing Wage and other data for every state, metropolitan area and county in the country. It finds that the cost of renting an apartment in Oregon has increased again, an alarming trend for a state with unemployment at 10.6% and whose number of homeless children attending schools has more than doubled since 2003. The full report is available here; the Housing Alliance's press release is available here. Please share it with your networks.
— Posted on 4/27/2010
Preservation Bill Introduced
On March 17, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) introduced H.R. 4868, the Housing Preservation and Tenant Protection Act of 2010, the long anticipated bill addressing the preservation of rental housing funded by HUD or USDA Rural Development. HR 4868 contains provisions to encourage preservation of federally assisted rental housing that is at risk of loss or conversion and provide new protections to the people living in this housing. The bill’s primary goals include (1) Providing resources and incentives to prevent the further loss of affordable housing units; (2) Preventing the displacement of disabled, elderly and other low-income tenants; (3) Establishing a national database to further preservation; (4) Preserving HUD 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly and (5) preserving rural subsidized rental housing. Most of the provisions in Title VIII of the bill’s rural section are the same as those in H.R. 2876, introduced in 2009. 4868 is scheduled to go to before the House Financial Services Committee for mark up on May 5th. Informaiton on the bill can be found here.
— Posted on 4/27/2010
Weatherization List Published
On March 24, 2010 the US Department of Energy published a listing of USDA Rural Development Section 515 multifamily subsidized buildings which meet some of the automatic tenant eligibility requirements for Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) funding. DOE previously published the list of eligible HUD subsidized properties. The newly published DOE list of RD projects completes the list of federally subsidized properties in Oregon eligible for WAP funding.
— Posted on 4/27/2010