Speak Out For The True Conservative Position On Deficit Reduction

It’s time for those of us who care about the needs of low-income people to advocate a conservative position.

As you probably know, programs that serve these needs are at high risk as the President seeks to forge a compromise that will avert a default on the federal debt.

The Republicans are demanding at least $2 trillion in spending cuts, along with “reforms” in Medicare — maybe other so-called entitlements too.

They’ve said they won’t accept tax increases of any sort, betting that the President and other Democrats at the table will cave to avert an unprecedented economic crisis — even if it means throwing poor people under the bus.

It’s hard to imagine a spending-cut-only plan in the trillions that wouldn’t.

There’s nothing conservative about this. It’s a radical departure from a long-standing consensus that deficit reduction plans should, at the very least, protect programs for low-income people.

All the deficit reduction plans passed in the last 25 years did. Several of them actually strengthened anti-poverty measures, e.g., by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit. The Children’s Health Insurance Program came into being as part of the Clinton era Balanced Budget Act.

Even President Obama’s deficit hawkish fiscal commission adopted, as a guiding principle, “protect the truly disadvantaged.”

The true conservative position is thus to conserve programs that mitigate poverty and offer low-income people opportunities for a better life.

The programs need to be protected from specific near-term budget cuts and also from any automatic cuts that would be triggered if Congress fails to achieve some as-yet undetermined deficit or debt reduction targets in the future.

Leaders of major national faith-based, civil rights, charitable, economic research and advocacy organizations have written the President, the Vice President and the Congressional leaders of both parties urging them to “honor the precedent set by previous deficit reduction negotiations.”

The Coalition on Human Needs tells us that we need to join our voices to theirs. The stakes are alarmingly high and the clock is ticking.

Here are two quick, easy ways to let the President know that we want him to stand firm for the conservative principles of past deficit reduction plans — protection for programs that serve low-income people and revenue raisers that will help make the total package balanced and fair.

We can leave a message on the White House comment line. The toll-free number is 888-245-0215.

We can also use this editable e-mail provided by the Half in Ten campaign.

Proposed DC Budget Would Gut Affordable Housing Programs

Seems that Mayor Gray has decided that the District of Columbia should get out of the affordable housing business.

Hard to see how else one can interpret the end results of the proposed cuts and related policy changes the DC Fiscal Policy Institute details in its brief on the proposed Fiscal Year 2012 affordable housing budget.

The affordable housing budget, if one can call it that, is hard to get one’s mind around — three different housing agencies, a number of programs designed for different purposes and, to some extent, different segments of the population.

And there’s housing in the homeless services and mental health budgets too.

Brief overview of the biggest issues, as I understand them.

Housing Production Trust Fund

The mayor’s proposed budget would siphon $18 million out of the Housing Production Trust Fund as a substitute for the customary separate appropriation for the Local Rent Supplement Program.

The $18 million cut wouldn’t be a one-time thing. The same amount would be transferred — though not necessarily to LRSP — every year until at least 2015.

The Trust Fund is a major source of local funding for affordable housing construction and preservation. It’s the most flexible tool we’ve got.

Developers can use Trust Fund commitments together with other public sources, including certain types of LRSP vouchers, to show private lenders that their projects are credit-worthy. The Trust Fund can also provide critical time-sensitive grants and loans that enable tenants to purchase the buildings they live in.

The Trust Fund gets a percentage of revenues from the deed transfer and recordation taxes that buyers and sellers pay when properties in the District change hands. So it’s been cash-short ever since the local housing market cooled a couple of years ago. As a result, lots of approved projects in the pipeline have stalled.

But the market’s on an upswing again. So some of these projects could move forward if the revenues earmarked for the Trust Fund were left where they belong. With the proposed transfer, the Fund would instead have $1 million less next year.

Only $8.9 million would be available for the Fund’s core purposes. It will have to use increasing amounts of its total revenues for debt service on bonds. So what’s left for core purposes will shrink over time. Only $4.8 million will remain in 2015.

Local Rent Supplement Program

The transferred funds would not sustain LRSP. Far from it.

The mayor’s proposal would phase out the tenant-based vouchers that are part of the program. These are the vouchers that recipients (all very low-income) can use to help pay market-based rents on any approved unit in the District.

The District would continue to subsidize rents for current voucher holders. But as households left the program, their vouchers would effectively disappear. So another major affordable housing tool would continuously shrink.

LRSP also provides vouchers that are attached to units in affordable housing developments. Like the tenant-based vouchers, they’re supposed to make rental housing affordable for a range of very-low income residents. And indeed, they do.

But the mayor wants to use all vacant LRSP units for the District’s permanent supportive housing program — a key part of the Department of Human Services’ homelessness strategy.

Though PSH is affordable housing, it’s only for individuals and families who’ve been homeless for a long time or recurrently due, at least in part, to severe challenges like mental illness and/or substance abuse.

So another fund shift — or the equivalent. And another case where a tool that was serving a particular purpose gets used for another.

Bottom Line

At the end of the day, the shifts would drastically curtail the District’s efforts to ensure that low-income individuals and families can afford to be part of this “one city” the major has promised.

And dollars to doughnuts, they’d put more pressures on the under-funded homeless services budget too.

What Now?

It’s up to the DC Council now to restore the funds the mayor’s budget cuts.

The Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development and allies in its Continuum of Housing Campaign have organized a rally to urge this. We’re asked to show up at the John A. Wilson building tomorrow, May 3 at 6:00 p.m., just before the last of three back-to-back hearings on Fiscal Year 2012 budgets for D.C. Housing Agencies.

New Figures Show Still More Homeless Families In DC

The Washington Metropolitan Council of Governments has just released preliminary figures from the homeless counts conducted in late January. We’ll get more details next month when the final report is issued.

But even the preview shows that the District of Columbia, like the region as a whole, still faces a rising tide of literally homeless people, i.e., those in shelters, transitional housing and “places not meant for human habitation” like streets, parks and bus stations.

And the increase is still driven by families with children. According to the January 2011 count:

• The total number of homeless people in the District registered virtually no change — 6,546, as compared to 6,539 in 2010.
• But the number of those people who were in families increased by 265 to a total of 2,688. This is 852 more than in 2008, when the recession had just set in.
• The number of homeless children in families increased from 1,535 in 2010 to 1,620. This is about two and a third times more than in 2008.
• The number of homeless families as a whole rose to 858 — 50 more than in 2010 and 287 more than in 2008.*

In short, family homelessness in the District has increased by nearly 32% in the last three years.

The increase probably would have been even greater if the District hadn’t had federal stimulus funds for homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing.

And there could well have been more homeless families on the streets had the District not been able to supplement its local homeless services funds with stimulus funds for its Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.

The DC Fiscal Policy Institute reports that most of the stimulus funds have been spent. And the District won’t get more federal funds earmarked for support of its permanent supportive housing program.

Yet Mayor Gray proposes to cut local funding for homeless services by $11 million. He also wants an additional $2.3 million cut in the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which has kept some low-income households from needing homeless services.

The District is already denying shelter to families who’ve got no place to stay. It’s a good bet there will be more of them if the Council approves the mayor’s proposals for further cuts in TANF cash assistance and the phase-out of the Interim Disability Assistance program.

So the Council’s got a lot of work to do. And so do we because it won’t do what’s needed to shore up homeless services — let alone bend the family homelessness curve — unless it hears from us.

* UPDATE: DCFPI analyst Alexandra Gajdeczka provides additional figures, with great graphs, on homelessness and homeless services funding in the District. Her figures show that I miscalculated. The number of homeless families in D.C. has actually increased by 271 or 46% since 2008.

Mayor Gray Wants Our Input On DC’s Fiscal Year 2012 Budget

The Gray administration has posted a short survey on its website. It aims to get feedback on key issues in the proposed Fiscal Year 2012 budget, which will go to the DC Council on April 1.

So all of us who live in the District have a chance to tell the mayor two important things:

• Our priorities for next year’s local funding — specifically, how we rank major areas of the budget, e.g., human services, education, government operations
• Whether we agree — and if so, how strongly — that the District government “should consider revenue enhancements,” e.g., taxes and fees, in balancing the budget.

We also have an opportunity to provide whatever specific recommendations we choose.

For example, if you feel, as I do, that “revenue enhancements” are a must-do — not just something the mayor should consider — you can tell him so. Also tell him what they should be.

A couple of big impact options.

Save Our Safety Net has an updated plan for new tax brackets that I personally feel is the best version yet.

The DC Fiscal Policy Institute recommends something similar, plus legislation the Council should have passed long ago to close a tax loophole that’s leaking millions of corporate dollars out of our local budget.

So much for the lobbying.

The recommendations box is also a great place to flesh out your priority choices — specific programs that should get more funding, programs and/or activities we could do without, etc.

It’s a good way to advocate constructively at a key moment — especially for those of us without access to the inner sanctums.

But time is short. The mayor and his people are undoubtedly putting the proposed budget together now. Once it gets to the Council, chances to significantly alter it are limited.

So take a moment to weigh in. A large volume of responses will let the mayor know that we’ll tell him what we think if he asks.

NOTE: Thanks to budget and children’s policy consultant and indefatigable blogger Susie Cambria for alerting me to the survey.