Act Now to Save Housing Resources!

Separate and Unequal: The Struggle of Tenants With Mental Illness to Maintain Housing (This is a PDF document; You will need the free Acrobat Reader to view it.) Support the Bazelon Center. Your tax-deductible donation helps the Bazelon Center keep you informed on important developments in mental health law and policy. Not a Subscriber? Sign up now to receive action alerts and updates from the Bazelon Center. Syndicate Our Alerts. With our new RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds, you can receive instant notification of new alerts, updates, news releases and publications on our website. If you have your own website, you can also automatically post links to new resources from the Bazelon Center on your website. Find out more...

(June 14, 2005)—The House Subcommittee responsible for allocating funds to federal housing programs will make their decisions tomorrow, Wednesday, June 15. At risk are thousands of rental vouchers, operating funds for Housing Authorities and financial support for nonprofit housing providers throughout the country.

The ability of individual tenants with disabilities to pay their rent to private and nonprofit landlords will be decided by the House Appropriations Subcommittee tomorrow. If the Subcommittee does not fully fund HUD’s 2004-2005 budget for 2006, HUD will have to cut somewhere. Federal funding for very low income tenants will be one of the targets.

We already know what HUD would like to cut. The Administration’s State and Local Housing Flexibility Act (S. 771; HR 1999) would

• drastically reduce the numbers of rental vouchers to low and very low income families and individuals;
• it would eliminate funding for rental subsidies in non-profit housing, including supportive housing and housing for homeless individuals;
• it would eliminate the majority of tenant protections that the Congress and HUD created over the past 50 years; and
• it will further reduce the operating subsidies that make it possible for Housing Authorities to maintain decent and safe condition.

We will send more information about the State and Local Housing Flexibility Act soon. But if Congress does not budget sufficient funding for HUD’s programs as they currently exist, individuals with mental illnesses and other disabilities, already burdened by extremely low incomes, will face new housing crises.

Take action Now!

Please send an email, call or fax a statement to one or all of the members on the House Transportation, Treasury and Housing and Urban Development Subcommittee.

The Subcommittee’s number is 202/225-2141; its fax is 202/225-0900.
The Representatives on the subcommittee are:
Alabama (Rep. Aderholt, Rep.)
Arizona (Rep. Pastor, Dem.)
Kentucky (Reps. Rogers, Northrup, Rep.)
Maryland (Rep. Hoyer, Dem.)
Massachusetts (Rep. Olver, Dem.)
Michigan (Rep. Knollenberg, Rep. Kilpatrick, Dem.)
New Jersey (Rep. Rothman, Dem.)
New York (Rep. Sweeney, Rep.)
Ohio (Rep. Regula, Dem.)
South Carolina (Rep. Clyburn, Dem.)
Texas (Rep. Culberson, Rep.)
Virginia (Rep. Wolf, Rep.)

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