Neighborhood Partnerships

Federal spending on affordable housing and preventing and ending homelessness continues to improve!  We are very pleased that on Thursday, July 1, 2010 the House Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development (T-HUD) Appropriations Subcommittee marked up its Fiscal Year 2011 spending bill.  This subcommittee oversees funding for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, and sets spending levels for federal housing programs.

Some highlights of the appropriations bill include: A 10% increase to $2.055 billion in funding for HUD’s McKinney-Vento programs which serve homeless families and individuals.  While this is great news, estimates indicate that to fully implement the Hearth Act will require $2.4 billion.  The Hearth Act was the 2009 reauthorization of the McKinney Vento act, and it expanded the definition of homelessness; expanded homelessness prevention activities; and increases efforts to serve homeless families and children, among other things.  (Read a summary here.)

The bill also requested $75 million for additional VA Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers to serve homeless veterans, continued funding for housing programs for seniors and people with disabilities; and increased funding for the tenant based rental assistance program renewals.

The bill does not provide funding for two new HUD initiatives, the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, or PETRA (Preservation, Enhancement and Transformation of Rental Assistance). Choice Neighborhoods Initiative is a HUD proposal to replace HOPE VI, a program which was designed to rehabilitate and replace distressed public housing properties.  PETRA is a proposal by HUD to transform its current programs.  The proposed changes would: streamline its current subsidy programs, change the way public housing is rehabilitated and preserved in the future, and promote resident choice.  Advocates for affordable housing and their residents are concerned about some components of PETRA, while HUD asserts that PETRA will be both beneficial and critical to the future of affordable housing.

Funding for the National Housing Trust Fund was not included in this appropriations bill.  Advocates are still hopeful that the Senate will again consider legislation to fund the Trust Fund through the Tax Extenders Bill (HR 4213).  A $1 billion investment into the Trust Fund would bring over $15 million to Oregon.

What’s next?

The Senate Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development Appropriations Subcommittee will also markup its Fiscal Year 2011 spending bill.

Want to know more?

If you’re interested in learning more, the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the National Low Income Housing Coalition are both tracking this issue.  Download the NLIHC summary of spending since FY 2005 and proposed FY 2011 levels.

Neighborhood Partnerships has added two new Board members as part of a planned Board expansion.  Bill Hall and Jesse Beason have just signed on for three year terms.

“We’re thrilled to have Bill and Jesse join the Board,” said Janet Byrd, Executive Director of Neighborhood Partnerships.  “They both bring such deep experience working on behalf of Oregon’s communities, particularly in the policy arena.  They have a lot to offer the Board and staff as we work to create opportunities across Oregon for low income individuals and families.”

Bill Hall is a County Commissioner in Lincoln County, who just won re-election to a second term.  Bill helped write the Lincoln County Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness and serves as co-chair of the Oregon Ending Homelessness Advisory Committee.  He has been active in the Housing Alliance, as well as in the Association of Oregon Counties.  He is a history buff and lives in Newport with his family.

Jesse Beason is Executive Director of Proud Ground, a Portland based community land trust which provides affordable homeownership opportunities to low income families.  Jesse previously worked as policy advisor for then-Commissioner Sam Adams and at Metro.  He lives in Portland, and when he isn’t managing his organization, he manages his two hives of bees.

The 2011 Legislative session is just around the corner! Please join Neighborhood Partnerships in a meeting of homeless family advocates and others to discuss possible legislative proposals in the 2011 session. If you’re planning to advocate for policy or resources that affect homeless families and children, we’d love to hear about it.

Many of us are working to plan our 2011 legislative agendas, and there is interest and momentum around homeless families and children in particular. Please join us at this meeting to share what you’re thinking about in 2011 or learn about other policy proposals under consideration.

Please join us to discuss possible legislative proposals in the 2011 session on Tuesday, June 15 from 1—3. If you’d like to attend or have questions, please contact Alison.  If you can’t attend, we’d still love to hear what you’re doing, so please email or call us, 503-226-3001 x107.

Please join us!

Bridges to Housing is very excited to release our 2009 Year End Evaluation report!  Once again, this report indicates that Bridges to Housing is serving homeless families with very high levels of need.  The report also illustrates that Bridges to Housing is very successful in helping these families maintain their housing, helping children remain stable in educational settings, and helping these families make progress on health, safety, stability and other goals.

The evaluation of Bridges to Housing is being conducted by Portland State University’s Regional Research Institute.  On Thursday, May 5, 2010 Diane Yatchmenoff, Ph.D. of the Regional Research Institute presented the 2009 Year-End Evaluation Report to the Bridges to Housing Regional Steering Committee.

This report focuses on families who have been in Bridges to Housing for 18 months, families preparing to exit Bridges to Housing, and overall program retention rates.  The evaluation contains some exciting results about Bridges to Housing.  Overall, it finds that families enrolled in Bridges to Housing have continued to make gains in safety, stability and child wellbeing.  Families have also experienced dramatic improvements in basic life skills, social support networks and progress towards education or employment.  Impacts on children have also been significant.

The evaluation report shows significant improvements in safety.  Forty-two percent of families reported one or more instances of domestic violence during the six months prior to intake.  This drops in the six months after intake to 5% and remains at 5% through 18 months in the program.

Results for children are also promising – with significant improvements in stability in childcare or educational settings, children with primary health care providers and dental care providers, and improvements in meeting grade-level benchmarks in school.

As Bridges to Housing moves forward, we hope to share these evaluation reports and learnings not only with our local partners but with others working to develop housing plus services models for families.

You can download and read the full report or the executive summary here.  Earlier reports are also available.

While in Washington, D.C. for the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (NLIHC) Annual Conference, The Oregon Housing Alliance won NLIHC’s first ever  State & Local Organizing Award for our work in 2009, an honor we shared with Oregon’s Community Alliance of Tenants.

DeDe Carney, NLIHC Board Member, poses with Janet Byrd, Executive Director of Neighborhood Partnerships and Chair of the Oregon Housing Alliance, and Dung Ho, CAT Staff Member, after awarding them the State and Local Organizing Award.

George Moses, Board Chair, NLIHC, Janet Byrd,  Alison McIntosh, Project Associate for Neighborhood Partnerships, and Sheila Crowley, Executive Director, NLIHC.

Photos courtesy of Jamie Rose Photography.

Higher prices in the rental market continue to force Oregon families to choose between paying rent, putting food on the table, and paying utility bills.  A national study reports 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.

According to the report released today, the Housing Wage for Oregon is $14.93. The Housing Wage is the hourly wage a family must earn – working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year – to be able to afford rent and utilities in the private housing market. The average fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Oregon is $776—a number that has increased 27.5% since 2000. These increases continue despite high unemployment and foreclosures. As rents continue to increase, more and more Oregon families find themselves homeless for the first time.

“Every year it is becoming more difficult for hard working Oregonians to find decent homes they can afford,” said Bill Hall, Lincoln County Commissioner. “In the past year, rural Oregon has seen huge increases to the number of children and families experiencing homelessness. If we want kids to succeed in school, or parents to succeed in the workplace, people need a place to call home.”

The report, Out of Reach 2010, was jointly released by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), a Washington, DC-based housing advocacy group, and Oregon’s Housing Alliance. The report provides the Housing Wage and other data for every state, metropolitan area and county in the country.

“Housing gives people an opportunity to build better lives,” said Cathey Briggs, Executive Director of Oregon Opportunity Network, “And yet an estimated 45% of renters in Oregon don’t earn enough income to afford a two-bedroom unit at the Fair Market Rent.”  Fair market rents are a federal statistic for determining market rents.

“The on-going recession and increasing rate of foreclosures in Oregon continues to make it more difficult for hard working Oregonians to find a safe, decent and affordable place to call home,” said Janet Byrd, Chair of the Housing Alliance, “The Housing Alliance will call on the legislature in 2011 to help all Oregonians have a safe place to call home.  Over the past year, we’ve seen significant increases in the number of families with children who’ve become homeless.  All too often these days, people are forced to choose between rent and food.”

The typical renter in Oregon earns $12.84, which is $2.09 less than the hourly wage needed to afford a modest unit.

Working at the minimum wage, $8.40 in Oregon, a family in Oregon must have 1.8 wage earners working full-time—or one full-time earner working 71 hours—to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment.

This year, Oregon is the twenty-sixth most expensive state in the nation for renters. The National Housing Wage is $18.44 in 2010.

Oregon’s unemployment rates remain high—10.6% statewide.  Many of Oregon’s counties have even higher unemployment:  Crook County’s unemployment is the highest in the state at 17.9%, Harney County is second with 16.1%. Columbia, Curry, Deschutes, Douglas, Grant, Jefferson, Josephine, Klamath and Linn counties all have unemployment rates above 13%.

For additional information, visit http://www.nlihc.org/oor/oor2010/.

Want to find data on your local community?  Download a PDF here.

You can download a PDF of the media advisory here.

On April 10, 2010, Neighborhood Partnerships staff traveled to Washington, D.C. for the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (NLIHC) Annual Conference.  We were kept busy– we won an award, attended a meeting of other statewide coalitions, learned about changes to federal policies related to affordable housing, and met with our congressional delegation.

First up – our award! The Oregon Housing Alliance won the first ever NLIHC State & Local Organizing Award for our work in 2009, an honor which we shared with Oregon’s Community Alliance of Tenants.  Read all about it here!  Senator Jeff Merkley, who is quickly becoming the go-to-Senator on affordable housing issues, also spoke at the conference the day we received our award.  Senator Merkley called for significant new investments in housing through new vouchers and the National Housing Trust Fund.

We learned about federal legislation related to affordable housing:  The continued campaign to fund the National Housing Trust Fund is in high gear.  The National Housing Trust Fund would bring nearly $15 million to Oregon to serve very low income households! Read more here. Potential changes at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development through their Transforming Rental Assistance initiative are also moving forward; and we learned more about what was included in the President’s Budget for housing.

We also visited Capitol Hill to meet with our Oregon delegation.

While on Capitol Hill, we talked to our delegation about what’s going on in Oregon related to preservation of affordable rental housing and federal rent subsidies; how we hope to protect tenants living in foreclosed properties; and what changes to federal law would help us work more effectively here in Oregon.

The Housing Alliance and Neighborhood Partnerships are pleased to announce that we’ve been selected to receive the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (NLIHC) first annual State and Local Organizing Award! We are sharing this honor with another Oregon organization, the Community Alliance of Tenants.

We’ll be presented with this award at the NLIHC’s Annual Conference in Washington, DC on April 13, 2010.   The Alliance was selected for this honor due to the strength of our campaign to win the statewide 2009 Housing Opportunity Bill, which creates a dedicated, ongoing source of revenue for multifamily housing, homeless prevention, affordable homeownership opportunities, and other housing needs.

The bill increases the state’s existing document recording fee by $15, which is expected to generate as much as $20 million per biennium in new funds. Check out Janet’s post right after we won the Housing Opportunity Bill discussing the many contributions you all made to the victory, and also our accomplishments for the past four years.

We are very excited to win this award, and congratulate our co-recipient, the Community Alliance of Tenants. If you want to be part of the ongoing work of the Housing Alliance, we’d love to hear from you.

The short February legislative session was a whirlwind of activity. Neighborhood Partnerships was active in the session in partnership with the Housing Alliance as well as in support of the issue priorities we identified with our partners in Oregon Thrives.

The Housing Alliance members had a very short list of priorities going into the session, and all made it successfully through session. One is still awaiting a signature by the Governor.

• SB 1013 protects tenants living in foreclosed properties. This bill cleared up some technical issues in the bill passed in 2009.
• SB 1015 extends the sunset date on a statute enabling local governments to provide property tax exemptions to non-profit owned multi-family affordable housing, and provides clearer legal authority for some existing property tax exemptions in Multnomah County.
• HB 3640, once it is signed by the Governor, will provide personal property tax relief to owners of manufactured homes valued at less than $12,500 in the four largest counties in the state—Multnomah, Washington, Lane, and Clackamas.

Oregon Thrives allies worked hard to build momentum for an expansion of Oregon’s Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC. Janet Byrd of NP presented testimony in support of the expansion, which would put money back into the budgets of low income working households statewide, and help them better weather financial stresses. Janet also testified in support of the Oregon Hunger Task Force’s new plan to end hunger in five years.  That report calls out financial asset building, among other strategies, as a key policy to end hunger.

The legislative focus will turn now to 2011. Candidates have all filed now for state and local races, and are gearing up for the primary election on May 18, 2010. Be sure to ask your legislative candidates what they plan to do to create opportunity in Oregon!

On Friday, February 12 constituents gathered in Salem for Oregon Thrives’ “Have a Heart Day” in honor of Oregon’s 151st birthday and Valentine’s Day.  Oregon Thrivesis an emerging coalition of advocacy and service organizations in Oregon, and Neighborhood Partnerships is a founding member and participates in the steering committee.  NP staff went to Salem to participate in the event and encourage legislators to have a heart and remember Oregon’s most vulnerable citizens during this special legislative session and these difficult economic times.

After a brief discussion of the day’s issues and schedule, close to 100 constituents left to talk with 65 of their Senators and Representatives.  We spoke to our elected representatives about critical issues facing hard working Oregonians such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Employment Related Day Care (ERDC), and the Emergency Housing Account.  Constituents also passed out Valentine messages thanking legislators for remembering hard working Oregonians during this special legislative session.

Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon led an interfaith prayer vigil on the steps of the Capitol, drawing attention to the many homeless school children and families.  The vigil was preceded by a conversation focusing on ways to work with schools to serve their homeless students, as well as policy and funding issues.  Janet Byrd lent her expertise to the discussion, focusing on policy and NP’s extensive experience with the issue of family homelessness as a result of its involvement with Bridges to Housing. This discussion was spurred by the 18,000 school-aged children who were homeless for at least some part of the 2008-2009 school year.  The group is planning an interfaith summit on child and family homelessness in late spring.

The afternoon ended with a legislative hearing on increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).  Oregon is one of the few states where income tax is still applied to low-income families.  Multiple testimonies cited the ways in which EITC eases the burden on those in Oregon’s lowest tax brackets.  Expanding Oregon’s EITC was the first recommendation made by the Corporation for Enterprise Development in their Assets for Opportunity Scorecard suggesting how Oregon could improve its climate for its most financially vulnerable citizens.  Increasing the EITC from six percent of the federal credit by three points each year until it reaches 18% in 2014 would benefit over 220,000 households throughout Oregon.  It would also help to boost the local economy as EITC dollars are often spent locally and quickly.

Have a Heart Day was a great success!  Together with Oregon Thrives and their other partners we were able to thank many members of the Oregon State Legislature, reminding them to have a heart during the remainder of the February session to ensure that all Oregonians have an opportunity to thrive.