The Steering Committee of the Opportunity Starts at Home multi-sector affordable housing campaign sent a letter on September 20 urging Congress to include in its final Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) FY19 funding bill the House provision that invests $50 million for the Housing Choice Voucher Mobility Demonstration.
The Housing Choice Voucher Mobility Demonstration would provide low income households with expanded access to affordable homes located in high-opportunity neighborhoods with strong schools, better job prospects, and other resources. In the letter, the Steering Committee emphasizes the growing research showing that when children in poor families grow up in neighborhoods with low poverty, quality schools, and low crime, they are significantly more likely to attend college, less likely to become single parents, and more likely to earn dramatically more as adults over the course of their lifetimes.
The demonstration would empower participating housing agencies to inform families with children about the benefits of high-opportunity neighborhoods, help interested families identify housing possibilities in those neighborhoods, recruit landlords to participate in the program, and support families during and after the move. To enable this demonstration and to incentivize housing agencies to join, roughly 2,000 new vouchers would be made available. The demonstration would be evaluated for its effectiveness.
The Opportunity Starts at Home Steering Committee currently consists of 15 leading national organizations: the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Children’s HealthWatch, Make Room, National Alliance to End Homelessness, Catholic Charities USA, Children’s Defense Fund, Community Catalyst, Food Research and Action Center, NAACP, National Alliance on Mental Illness, National Association of Community Health Centers, National Education Association, National League of Cities, and UnidosUS.
Read the Steering Committee’s letter at: https://bit.ly/2NveKIX
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