Presidential candidate and former HUD Secretary Julián Castro participated in an Our Homes, Our Votes, Our New Hampshire event on August 17 for an intimate policy conversation on affordable housing and homelessness and a tour of Cross Roads House, a homeless shelter in Portsmouth, NH. “I believe housing is a human right. Everybody should have a safe, affordable place to live,” Secretary Castro said at the event. He called for investing $40 billion per year in the national Housing Trust Fund (HTF). “That’s particularly significant because that’s aimed at people who are extremely low-income,” he said.
During the policy conversation, Secretary Castro spoke with NLIHC President and CEO Diane Yentel, Cross Roads House Executive Director Martha Stone, Ben Frost with New Hampshire Housing, residents of Cross Roads House and other impacted community members. Secretary Castro said he intended to elevate the issue of housing affordability on the campaign trail, focusing on the need to increase funding for housing vouchers, the national HTF, and implementing source-of-income discrimination protections, among other things.
The tour of Cross Roads House, which provides emergency and transitional shelter for homeless families and individuals as they return to permanent housing, showcased the property’s emergency-shelter dorm rooms, the transitional shelter rooms, and on-site facilities including medical, kitchen and resource rooms.
Our Homes, Our Votes, Our New Hampshire is a nonpartisancandidate engagement partnership between Housing Action NH and NLIHC to elevate the affordable housing crisis and its solutions in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary. The goal is to ensure that allcandidates for president put forward bold solutions for affordable housing—and commit to advancing real solutions – so that the next president prioritize ending homelessness and housing poverty. Read more about Our Homes, Our Votes, Our New Hampshire here and about the nationwide Our Homes, Our Votes: 2020 project here.
Watch the recordings of the conversation at: https://bit.ly/2Mowx3v and https://bit.ly/2NgzzpW