The United for Homes (UFH) campaign website includes a “Resources” page of images, fact sheets, data, and other tools to assist advocates in spreading the message about the simple UFH solutions to homelessness and housing poverty in America: reinvesting savings from modest reforms to the mortgage interest deduction (MID) into affordable housing.
The UFH campaign proposal would benefit millions of lower income homeowners and generate billions of dollars in savings to be invested in affordable housing solutions like the national Housing Trust Fund and Housing Choice Vouchers. The campaign calls for reducing the portion of a mortgage eligible for a tax break from $1 million to $500,000, impacting fewer than 6% of mortgage holders nationwide, and converting the MID into a tax credit. Nationally, these two changes would allow 15 million more low and moderate income homeowners who do not currently benefit from the MID to receive tax relief and would generate $241 billion over ten years to invest in affordable rental housing solutions.
The UFH Resources page presents user-friendly data, information, and tools under the categories: Get National Data, Get Taxpayer Profiles, Build Support, Gain Attention, and Advocate Effectively. Users can quickly download or print materials to take with them to a meeting with a member of Congress or to post on social media. For example:
- Get National Data – provides NLIHC’s The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes report showing that extremely low income renter households in America face a shortage of 7.4 million affordable and available rental homes and that 71% percent of these households are severely cost-burdened. The UFH campaign calls for rebalancing federal housing expenditures to meet this critical housing need.
- Get Taxpayer Profiles – provides different homeowner profiles showing how reforming the MID would affect their tax situation.
- Build Support – provides a United for Homes Fact Sheet that succinctly describes the issue, solution, and UFH proposal.
- Gain Attention – provides a Media Tool Kit that includes sample tweets, a press release, images, and talking points advocates can use to spread the campaign message on social media and to reporters.
- Advocate Effectively – provides a script for calling members of Congress to encourage their support for the UFH campaign.
Visit the new UFH campaign website at: http://www.unitedforhomes.org/