Government Shutdown and Affordable Housing
I sat in on a conference call today organized by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The subject was the status of the government shutdown and its’ effect on low income programs funded by HUD.
There are 1150 Section 8 project based buildings that have not had their contracts renewed in December and January. This means they could not receive Section 8 payments from HUD. Most have enough reserves to get by but HUD has not come up with a fix for those who do not. The consensus was that HUD had enough funding from previous fiscal years to fund Section 8 and public housing, but after that resources run dry. Similarly if projects are pulling from reserves, a major physical crisis may go unanswered. This is a major problem and unfortunately, HUD is just one agency trying to struggle through. Written by Paul Dribin
The St Louis Contrarian 