April, 13 2009, 01:43pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Renee Willis, Vice President for Field and Communications,media@nlihc.org,Ph.,202-662-1530 x. 247
Study Finds That Rents for Modest Studio and 1-Bedroom Housing Units Are Higher Than Monthly Income or People With Disabilities
TAC and CCD Housing Task Force release new study documenting extreme housing affordability crisis for the most vulnerable people with disabilities
WASHINGTON
Across the United States in 2008, people with
disabilities with the lowest incomes faced an extreme housing affordability
crisis as rents for moderately priced studio and one-bedroom apartments soared
above their entire monthly income. The national average rent for a one-bedroom
unit climbed to $749 per month in 2008 - higher than $667, the average monthly
income of over 4 million people with disabilities.
These shocking statistics are some
of the important findings included in Priced
Out in 2008 - a study of the severe housing affordability
problems of people with disabilities who must survive on incomes far below the
federal poverty line. The study compares the federal Supplemental Security Income
(SSI) payments of people with serious and long-term disabilities to U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Fair Market Rents for modestly
priced rental units. Priced Out
is published every two years by the Technical Assistance Collaborative (TAC)
and the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD) Housing Task Force to
shine a spotlight on our nation's most compelling - and least
understood - housing affordability crisis.
In 2008, 219 housing market areas
across 41 states had modest one-bedroom rents that exceeded 100 percent of
monthly SSI, including 25 communities with rents over 150 percent. Between
2006-2008, the number of market areas with modest rents higher than SSI rose
from 164 to 219 - a 34 percent increase. For the first time, there were 3
housing market areas - Honolulu (HI), Columbia City (MD), and Nantucket
County (MA) - where SSI recipients needed to spend over 200 percent of
their income for a modest 1-bedroom housing unit - not only an
impossibility, but absurd.
Perhaps the most shocking
revelation in Priced Out in 2008
is the precipitous and relentless decline in housing affordability for SSI
recipients since 1998 when the first edition of Priced Out was developed. The amount of monthly SSI income
needed to rent a modest one-bedroom unit has risen an astonishing 62 percent from
69 percent of SSI in 1998 to 112.1 percent of SSI in 2008. The root cause of
the nation's most severe - and most hidden - housing crisis
is clearly revealed in the painful statistics included in the 2008 edition of Priced Out.
As stated by Congressman Barney
Frank in the Foreword to Priced Out,
"The lack of adequate housing is a serious obstacle to a decent life for
anyone. It can be particularly troublesome for people dealing with
disabilities, for whom the physical and emotional stress of a lack of decent
shelter are added burdens for people already doing their best to deal with
difficulty."
Discretionary state SSI
supplements provided by states are not the solution to the housing
affordability problems experienced by people with disabilities living on SSI
payments. Even in the State of Alaska - which had the highest state SSI
supplement in 2008 of $362 and a total monthly SSI payment of $999 -
people with disabilities receiving SSI still needed to pay 80.6 percent of
their monthly income to rent a modest one-bedroom unit.
While some progress has been made
by Federal officials responding to creating additional affordable housing
resources, a bolder action is essential to inaugurate a new era in housing
policy that places the housing needs of people with disabilities within the
mainstream of national housing policy. TAC and the CCD Housing Task Force urge
the federal government to take the following actions:
-
Enact Section 811 legislation
that will create at least 5,000 new units of permanent supportive housing each
year. -
Provide 10,000 new Housing Choice
Vouchers for People with Disabilities in HUD's annual budget. -
Support the
Administration's proposal to appropriate at least $1 billion in funding
for the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund. -
Remove Barriers to Permanent
Supportive Housing in the LIHTC Program. -
Facilitate a Coordinated
Disability Housing Policy Across the Federal Government. -
Reinvigorate Fair Housing
Enforcement.
By implementing these
recommendations, the federal government will send a powerful message of
inclusion to state and local communities, along with the housing resources
necessary to finally begin to achieve the vision of community integration for
people with disabilities first articulated almost 20 years ago through the ADA.
A copy of Priced Out in 2008 can be found online at https://www.tacinc.org/pubs/pricedout/2008.html. For
more information about Priced Out,
please contact Emily Cooper at ecooper@tacinc.org
or (617) 266-5657 x123.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition is dedicated solely to ending America's affordable housing crisis. Established in 1974 by Cushing N. Dolbeare, NLIHC educates, organizes and advocates to ensure decent, affordable housing within healthy neighborhoods for everyone. NLIHC provides up-to-date information, formulates policy and educates the public on housing needs and the strategies for solutions.
LATEST NEWS
'Just the Beginning': 50+ Arrested for Blockading Citigroup Bank Over Climate Crimes
"Through people-powered resistance, we can give money a conscience and stop Citi's destruction of our planet," said one Indigenous campaigner.
Apr 25, 2024
Twenty more demonstrators were arrested Thursday, the second day of Earth Week protests targeting Citigroup's Manhattan headquarters in what organizers called "the beginning of a wave of direct actions to take place over the summer targeting big banks for creating climate chaos that is killing our communities and our planet."
Protest organizers—who include Climate Defenders, New York Communities for Change, Planet over Profit, and Stop the Money Pipeline—said 53 activists were arrested over two days of demonstrations, which included blocking the entrance to Citigroup's headquarters, to "demand that the bank stop funding fossil fuels."
Organizers said this week's demonstrations "were just the beginning" of what they're calling a "Summer of Heat" targeting big banks for their role in the climate emergency and for "polluting our land, air, and water, and threatening the health of children, families, and our planet." Citigroup is the world's second-largest fossil fuel financier.
"We're holding Citi accountable for financing dirty fossil fuels from Canada to Latin America and beyond," said Chief Na'moks of the Wet'suwet'en Nation, one of several Indigenous leaders who took part in the action. "Through people-powered resistance, we can give money a conscience and stop Citi's destruction of our planet."
Jonathan Westin, executive director of Climate Defenders, asserted that "Citigroup's racist funding of oil, coal, and gas is creating climate chaos that's devastating communities of color across the country."
"We're taking action to tell Citi that we won't put up with their environmental racism for one more day," Westin continued. "Our communities have reached the boiling point. Our children have asthma, our city's sky was orange, and our air polluted because of the climate crisis caused by Citi and Wall Street."
"We're going to keep organizing and taking direct action until Citi listens to us," he vowed.
Stop the Money Pipeline co-director Alec Connon said: "To have any chance of reigning in the climate crisis, we must stop investing in fossil fuel expansion. Yet, Citibank is pumping billions of dollars into new coal, oil, and gas projects."
"We're here to make it clear: If they're going to fund the companies disrupting our climate and our lives, we're going to disrupt their business," Connon added.
Activists have repeatedly targeted Citigroup in recent years as the megabank has pumped more than $300 billion into fossil fuel investments around the world since the Paris climate agreement.
According to the protest organizers:
Citi has provided $668 million in funding to Formosa Plastics between 2001-2021, which is trying to build a $9.4 billion plastics facility in a majority Black community in the heart of Cancer Alley in Louisiana.
Citigroup is also one of the biggest funders of state-run oil and gas companies in the Amazon basin, pumping in over $40 billion between 2016-2020, and a major backer of Petroperú, which has been involved in oil spills and Indigenous rights violations.
"From wildfires, heatwaves, and floods to deadly air pollution and mass drought, Citi's fossil fuel financing is killing us," said Alice Hu of New York Communities for Change. "We've sent polite petitions and had pleading meetings with bank representatives, but Citi refuses to stop pouring billions each year into coal, oil, and gas."
"That's why we're fighting for our lives now with the best tool we have left: mass, nonviolent disruptive civil disobedience," Hu added.
Keep ReadingShow Less
No Outside Probe, US Reiterates as Gazans Reportedly Buried Alive in Mass Grave
"How does it ever make sense that the United States asks the accused party to examine itself?" asked one incredulous reporter.
Apr 25, 2024
A Biden administration spokesperson once again brushed off calls for an independent investigation into how hundreds of Palestinians found in mass graves near Gaza hospitals died when asked Thursday about new reports that many of the victims were tortured, summarily executed—and in some cases, buried alive by Israeli invaders.
During a Thursday U.S. State Department press conference in Washington, D.C., a reporter noted Gaza officials' claim that mass grave victims "including children were tortured before being killed" and that "some even showed signs of being buried alive, along with other crimes against humanity."
"What's wrong with an independent, scientific, forensic investigation?"
Noting calls by Palestinian officials and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk for an independent probe into mass graves, the reporter said that "this administration repeatedly said that it asks... the Israeli government to investigate itself."
"How does it ever make sense that the United States asks the accused party to examine itself and provide reports that you have previously said that you actually trust?" the reporter asked State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel. "What's wrong with an independent, scientific, forensic investigation?"
Patel replied: "We continue to find these reports incredibly troubling. And that's why yesterday you saw the national security adviser for this to be thoroughly investigated."
While National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on Wednesday called reports of mass grave atrocities "deeply disturbing" and said that "we want answers" from Israel, he did not call for an independent investigation.
When the reporter pressed Patel on the legitimacy of asking Israel to investigate itself, Patel said, "we believe that through a thorough investigation we can get some additional answers."
Thursday's exchange followed a similar back-and-forth on Tuesday between Patel and Said Arikat, a journalist for the Jerusalem-based
Palestinian news outlet al-Quds who asked about the mass graves.
At least 392 bodies—including numerous women and children—have been found in mass graves outside Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, where Palestinian Civil Defense and other workers have been exhuming victims for nearly a week. Officials believe there are as many as 700 bodies in three separate mass graves.
Based on more recent exhumations, local Civil Defense chief Yamen Abu Sulaiman said during a Wednesday press conference that "we believe that the occupation buried alive at least 20 people at the Nasser Medical Complex."
"There are cases of field execution of some patients while undergoing surgeries and wearing surgical gowns," he stated, adding that some victims showed signs of torture and 10 bodies had medical tubes attached to them.
Gaza Civil Defense official Mohammed Mughier told reporters that "we need forensic examination" to definitively determine the causes of death for the 20 people believed to have been buried alive.
Previous reporting on the mass graves quoted rescue workers who said they found people who were apparently executed while their hands were bound, with some victims missing heads, skin, and internal organs.
Other mass graves have been found in Gaza, most notably on the grounds of al-Shifa Hospital, where Israeli forces last month committed what the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor called "one of the largest massacres in Palestinian history."
It's also not the first time there have been reports of Israeli troops burying victims alive during the current war, in which Palestinian and international officials say Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 122,000 Gazans, including at least 11,000 people who are missing and feared dead. Israeli forces attacking Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia last December reportedly bulldozed and buried alive dozens of injured patients and displaced people.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Columbia Students File Civil Rights Complaint After Arrests, National Guard Threat
"The violent repression we're facing as peaceful anti-war protesters is appalling."
Apr 25, 2024
A day after Columbia University officials warned it may call on the National Guard to remove nonviolent student protesters who have been occupying campus lawns since last week in solidarity with Gaza, advocacy group Palestine Legal on Thursday filed a federal civil rights complaint demanding an investigation into the school's "discriminatory treatment of Palestinian students and their allies."
The school discriminated against pro-Palestinian protesters last week when President Minouche Shafik summoned New York Police Department officers in riot gear to arrest more than 100 students, said Palestine Legal.
The complaint details how the escalation against students, who have set up an encampment on campus to demand Columbia divest from companies that work with the Israeli government and to support calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, is part of a monthslong pattern of the university's targeting of pro-Palestinian students.
According to Palestine Legal, students of all backgrounds who have demanded an end to Israel's U.S.-backed massacre of Palestinians in Gaza "have been the target of extreme anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic harassment, including receiving multiple death threats, being harassed for wearing keffiyehs or hijab, doxxed, stereotyped, being treated differently by high-ranking administrators including... Shafik, an attack with a chemical agent that led to at least 10 students requiring hospitalization and dozens of others, including a Palestinian student, seeking medical attention, and more."
Columbia student Maryam Alwan, who Palestine Legal is representing in the complaint to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, said the university has "utterly failed to protect [her] from racism and abuse."
"Beyond that, the university has also played a role in this repression by having me arrested and suspended for peacefully protesting Israel's genocide in Gaza," said Alwan. "The violent repression we're facing as peaceful anti-war protesters is appalling. Palestinian students at Columbia deserve justice and accountability, not only for Israel's decadeslong oppression and violence against our people, but for the racism and discrimination we've experienced here on Columbia's campus."
Palestine Legal is representing four students in the case, as well as Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, which was suspended from the campus late last year after holding anti-war protests.
The group called Columbia's threat to call in the National Guard "gravely concerning."
"Columbia's vicious crackdown on student protests calling for Palestinian freedom amidst an ongoing genocide should alarm us all. Students have always been at the forefront of the most pressing social issues of the day," said Palestine Legal staff attorney Sabiya Ahamed.
College campuses have been the sites of frequent pro-Palestinian protests since October, and the NYPD's crackdown on Columbia students last week galvanized students at universities across the country.
The Biden administration has said little about the student demonstrations, but President Joe Biden referred to them broadly as "antisemitic protests" this week.
"We urge federal civil rights officials to do what Columbia has disgracefully failed to," said Ahamed. "Ensure the rights of Palestinian and allied students are protected at a moment when their voices are most essential."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular