A non-housing program for the homeless

[Marvin Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(It seems clear the plan is to allow most of the hundreds of thousands of
homeless families to disperse and find work and housing on their own, with
the immobile and unemployable to be swept into segregated trailer camps
which even Newt Gingrich has condemned as a "crazy notion" which "will
isolate them from the rest of society". The Bush administration's priority,
though, is exactly that: to quickly sweep "them" out of public view by by
providing readily-available trailers and other cheap prefab housing, some
token rental and job-training allowances, and passing responsibility for the
homeless onto charitable institutions. Gingrich and other critics, including
Democrats, are promoting more private sector involvement through tax
incentives and subsidies to encourage developers to build low-cost housing.
But the private sector won't invest unless it is profitable to do so, and
there is infrastructure already in place. To meet the emergency, an urgent
crash program of decent and affordable public housing and jobs is required -
in New Orleans and elsewhere -  but because of the dispersal of the homeless
and the absence of popular organization and pressure, that isn't going to
happen.)
---------------------------
Bush Presents Post-Katrina Housing Plan

President's 'Homesteading Act' Proposal Is a Start, But More Help Is Needed,
Some Say By JACKIE CALMES Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 19, 2005; Page A4

WASHINGTON -- On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of families left
homeless after Hurricane Katrina, President Bush has proposed a response in
keeping with his "ownership society" agenda: the Urban Homesteading Act.

With the name, the president conjured up images of the famed Homestead Act
of 1862, which settled the West through government giveaways of land. Under
the 21st-century version, the government would identify property it owns in
the affected region and run a lottery to award sites to low-income
"homesteaders" who would pledge to build there.

It's a concept along the lines of Mr. Bush's broader agenda to expand asset
ownership -- not just housing, but shares of stock, and savings accounts --
to lower-income families. But it's a modest step for meeting needs in
Louisiana and Mississippi, according to housing experts across the political
spectrum, who say tax incentives and many additional rental vouchers also
will be needed to get developers and nonprofit groups to do the rest.

"It's a very small effort," says Ronald Utt, a housing scholar at the
Heritage Foundation, which works closely with Republicans. But, he adds,
"We're all flying blind here. We don't have any examples in modern history
of a million people being displaced in America."

The president's domestic-policy chief, Claude Allen, says the homesteading
initiative "is only a piece of the housing needs that are being addressed."
Mr. Allen adds that "the real solution" is to provide aid for renting
housing to those who choose to go to other states, though it's unclear if
the administration will ask for new money beyond existing programs.

In the New Orleans area alone, Katrina left a quarter-million families
homeless, Mr. Bush told the nation last week. The White House doesn't know
how many federal properties might be available through foreclosures and
vacancies for the homesteading lottery, although the main landlord, the
Department of Housing and Urban Development, has identified about 4,000 in
the region, including about a thousand in the New Orleans area. Other
agencies are combing their inventories of vacant lots and buildings. The
administration envisions public-private partnerships, working with
charitable groups such as Habitat for Humanity, to help the needy get
mortgages or donations to build on the sites.

Robert Greenstein, executive director of the liberal Center on Budget
Policies and Priorities, said the initiative's reach will be limited not
only by the available federal land, but also by the poverty of many
prospective claimants, who wouldn't be able to afford a mortgage on their
homes, even if they won the land. "This is probably not something that would
help the poorest of the poor," he says. Policy analyst Ray Boshara at the
nonpartisan New America Foundation notes that Mississippi families overall
have the lowest net worth in the nation, while Louisiana and Alabama are
49th and 44th, respectively -- facts that could crimp Mr. Bush's goal of
spurring ownership.

Beyond the homesteading initiative, the Federal Emergency Management Agency
is buying several hundred thousand trailers and mobile homes for temporary
and long-term housing. Liberals and conservatives alike say the
administration should rely more on increasing federal rental vouchers,
instead of letting FEMA follow what Republican Newt Gingrich, the former
House speaker, calls "this crazy notion of thousands of mobile homes" for
evacuees that will "isolate them from the rest of society" -- much as some
victims of last year's Florida hurricanes still remain in crime-ridden
trailer camps.

Mr. Gingrich sees the Katrina recovery effort as a chance to "get rid of
public housing." Especially in New Orleans, where segregation of
impoverished households was among the worst in the nation, he sees "a
one-time opportunity to move everyone forward to live in decent housing."

That takes new construction, which Mr. Bush's proposals go only so far to
address. Besides the homesteading initiative, he outlined two proposals to
spur business investment and jobs. One would create "Worker Recovery
Accounts," up to $5,000 for evacuees to spend on job training and education
to find new work, and for child-care expenses as they search. The other
would designate Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama as a Gulf Opportunity
Zone, with the government providing about $2 billion in tax incentives,
loans and loan guarantees for small businesses.

However, New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta region were among the first
tax-favored "enterprise zones" a decade ago, and the record shows little
impact, says Leslie Papke, an economics professor at Michigan State
University. "If there's an effect, it will be small," she predicts. "I think
businesses will wait to see what infrastructure is in place" as the federal,
state and local governments rebuild roads, bridges and levees.

Nicolas Retsinas, director of Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing
Studies, says restoring the Gulf Coast's housing stock "is clearly going to
be a venture that's going to involve more than government." Mr. Retsinas is
vice chairman of the board of Habitat for Humanity, to which Mr. Bush is
looking for help. He says the organization is weighing how to expand its
activities, though the first priority for 25 affiliates in the region is to
rebuild 800 Habitat homes that were lost. This week it will announce a
"Home-in-a-box" program to be tested in Jackson, Miss.; modular house parts
will be built, and then trucked to permanent sites as those become available
to new owners.

As for the private sector, Pres Kabacoff, chief executive of HRI Properties,
a leading New Orleans developer, says the main thing for government to do is
rebuild the infrastructure so that the lenders and insurance companies that
builders depend on will have the confidence to reinvest. The government also
could expand a tax break for developers, which now applies to projects that
include housing for lower-income renters, to apply also to projects for
lower-income owners -- as the administration has proposed in the past but
not pursued. Mr. Kabacoff also would like the government to raise the income
limits for such mixed-income rental units from the current ceiling of about
$40,000 in New Orleans to as high as $80,000 for a family of four, to make
more people eligible and to encourage construction.

"We know how to build high-volume, mixed-income communities for
homeownership and rental housing," says Bruce Katz, a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution think tank and a former Clinton administration housing
official, citing experiences with local tax incentives. But the president
must go further, he adds, including by promoting his own proposal for tax
incentives for mixed-income homeowner developments: "Why not put the private
sector to work here?"