ST. LOUIS, MO – U.S. Senator Kit Bond today held a roundtable with city officials, public housing advocates, and local families in North St. Louis to highlight the importance of addressing the shortage of affordable housing to help low-income, working families during the current economic crisis.  Last week, Bond was successful in passing a provision to jumpstart the building of affordable housing units in Missouri and across the nation.  Bond is holding similar events in five other cities across the state this week.

 

               “The shortage in available affordable housing is another blow to families in Missouri and across the nation struggling to find work and put food on the table,” said Bond.  “We must jumpstart the building of affordable housing units to help struggling families while creating jobs and putting people back to work.”

 

Bond held today’s roundtable at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in North St. Louis in the Salisbury Park neighborhood.  A long-time affordable housing advocate and ranking member of the Senate subcommittee that funds the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Bond has fought for funds to make affordable housing available for families, including $1 million he secured for Salisbury Park in 2005.   Bond praised Bethlehem Lutheran for working to rebuild their neighborhood, which was over 70 percent vacant.  Once completed, the development will rebuild a 15 block blighted area and will have 54 renovated apartments, 98 low income housing tax credit apartments and 60 new single-family homes. 

 

Last week, Bond led a bipartisan group of Senators in introducing an amendment to help provide needy families affordable housing.  Bond’s amendment provides $2 billion to fund low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) projects that have been stalled by the financial credit crisis.  As part of the Democrats’ spending bill now signed into law, the Senate unanimously accepted Bond’s provision.

 

               Over the last 20 years, the LIHTC program successfully produced some 2 million housing units for low-income families.  The program creates about 120,000 housing units and creates 180,000 new jobs annually.  Despite the program’s success, the financial crisis has resulted in drastic cuts in investment to this program.  These funding cuts have endangered the production of affordable housing and new jobs.   Bond’s provision helps address these cuts to by providing $2 billion in direct equity grants to states, which will allow many housing-financing deals to be completed.  Much of the funds will be directed towards tax credit deals that were approved by state credit agencies and have financing to proceed into construction except for the recent equity gap created by the credit crisis.  In other words, these funds would go to real “shovel ready” deals. 

 

               This provision will have a real impact in Missouri, especially for low-income, working families in need of safe and affordable housing.  In Missouri, about 703 affordable housing units approved by the Missouri Housing Development Commission were stalled by the equity gap.  For 2009, the state officials anticipate another 2,000 units being stalled.  Bond’s amendment will save more than 700 housing units and create 3,000 new jobs in Missouri. 

 

                Over the past few weeks, 85 percent of the calls to Bond’s office from Missourians were in opposition to the Democrats’ spending bill.  While Bond opposed the final trillion-dollar bill because it does more to stimulate the debt and growth of government than the economy, Bond fought to improve the bill through bipartisan amendments, including the low-income housing provision. 

 

“This is the type of emergency stimulus spending we should be supporting – programs that will create jobs now and help families,” said Bond.

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