The Oregon Housing Alliance is pleased to join leading national organizations in education, civil rights, health care and more in a campaign to increase affordable housing across America
Washington, DC – A diverse range of organizations from various sectors announced a new campaign today to increase affordable housing for America’s most vulnerable communities.
The Opportunity Starts at Home campaign launched on Wednesday, March 20 at the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (NLIHC’s) Housing Policy Forum in Washington, DC. With financial support from the Funders for Housing and Opportunity, NLIHC launched this new multi-sector affordable homes campaign together with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Children’s HealthWatch, Make Room, and the National Alliance to End Homelessness, and with a steering committee that includes Catholic Charities USA, Children’s Defense Fund, Community Catalyst, Food Research and Action Center, NAACP, National Alliance on Mental Illness, National Association of Community Health Centers, National Education Association, and UnidosUS. Locally, the Oregon Housing Alliance will participate in the campaign.
Stakeholders from multiple sectors are increasingly recognizing the importance of affordable housing to their own priorities and goals. The Opportunity Starts at Home campaign seeks to mobilize powerful new constituencies beyond housing to ensure that people with the lowest incomes have access to safe, decent, affordable housing in neighborhoods where everyone has equitable opportunities to thrive.
Recent NLIHC research shows the Oregon has only 25 rental homes affordable and available for every 100 renters with extremely low incomes, and nearly nine in ten households who rent their homes with extremely low incomes are severely housing cost-burdened, spending more than half of their incomes on housing. Nationally, just one out of four eligible low income households receives federal housing assistance.
Members of the Oregon Housing Alliance know that the consequences of Oregon’s affordable housing crisis are spilling over into many other areas like the education, health care, civil rights, hunger, homelessness, and poverty sectors.
National leaders hope that by combining voices and expertise, leading organizations from these sectors seek to build a broad national movement that promotes federal policies that protect and expand affordable housing.
The long-term goals of the campaign are to promote federal policies that align strongly with policies supported by the Oregon Housing Alliance:
- Increase rental assistance for Oregonians in the face of rapidly rising rents;
- Provide emergency assistance to people experiencing job losses or other economic shocks to avert housing instability or homelessness; and
- Expand the affordable housing stock for the Oregonians with the lowest incomes.
Nationally, the campaign will act to defend against funding cuts and harmful policy changes in existing low income housing programs.
Nationally, Opportunity Starts at Home is working to strengthen the capacities of multi-sector state coalitions that share the campaign’s goals. The campaign has issued capacity-building grants to partners in seven states, including Oregon. Other states include: California, Idaho, Maine, New Jersey, Ohio, and Utah.
“The time to act is now,” said Diane Yentel, NLIHC president and CEO. “The housing affordability problem has reached historic heights. Federal housing assistance is chronically underfunded and faces increasing threats. It’s time for those who believe that everyone in America deserves a safe and affordable home to join in a movement that will ensure fundamental opportunities for people most in need.”
Learn more about the Opportunity Starts at Home campaign at: www.opportunityhome.org
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Opportunity Starts at Home is a new national multi-sector campaign to generate widespread support for federal policies that protect and expand affordable housing.
Established in 1974 by Cushing N. Dolbeare, the National Low Income Housing Coalition is dedicated solely to achieving socially just public policy that assures people with the lowest income in the United States have affordable and decent homes.