Op-ed submission, 749 words:

Affordable Housing, Reinvented: Now Can We Build Some?

By Brad Lander

Many politicians would have you believe that affordable housing is a lost cause. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Ask Ricardo Sosa, a N.Y.C. firefighter who was part of the rescue effort on September 11, 2001. A lifelong Brooklynite, Sosa thought his family would be forced out by rising housing prices. But now, he owns a beautiful two-family home just one mile from his firehouse, made possible by the Fifth Avenue Committee, a community development corporation. Sosa was able to buy the home at below-market price, agreeing that an attached unit would be rented to a low-income family at an affordable rate.

Today's affordable housing programs work — yet the public is generally unaware how effective they are.

Thirty years ago, the demolition of the Pruitt Igoe public housing towers in St. Louis signaled the end of "low-income housing as we knew it." Pruitt Igoe represented twin evils: arrogant large-scale planning and the supposed vices of poor communities. Tenants hated the way the towers had destroyed neighborhood life. Suburban whites saw the towers as evidence of the failure of the War on Poverty.

A generation later, we have reinvented affordable housing. Instead of high-rise towers, we develop attractive buildings that strengthen communities. Many are built by "community development corporations," or C.D.C.s, non-profits run by local residents that rebuild communities and create opportunities. In New York City, C.D.C.s have built over 75,000 apartments or homes, including Ricardo Sosa's. We have restored hope in once-abandoned neighborhoods. It is a remarkable story of community leadership, enabled by government, philanthropy and private sector support.

Community development is "reinventing government" at its best. Resources come from Washington, but priorities are set in neighborhoods. C.D.C.s advance civic life by organizing people to work for change. We help people find good jobs. We are attuned to markets and build public/private partnerships. Many are "faith-based." We draw strength from community and help build local leadership. As a result, community development draws praise from across the political spectrum.

Ironically, the success of community development may have made the problem worse. Our communities look better, masking the growing number of struggling families. Revived housing markets make it harder for families to afford rent.

Our national affordable housing crisis has grown worse during boom and recession, in cities, suburbs and rural areas, in every region of the country. Last year, one out of every seven American families paid over half their income for rent, 30 percent more than two years ago.

New York City faces its worst housing crisis in over 50 years. There are 37,000 people each night in shelters, the most ever. Nearly half are children. The wait for public housing is eight long years. Firefighters like Sosa — not to mention teachers, bus drivers, and retail clerks — can't afford to live here.

But C.D.C.s are small and fragmented, so we cannot muster large-scale political force. As a result, we are losing the money we need to provide these families with affordable housing.

Just when we have a solution, we have lost the political will to implement it. H.U.D. now spends a third of what it spent on low-income housing in 1978. New York City spends half of what it spent in 1990. Where did the money go? Last year, the federal government gave $90 billion in housing-related tax deductions to the richest 20 percent of Americans — three times what it spent on low-income housing. While we were rebuilding our communities, Washington was redirecting our housing money to the wealthy.

We have lost vision as well as money. In 1949, Congress set the National Housing Goal of "a decent home … for every American family." A half-century later, this Goal is achievable. We could end homelessness and build millions of new homes. Unfortunately, the Millennial Housing Commission did not even reiterate the Goal in its report to Congress this year. While the Commission catalogued a "millennial" crisis, its solutions are piecemeal at best. H.U.D. Secretary Mel Martinez has said that housing is a local problem.

Gotham historian Mike Wallace writes, "For nearly a quarter century … reigning mantra-makers have chanted the ineffectuality, indeed the impermissibility, of purposive public action." But large-scale public action is precisely what the times demand. Investing in housing and neighborhoods — keeping firefighters in the communities they serve — is the way to avoid the abandonment and fiscal collapse of the 1970s.

As Ricardo Sosa's story shows, we know what works. Now, we must combine the neighborhood-scale solutions of community development with large-scale political vision and resources to address the crisis across America.

Brad Lander is the executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, a community development corporation in Brooklyn recently recognized with a Leadership for a Changing World" award by the Ford Foundation. He may be reached by e-mail at blander@fifthave.org