August 26, 2005
In this issue:
In Delaware
*
September 6, “Bridge the Economic Divide” in Smyrna
* September 20, Poetry Slam on the Georgetown Circle
Elsewhere
* Senate Bill Would Be Better for Housing Vouchers
* HUD Publication on Disability Barriers and Testing
September 6, “Bridge the Economic Divide” in Smyrna
Bridge
the Economic Gap Day
Join
us from 4:30 to 6:30 pm on the Commerce Street bridge over Route 1 in Smyrna
to call for a Universal Living Wage!
On
September 6th, (Labor Day plus 1) Living Wage advocates in all fifty states
will display their banners on specially selected, highly visible, rush hour
traffic bridges. The banner we fly will read:
“Bridge the ECONOMIC GAP with a
www.UNIVERSALLIVINGWAGE.org
The
Universal Living Wage Formula
The
concept is simple. 1) Work a minimum 40 hour week, 2) spend no more than 30%
of income on housing, and 3) have a minimum wage indexed to the local cost
of housing as set each year by the US Department of HUD (Fair Market Rents).
The Universal Living Wage formula was
first created by House the Homeless in Austin, Texas, as a homelessness
prevention measure.
For
more information on what a universal living wage would mean if applied to
Delaware, go to:
http://www.housingforall.org/universal_living_wage.htm
Universal Living Wage Endorsers in Delaware
*
Better Homes of Seaford, Inc. (Seaford, DE)
* Delaware Housing Coalition
* Delaware Statewide Association. of Tenants
* Green Party of Delaware (Newark, DE)
* IBEW Local 1238 (Wilmington, DE)
* The Shepard Place (Dover, DE)
* Saint Paul’s Church (Wilmington, DE)
[Tina
Riley, Delaware Housing Coalition,
manymansions@housingforall.org]
September 20, Poetry Slam on the Georgetown Circle
You are invited to join with other voices for recovery at an
evening of poetry and music on “The Circle” in Georgetown. The event is
scheduled for 5:30 to 7:30 pm, Tuesday, September 20th, with a
rain date of Thursday, September 22nd. The event is sponsored by
Brandywine Counseling with help from the State of Delaware, Division of
Substance Abuse and Mental Health; as well as Corinthian House, Fellowship
Health Day Program, PSI Transition, Tau House, Seaford Mission, and The Way
Home.
[Shay Lipshitz,
cm2believe@aol.com]
Senate Bill Would Be Better for Housing Vouchers
The Senate Appropriations Committee’s HUD funding bill for 2006 would do a
better job than the comparable House bill of repairing recent damage to the
housing voucher program, a new Center report finds. The report shows how
each of the bills would affect state and local housing agencies across the
nation.
Both bills would change the way voucher funds are divided among housing
agencies, but the House’s approach is less efficient and would underfund
some agencies and overfund others. Under the House bill, more than 1,000
agencies would receive insufficient funds to maintain all their current
vouchers, the study finds, while nearly $80 million in overfunding to other
agencies would go unused. Both bills also would increase voucher funding
for 2006, enabling housing agencies to restore some (but not all) of the
vouchers that were cut over the past two years as a result of funding
shortages.
The
Housing Choice Voucher Program provides roughly two million low-income
households with vouchers they can use to rent housing in the private
market. Vouchers help make housing affordable for these families, and
research suggests that vouchers can have positive effects on employment,
earnings, education, and children’s health and well-being.
The National Low-Income
Housing Coalition worked closely with CBPP on the release of this report and
released recommendations for strengthening the Section 8 Voucher program
agreed to by participants in the National Voucher Summit, held in February
2005. NLIHC’s Press Release and Voucher Summit Report are available at:
www.nlihc.org
Press
Release:
http://www.cbpp.org/8-24-05hous-pr.htm
http://www.cbpp.org/8-24-05hous-pr.pdf
Full Report:
http://www.cbpp.org/8-24-05hous.htm
http://www.cbpp.org/8-24-05hous.pdf,
HUD Publications on Disability Barriers and Testing
The results of an important research effort, titled "Discrimination Against
Persons with Disabilities: Barriers at Every Step," is now available through
the HUD USER Clearinghouse. Together with its "Testing Guidance for
Practitioners" companion piece, the "Barriers at Every Step" volume advances
our ability to verify – and furthers our chances of eradicating - inequity
in housing
opportunities for disabled persons.
The study employs a number of newly developed, field-tested tools for
measuring housing discrimination that are:
o Applicable to various kinds of disabilities and housing circumstances;
o Useful in detecting differential treatment;
o Viable for use in documenting refusal to make reasonable accommodations;
and
o Applicable to a larger, nationally representative sample of housing
markets (both sale and rental).
The study also systematically documents discrimination against two groups
with disabilities in the Chicago metro area: deaf persons who used the TTY
phone system to call about advertised rental housing and persons in
wheelchairs who personally visited rentals to inquire about an available
unit. One-fourth of the callers using the TTY system to follow up on rental
unit advertisements received no service. A significant portion of deaf
persons whose calls were accepted received less information about the
application and how to get additional information than did their hearing
counterparts. Adverse treatment occurred in one-half of the calls placed via
the TTY system. One-third of customers in wheelchairs who personally made
rental inquiries were also adversely treated. This treatment consisted of
learning about fewer rental options than non-disabled customers were
informed of, not being allowed to inspect units, and receiving less
information about the application process.
These findings are even more revealing when contrasted with a recent study
of housing discrimination attributable to race and ethnicity in the Chicago
metropolitan area. This comparison depicts the discrimination experiences of
different populations. When viewed side by side, the "measures of systematic
discrimination against persons with disabilities are generally higher than
the net measures of discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity."
A copy of this report is available as a free download from
http://www.huduser.org/publications/hsgspec/dds.html
or in printed form for a nominal fee by calling
HUD USER at 1-800-245-2691.
[HUD USER, To:
hudusernews@huduser.org]