Contact: Rob Ostrander 202-224-5721 Shana Stribling 202-224-0309
Tuesday, March 9, 2004

WASHINGTON, DC Senator Kit Bond today was named a "2004 Champion of Affordable Housing." Bond received the award from the National Council of State Housing Agencies (NCSHA) for his efforts to expand affordable housing for families in Missouri and nation-wide.

"All families should be able to find decent, safe and affordable housing," said Bond, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee that funds the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). "I will continue to work on finding solutions to expand the stock of the affordable low-income housing."

Bond thanked the Council for their recognition of his efforts, and pledged his strong commitment to providing the needed funding for HUD programs. Bond also acknowledged the importance of state housing agencies as well as their hard work on behalf of providing low-income families with good housing.

With the Senate budget resolution being debated on the floor of the Senate this week, it is still early in the process, Bond said, but he will work to find the necessary funding for a number of top housing priorities, including federal dollars for Section 8, the HOME program and the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program.

Bond pointed out that the housing situation for low-income families continues to worsen. As of 2001, HUD estimated that over 5 million very low-income families had worst case housing needs for rental assistance in the United States. In addition, over three-quarters of the families with worst case housing needs had incomes below 30 percent of median income. There is also no evidence that these families have fared better since 2001, and Bond pointed out that, in fact, HUD's 2003 worst case housing needs assessment indicates that these families have fared even worse since there were 1.6 million fewer apartments with rents affordable to extremely low-income families than there had been in 1991.

In order to address this low-income housing crisis, Bond will again introduce his Affordable Housing Expansion Act of 2002, which would create a $1 billion new housing production program that would be administered through state housing agencies. The program would fund mixed income housing with the Federal funding targeted to subsidize the development of low-income and extremely low-income housing units. This new housing production program would also allow the use of funds for rehabilitation needs. Bond observed that this should be considered another housing policy priority since there are many older low-income multifamily housing projects throughout the nation that are deteriorating and unable to generate the income to meet needed repairs.

Bond stressed his support for homeownership as an important part of the American dream; however he cautioned that it needs to be promoted responsibly and is often not possible for every family. He concluded that where home-ownership is not an option, there must be the capacity to provide rental housing for families. In addition, he stressed the importance of state housing agencies, noting there must be strong state housing agencies with the local knowledge, the local relationships and the expertise to make housing programs, from rental housing to home-ownership, work well and work successfully.

Bond served Missouri twice as Governor and now continues his service to Missourians in the United States Senate.