________________________________________________________ACTIONET
January 22, 2010
Action Alert!
Support a State Housing
Trust Fund & HB 60
What You Can
Do:
Call or email your
State Representative
immediately and tell him or her that you
support HB 60, the creation of a state
housing trust fund. The House is
scheduled to vote on this as early as Monday, January
25th!
You can find
your State Representative's phone number by entering
your zip code in the “Find Your Elected Officials” box
in the lower left-hand corner of the LAMPa website (www.lamp.org).
Be sure to click on the
“state” tab!
The following is a sample of how your phone call
might go:
"My name
is ___________, and I'm a constituent. As a person of
faith I support HB 60 and the creation of a state
housing trust fund. It would require no new state money
this year, but would effectively and efficiently direct
federal money towards a very pressing problem for all
communities - urban and rural alike"
Background
For the
past few years, a large, bi-partisan group of State
Representatives and Senators have been trying to pass a
state housing trust fund to improve the amount of
affordable housing in communities all across the
Commonwealth. 38 other states have similar funds, and
in 2008, Congress enacted the National Housing Trust
Fund. The only hurdle has been finding the money to
capitalize the fund as state revenues (across the
country) have been in decline. Without an appropriation,
no one has has interest in moving to legislation.
However, now that Congress sits on the verge of
capitalizing the National fund, efforts to have the
State fund in place are moving.
LAMPa and the ELCA have been advocating for trust funds
as one solution to the complex problems of housing and
homelessness for many years.
“Housing is a fundamental human right.” Therefore we
should "not overlook the need for new and sustained
initiatives by governments... to assure housing services
for low-income families."
