Imagination in Housing
Believe it or not, Congress is edging toward creating a new housing program, and in these days of save, don’t spend, the measure even has bipartisan support. That may be because it mixes the notion of federal support for housing in the inner city with the American dream of home ownership. Contained in the omnibus housing bill soon to come before the Senate, the program deserves the widest possible support.
This potential housing breakthrough is called the Nehemiah housing opportunity program--Nehemiah having been the biblical prophet who rebuilt the walls of ancient Jerusalem after it was destroyed by the Babylonians. The program is modeled after one run by a coalition of churches in East Brooklyn, N.Y., whose leaders were trained by the Industrial Areas Foundation that has worked with United Neighborhoods Organization and the South-Central Organizing Committee in Los Angeles.
The churches put together a package of state and city money as a revolving fund that enabled them to avoid borrowing from banks, got the blighted land for construction from the city, exercised some ingenuity in construction and, finally, gave buyers who met certain income tests interest-free second mortgages. Those mortgages made the difference between the loan for which a low-income buyer could qualify and the purchase price of the home.
That’s where the federal government would come in--providing funds for these loans, up to $15,000 each, which would be repayable when the home was sold. Only homes developed with this East Brooklyn model in mind--that is, whose nonprofit planners could demonstrate local support and financial backing--would be eligible. The authors of the Nehemiah legislation anticipate that $150 million in federal money could help in the construction of at least 10,000 homes across the country--possibly more.
In East Brooklyn, 500 Nehemiah-plan houses are already up and occupied in what had been a devastated, garbage-strewn area. The program has an added benefit, in that some of the home buyers had been living in other public housing and so their apartments are now available, too.
The Nehemiah plan is of course only one element in the housing legislation that was passed by the House this month. That measure would redirect most federal public housing construction money into rehabilitation. It would retain urban development action grants, but assure that more of this aid to encourage private development would go to Southern and Western cities. And it would give the Administration a small victory, allowing it to designate 100 enterprise zones in depressed areas in which business would receive regulatory relief but not the tax breaks that the Administration had sought.
The housing bill remains subject to Senate consideration, and then the give-and-take of a conference committee. The Nehemiah plan, contained in the bill that the Senate Banking Committee has sent to the floor, deserves a trial. It could encourage cities around the country to get to work to house their people who, as homeowners, would develop a stake in their communities.
