Affordable Housing

Your editorial “A Raid on Affordable Housing” (June 7) highlights the housing problem in San Diego. It is a problem which the private, nonprofit sector can address if the city maintains its current commitment to the Housing Trust Fund.

As federal housing dollars have become increasingly scarce, many cities took the opportunity to create a private nonprofit housing sector. As a result, in San Francisco 90% of the affordable housing is being produced by nonprofits; Pittsburgh has more than 30 nonprofit developers; a single nonprofit in Newark, N.J., owns $200 million worth of real estate, and in Boston a nonprofit consortium produces 2,000 units at a time.

Unfortunately, San Diego has failed to invest in the private nonprofit sector. This is one of the main reasons there is so little affordable housing in the city today. In time, the Housing Trust Fund will help remedy this situation. The City Council should not sit idly by and let the City Manager take it away to ease short-term budgetary pressures.

KRIS LARSEN, San Diego