Under Bush Proposals, All Housing Is Local

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino’s July 31 commentary on affordable housing misled your readers about the Bush administration’s ambitious affordable housing policy and quoted me out of context. From the beginning, the Bush administration has worked closely with state and local officials to help them meet their important needs. What we have learned is that the nature and the degree of affordable housing problems--as well as the solutions--differ from one community to another and need to be dealt with on an individual basis.

That’s one reason why President Bush proposed a significant increase in HUD’s 2003 budget--including more funds for HOME, a popular, successful and exceptionally flexible program that focuses exclusively on housing needs that the community itself determines. He created a new public-private partnership with a goal of creating 5.5 million more minority homeowners by the end of this decade. He also made an unprecedented commitment to end chronic homelessness in the next 10 years and rolled out $2.7 billion in new housing initiatives, including the American Dream Downpayment Fund, HUD’s Section 8 voucher program and a tax credit to encourage the construction of affordable housing.

Whether it is affordable rental housing or new opportunities for homeownership, all of us have an important role to play. In the end, I believe that partnerships between the federal and state governments and local public-and private-sector leaders will give young families, schoolteachers, police officers and families moving from welfare to work a real chance to live the American dream.

Mel Martinez

Secretary of Housing and Urban

Development, Washington