Conference Committee Budget Advocacy Alert:
ALERT: Call your state Senator and Representative within the next few days. Ask each to please urge budget conference committee members to adopt:
(1) the Senate’s recommended $1 million for RAFT, line item 7004-9316, and
(2) the Senate’s final recommended $37.9 million total for MRVP, line item 7004-9024 (say “total” here because this figure includes $2.5 million from Mass Housing)
The Situation: At the Statehouse, the Senate and the House are beginning the process of reconciling their differing budget recommendations for Fiscal Year 2011, which begins this July. Many state programs affecting homeless families are necessarily operating under funding cuts currently. Our calls will help insure that even deeper cuts do not occur.
Residential Assistance for Families in Transition, or RAFT, allows small one-time grants to help very low income families stay housed or move from shelter situations into rental housing.
Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program, or MRVP, subsidizes rents for low income families, seniors and the disabled, to help them remain in their housing and stay out of shelter housing, which is costlier to the state.
· The Senate RAFT funding will help 500 families keep their housing whereas the House RAFT funding will only help 125 families.
· The Senate MRVP funding would give housing vouchers to 360 families more than the House MRVP funding, which continues housing vouchers to the 5100 current recipients.
Never doubt the importance of your calls. They have helped restore hope for thousands of families in unstable and temporary living arrangements. Likewise, your calls have saved tax dollars that have to be poured into emergency shelters and motels for the homeless.
Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program (MRVP)
(Line Item 7004-9024)- $35.4M
This request level funds the program and maintains the existing level of vouchers at the same benefit level.
Why MRVP?
MRVP helps tenants with low-incomes to pay their rent in private apartments, ensuring access to market-rate apartment for people with extremely low incomes. Rental assistance is the quickest, most efficient way to move people from shelter to permanent housing and to assist people with specialized housing needs to find housing. MRVP also provides operating support to produce new rental housing affordable to homeless and extremely low income people.
There are 5,100 tenants served by MRVP with approximately 150 additional committed to housing in development. This minimal request to maintain funding for each of these vouchers reflects the current budget crisis. As we work to prevent and end homelessness, additional rental assistance will be critical.
Households currently enrolled in MRVP have an average household income of less than $11,000 per year ($917 per month). Yet the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in MA is as high as $1,345. Rents are significantly higher than their incomes.
Foreclosure Relief Bill - An Act Relative to Stabilizing Neighborhoods
S. 1379 and H. 3571
This legislation includes a multi-prong strategy to address the Massachusetts foreclosure crisis. The foreclosure relief bill accomplishes the following six steps:
1) Includes a new mediation process for lenders and homeowners to work together to create a mutually acceptable loan modification solution based on the net present value of the home. The mediation program would be voluntary but lenders that do not participate will have to wait 150 days to foreclose on the property.
2) Provides eviction protections to tenants in foreclosed properties who are in good standing and continue to pay rent.
3) Requires counseling in order to receive a reverse mortgage. A reverse mortgage is where a homeowner receives a loan on their home equity and the loan is paid back when the homeowner sell the home or passes away. Reverse mortgages are typically offered to seniors.
4) Creates an abandoned and foreclosed property registry to track distressed properties.
5) Encourages redevelopment of foreclosed properties by providing a local option to exclude nonprofits from property taxes during the term that the nonprofit rehabilitates the home and converts it into affordable housing.
6) Criminalizes mortgage fraud.
Adult Basic Education, ABE
Adult Basic Education provides literacy and English proficiency services to adults. ABE includes English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), General Education Development (GED) programs, and adult basic education (non-reader to pre-GED), with targeted services in Workforce Development, Family Literacy, and Transition to Higher Education.
The yearly cost of adult basic education is about $2,000 per person. Insufficient marketable skills are often the gatekeepers that prevent families from leaving a shelter more quickly or avoiding homelessness early on.
About 24,000 people are on the waiting lists for Adult Basic Education programs due to underfunding. Waiting lists vary from 2 to 8 months for Adult Basic Education and 6 months to 2 years for English for Speakers of Other Languages.