Hillary Clinton tours run-down Harlem NYCHA building, vows to fight for low-income housing residents

[Armstead]

75. Bermie hates the poor and doesn't care about affordable housing

Sanders' Housing Trust Fund Program Signed Into Law
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-housing-trust-fund-program-signed-into-law

The president signed into law today a massive housing rescue bill intended to help hundreds of thousands of homeowners avoid foreclosure.

The measure creates an Affordable Housing Trust Fund, an idea first introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) seven years ago. As a House member in 2001, Sanders first introduced legislation to create a trust fund to help build affordable homes and rental housing. The new law creates a dedicated fund to build, repair or rehabilitate affordable rental units and assist first-time homebuyers. The funds would be distributed to states and local communities. "This provision will play a significant role in building affordable housing for low- and moderate-income people, as well as the disabled," Sanders said.

The sweeping legislation also would help communities ease the harmful effects of foreclosures and delinquencies. Under the provision by Senators Patrick Leahy and Sanders, Vermont would receive almost $20 million of $3.92 billion in supplemental Community Development Block Grants. "Vermont cities and towns will be able to provide immediate assistance to the struggling middle class trying to hold onto their homes and revitalize neighborhoods in communities hit hard by foreclosures," Sanders said.

Another $57 million is allotted nationwide for federal grants to help disabled veterans adapt their homes. "With so many service members coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with disabilities, it is absolutely imperative that we make sure they have as normal a life as possible and that certainly includes adapting their homes to meet their needs," Sanders said of the provision he offered.

The number of households facing foreclosure more than doubled in the second quarter of this year compared to one year ago, according to data released recently. Nationwide, foreclosure actions involved 739,714 homes in April, May and June. In Vermont, public radio reported that the 443 home foreclosures during past three months represented a 65 percent increase over the same period last year.

2014
https://vtdigger.org/2014/12/12/sanders-welcomes-funding-affordable-rental-housing/

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a national leader in efforts to increase affordable housing, welcomed a move today that could free up hundreds of millions of dollars to expand affordable rental housing nationwide.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency ended its temporary suspension of contributions to funds designed to allow more renters to find the homes they need at prices they can afford. The agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ordered those companies to begin to make payments to affordable housing funds next year. The money will go into a fund to provided dedicated revenue for low-income housing. States and local agencies then could apply for the money and use it to finance very-low-income rental housing construction or rehabilitation projects.

“This is really excellent news,” said Sanders, who first proposed legislation in 2001 to create the Housing Trust Fund. “It is no secret that over the past decade, incomes have not come close to keeping pace with the escalating costs of housing. At a time when millions of families are struggling to get by, and when many households are spending 50 percent or more of their limited income on housing, the Trust Fund will provide resources to build the affordable housing we desperately need and create thousands of good-paying jobs.”

The National Low Income Housing Coalition had estimated that in 2012 there were only 3.2 million rental housing units available and affordable for the 10.3 million extremely-low-income households that need them. Sheila Crowley, the coalition president, cited Sanders’ role in a statement celebrating “a great victory” for the homeless and poor. “At long last, the National Housing Trust Fund will have funds to begin to ameliorate the shortage of housing that they can afford. I am very grateful to Sen. Bernie Sanders for championing the NHTF since the first days of our campaign in 2001.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/metropolis/2016/01/bernie_sanders_made_burlington_s_land_trust_possible_it_s_still_an_innovative.html

METROPOLIS
THE CITIES OF TODAY AND TOMORROW.JAN. 19 2016 5:30 AM
How Bernie Sanders Made Burlington Affordable

As the city’s mayor in the 1980s, he championed an unusual model of publicly supported housing. It’s still working.

By Jake Blumgart

....Within two years, his family owned a home in a small town just to the east of the city. The Robbins family bought its home through a conventional realtor and a commercial bank while also entering a covenant with the land trust to lease the land their home sits upon. This reduced the costs of their mortgage and down payment substantially.

They’re far from alone. Across the land trust’s portfolio today, there are about 565 other homes that enjoy similar terms, not to mention 2,100 rental and cooperative units. Half of these holdings are located within the city of Burlington itself, which had a total of 16,897 housing units as of 2010, meaning that about 7.6 percent of the stock sits on the nonprofit’s land.

“We don’t understand why housing isn’t done this way everywhere,” says Robbins, who says the cheaper mortgage allowed his family to save money for college and retirement that otherwise would have gone toward housing. “It’s just such a logical thing to have land owned by a community and the house be your private property to do with as you wish. We’ve just had a terrific life here so far because of it.”


The man largely responsible for this good fortune? Bernie Sanders.

While mayor of Burlington in the 1980s, the democratic-socialist senator and current contender for the Democratic presidential nomination was an early champion of community land trusts. Today, the organization whose creation he made possible—now called the Champlain Housing Trust—is the largest and most influential of its type in the nation.

Community land trusts are nonprofit organizations, with a board composed of representatives of the public, the local government, and the tenants, that obtain land and either develop it themselves or lease it to developers. The trust then removes its holdings from the private market, usually through 99-year ground leases and pre-emptive purchase requirements that limit how much the house can be sold for. Community land trust boosters argue that this not only ensures permanent affordability, but allows the organization to intercede in the case of, say, a foreclosure. An oft-cited study by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy showed that, as of 2010, homeowners within a land trust were 10 times less likely to default on their homes than their private-market counterparts

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Fighting for residents of affordable housing
http://portside.org/2015-06-05/bernies-burlington-what-kind-mayor-was-bernie-sanders

John Davis remembers a meeting in 1986 when Bernie Sanders, then the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, confronted the owners of the city’s largest affordable-housing complex. The federal program that had subsidized the Northgate Apartments for 20 years had a loophole that allowed the landlords to convert the buildings into market rentals or luxury condos.

“Bernie pounded his fist on the conference table in his office and told the owners, ‘Over my dead body are you going to displace 336 working families. You are not going to convert Northgate into luxury housing,’” recalled Davis, who was Sanders’s key housing aide.

Under Sanders’s leadership, the city adopted a number of laws to stifle the owners’ plans. One ordinance required apartment owners to give residents two years’ notice before a condo conversion. Others gave residents a pre-emptive right to buy the units and prohibited landlords from bulldozing buildings unless they replaced them with the same number of affordable units. (These measures lowered the selling price of the property.) Sanders then worked with the state government and Senator Patrick Leahy to get the $12 million needed to purchase and rehabilitate the buildings. The city allocated funds to help the tenants hire an organizer, form the Northgate Residents Association, and start the process of converting the complex to resident ownership. Today, Northgate Apartments is owned by the tenants and has long-term restrictions to keep the buildings affordable for working families......