The recent government shutdown highlighted that the federal government is an unreliable partner in addressing Pennsylvania’s housing needs.
The partial shutdown threatened thousands of low-income families across the commonwealth, including nearly 1,500 in Allentown, who receive rental assistance through the Housing Choice Voucher Program, formerly known as Section 8.
Working families across Pennsylvania won a reprieve thanks to a deal to open the government. But the incident highlighted how precarious federal support is for working families across our state who struggle to make ends meet each month.
This issue affects communities across Pennsylvania — particularly cities, like Allentown, that are seeing a development boom and risking the displacement of longtime residents because of development in the center city area.
Pennsylvania has an affordable housing crisis. About half a million families lack access to safe, affordable housing.
This has long-term economic impacts, making it difficult for hospitals to hire nurses’ aides and grocery stores to hire cashiers. And it clogs our roads by forcing minimum wage workers into long commutes to jobs in expensive communities where they can’t afford to live.
The government shutdown has exacerbated long-term problems of housing affordability in Allentown and across Pennsylvania.
For years, we have had difficulty convincing landlords to participate in the voucher program, which provides subsidies to allow low-income families to live in privately owned apartments. This problem has become more serious as development has accelerated in Allentown and landlords can command higher rents in the private market.
Now that the federal government has demonstrated that landlords may get their payments late, it will be more difficult to convince them they should participate in the program.
This threatens to worsen existing economic inequalities in Allentown and to ultimately make our city less affordable for working families.
Since we can no longer rely on Washington to tackle our housing crisis, our elected leaders in Harrisburg need to step up and give towns and cities the tools they need to expand affordable housing opportunities for working families, seniors and people with disabilities.
As lawmakers gear up for a new two-year session in Harrisburg, safe and affordable housing must be at the top of the agenda.
Lawmakers should strengthen existing housing programs while pursuing innovative new initiatives that leverage existing federal funding streams.
The federal low income housing tax credit is the federal government’s largest program for affordable rental housing, helping local housing authorities, nonprofits and other developers bridge the funding gap and get shovels in the ground in projects across Pennsylvania. And in a polarized political environment, it enjoys widespread bipartisan support in Washington. Here in Allentown we have worked with our developer partner, Pennrose Properties, and utilized tax credit funding for the development of Overlook Park and the redevelopment of Cumberland Gardens.
Pennsylvania lawmakers should leverage this program and pass a state housing tax credit program that provides additional resources to tackle the housing crisis while minimizing the creation of a new bureaucracy. Sen. Tom Killion (R-Delaware), along with Sens. Vincent Hughes (D-Philadelphia), Art Haywood (D-Philadelphia) and Elder Vogel (R-Beaver), plan to introduce such bipartisan legislation shortly, and we applaud their efforts.
While we hope that the federal government will never again be plunged into the crisis of a protracted government shutdown, our local elected officials must now step up and pursue policies that expand opportunities for working families to live in safe and affordable homes.
Daniel R. Farrell is executive director of the Allentown Housing Authority.
