After 50 Years, Reinventing HUD's Role in Fighting Poverty, Creating Affordable Housing

Washington, D.C. – House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, has called for organizations and ordinary citizens to submit new ideas to modernize the delivery of federal housing assistance.

The initiative marks 50 years since the creation of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which Hensarling says has failed to fulfill the promise of decent, affordable housing for all.

L. A. “Tony” Kovach is pleased as punch to share his professional perspective on the matter.

Kovach, the publisher of the two leading trade publications dedicated to manufactured housing issues, proposes to not only modernize, but revolutionize, the federal programs that have failed to remedy the cycle of generational poverty — despite more than $1.6 trillion spent over the past five decades.

What if HUD’s programs were re-focused to help people achieve home ownership?

What if those programs also yielded two to three million new jobs a year?

What if, at the end of 10 or 15 years, those who participated in such a program could own their home and the land it occupies — free and clear?

In a proposal submitted to Rep. Hensarling earlier this week, Kovach does the math and lays out an inspired plan in which HUD’s role is transformed from quasi-landlord of a permanent rental class, to facilitator of home ownership and the monetary, economic and social values it brings to families.

The Congressional Budget Office reported in September that only one in four people eligible for federal housing assistance actually receive support, even with $50 billion budgeted last year.

Kovach explains how that money, now primarily doled out as Section 8 rent subsidies, could help them buy 8,933,676 manufactured homes. That’s nearly 4 million added households — or roughly 8.8 million more people — than the existing HUD programs currently serve.

“Can we, as a people, provide a social safety net – one that also helps lift souls out of poverty – rather than see government programs act as a web that traps people in poverty?” Kovach asks in his proposal to Rep. Hensarling.

The answer would seem to be a resounding, “Yes.”

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Media Contact:
L. A. “Tony” Kovach
Publisher – MHLivingNews.com
Phone: 863-213-4090
Email: [email protected]
http://mhpronews.com/