研究生英语综合教程上unit910readingfocus精校文字版.doc
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1、THE HOUSING CRISIS GOES SUBURBAN1 Seventy years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that the Depression had left one-third of the American people ill-housed, ill-clothed and ill-nourished,2 Americans are well-clothed and increasingly over nourished. But the scarcity of affordable housing
2、is a deepening national crisis, and not just for inner-city families on welfare. The problem has climbed the income ladder and moved to the suburbs, where service workers cram their families into overcrowded apartments, college graduates have to crash with their parents, and firefighters, police off
3、icers and teachers cant afford to live in the communities they serve.2 Home ownership is near an all-time high, but the gap is growing between the Owns and the Own-Nots as well as the Owns and the Own-80-Miles-From-Work. One-third of Americans now spend at least 30% of their income on housing, the f
4、ederal definition of an unaffordable burden, and half the working poor spend at least 50% of their income on rent, a critical burden. The real estate boom of the past decade has produced windfalls for Americans who owned before it began, but affordable housing is now a serious problem for more low-
5、and moderate-income Americans than taxes, Social Security4 or gas prices.3 America used to care a lot about affordable housing. Roosevelt signed housing legislation in 1934 and 1937, providing mortgages, government apartments and construction jobs for workers down on their luck. In 1949, Congress .s
6、et an official goaljjf a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family, and in 1974, President Richard M. Nixon began offering subsidized rent vouchers to millions of low-income tenants in private housing. For half a century, most housing debates in Washington revolved arou
7、nd how much to expand federal assistance.4 But for the past two decades, the only new federal housing initiative has been HOPE VI5, a Clinton administration program that has demolished 80,000 units of the worst public housing and built mixed-income developments in their place. The program has elimin
8、ated most of the high-rise hellholes that gave public housing a bad name and has revived some urban neighborhoods. But it has razed more subsidized apartments than it has replaced.5 Overall, the number of households receiving federal aid has flatlined since the early 1990s, despite an expanding popu
9、lation and a ballooning budget. Congress has rejected most of President Bushs proposed cuts, but there has been virtually no discussion of increases; affordable-housing advocates spend most of their time fighting to preserve the status quo.6 And its a tough status quo. Today, for every one of the 4.
10、5 million low-income families that receive federal housing assistance, there are three eligible families without it. Fairfax County has 12,000 families on a waiting list for 4,000 assisted apartments. Its golden when you get onenobody wants to give it up, says Conrad Egan, chairman of the Fairfax ho
11、using authority. It sounds odd, but the victims of todays housing crisis are not people living in the projects, but people who arent even that lucky.7 Some liberals6 dream of extending subsidies to all eligible low-income families, but that $100 billion-a-year solution was unrealistic even before th
12、e budget deficit ballooned again. So even some housing advocates now support time limits on most federal rent aid. The time limits included in welfare reform 10 years ago were controversial, but studies suggest theyve helped motivate recipients to get off the dole. And unlike welfare, housing aid is
13、 not a federal entitlement, so taking it away from one family after a few years would provide a break for an equally deserving family.8 Its a no-brainer, says David Smith, an affordable-housing advocate in Boston. You cant sustain the internal contradiction of no limits.9 The root of the problem is
14、the striking mismatch between the demand for and the supply of affordable housing or, more accurately, affordable housing near jobs. Fifteen million families now spend at least half their income on housing, according to Harvards Joint_CenterfOTHousing Studies: many skimp on health care, child care a
15、nd food to do so. Others reduce their rents by overcrowding, which studies link to higher crime rates, poorer academic performance and poorer health; Los Angeles alone has 620.000 homes with more than one person per room. Other workers are enduring increasingly long commutes from less expensive comm
16、unities, a phenomenon knownas driving to qualify.10 This creates all kinds of lousy outcomeschildren who dont get to see their parents, workers who cant make ends meet when gas prices soar, exurban sprawl, roads clogged with long-distance commuters emitting greenhouse gases. I dont think were creati
17、ng strong communities by forcing people into their cars four hours a day, says Cathy Hudgins. chairwoman of the housing committee for the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. Affordable housing also helps make communities competitive; its not clear how Fairfax can keep creating jobs if workers cant
18、afford to live there.11 The best thing local officials can do to promote affordable housing is to get out of the waystop requiring one-acre lots and two-car garages, and stop blocking low-income and high-density projects.12 Washington politicians, on the other hand, have the federal budget at their
19、disposal. But Congress hasnt supported new construction since the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit of 1986, which creates nearly 100,000 units of affordable housing a year, enough to replace half the units that are torn down or converted to market rents. Bush proposed a home-ownership tax credit during
20、 his 2000 and 2004 campaigns, but it turned out to be the rare tax cut he didnt pursue. A bill pending in Congress would divert a percentage of profits from federally chartered institutions such as Fannie Mae to a national affordable-housing trust fund8, but it seems stalled. The only affordability
21、ideas with any traction at the national level are not really housing ideas; for example, one way to make housing more affordable to workers would be to raise their incomesthrough higher minimum wages, lower payroll taxes or an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit.13 There is one clear solution to the a
22、ffordable-housing crisis: a real estate crash. Its the one housing issue that attracts media attentionbecause it would hurt the Owns. But while an easing of prices could be devastating for lower-income Owns with risky mortgages, it probably wouldnt bring home ownership within reach for many Own- Not
23、s. Prices have too far to fall; in 2000, two-thirds of the home sales in Fairfax were for $250,000 or less, but last year, fewer than one-twentieth were. And even a modest price slump could trigger a construction slowdown that would make shortages of affordable housing for moderate-income families e
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