Affordable Housing Trust Fund for 2010

As chairman of the House Commerce Committee, I recognize a need for affordable housing. Pennsylvanians need help and deserve to have safe, decent and affordable homes.

I introduced a bill that would create an affordable housing trust fund. This legislation would enable the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency to build, rehabilitate or preserve housing for low-income and moderate-income people, the elderly and people with disabilities.

Providing adequate housing is critical to economic vitality and serves as an economic stimulus to communities.

Creating an affordable housing trust fund is just one tool that could help keep existing owners in their homes and would give many more people a fair chance to achieve the American dream of homeownership.

Currently, more than 15,000 Pennsylvanians are homeless and more than 90,000 families statewide are on various housing authority waiting lists. These numbers are unacceptable.

Thirty-eight other states have already created such funds to stimulate production of affordable housing. Let’s help make Pennsylvania number 39!

s for Support the PA Housing Trust Fund

Pictured from left to right: Iman Floyd-Carroll; Chairman Peter J. Daley; Rachel Falkove, executive director, Interfaith Hospitality Network of Northwest Philadelphia (NPIHN); Colleen Floyd-Carroll, housing program manager, Transformational Housing Initiative of NPIHN; Thomasine Mungo; Mercedes Reyes; Chairman Dick Hess; and Carol Marchand, executive director of the Interfaith Hospitality Network of the Main Line, Norristown.

About the Banner:

Iman, Mercedes, and scores of children from Project Learn School and their Free Saturday Community Art Program made the banner as part of their Martin Luther King Day of Service this past January. They have ardently supported the development of the Pennsylvania Affordable Housing Trust Fund by sending holiday cards and valentines to their legislators asking them to "Give homes for the Holidays" and to "Have a heart for Homes!"