NACEDA Supports Housing America Campaign

WASHINGTON, DC - March 21, 2007 - The National Alliance of Community Economic Development Associations (NACEDA) and its 1200 local community development corporation members, who produce thousands of  affordable apartments and homes  in low-wealth neighborhoods each year, supports the launch of the Housing America Campaign.

NACEDA Chairwoman, Diane Sterner, also Executive Director of Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey, said, “We are pleased to join this campaign, as there is an urgent need in this country for more affordable housing in communities of all types -  urban, suburban and rural.”

Community development corporations represented by NACEDA have as a primary activity the production of “affordable and special needs housing,” Sterner said. “Our members are experts in producing affordable housing, using subsidies to bring affordability to inner cities, suburbs and rural areas.

“Our members produce quality housing for low wealth families, the homeless, for HIV patients, the elderly, and the disabled. This is the housing that larger developers often don’t want to touch, yet is so needed in our communities today,”  Sterner said.

NACEDA Executive Director Jane DeMarines added: “The lessening of resources at the federal level, including cuts to Community Development Block grants and the HOME program among other cuts, is eroding the foundation of building and replacing housing nationwide. Some of the overcrowding that has resulted, and in some cases deaths as a result of poor maintenance and faulty electrical systems, jeopardizes lives, as we have seen too frequently this winter on the evening news.”

“The groups we represent do this work everyday, and we are glad to see a new coalition elevate this need that has been neglected in recent federal budgets”, Sterner concluded.