Governor Delivers Turkey Before Thanksgiving
Last Friday, just two weeks before Thanksgiving, Governor Romney unilaterally reduced funding for numerous state programs. Ironically, in many cases, the reductions equal the amount that he cut earlier this year, only to have the House and Senate override those vetoes. The Governor claimed that the cuts were necessary because a gap exists between "anticipated revenues and authorized expenditures." What he did not say in his letter is that the gap exists because he vetoed a transfer of funds, authorized by the Legislature, from the state's rainy-day account. In other words, the cuts were necessitated by the Governor's own action.
The cuts came to $30,070,391 for DHCD and Office of Commonwealth Development accounts. A complete list of cuts is available here.
The bulk of housing-related cuts were made to the Residential Assistance for Families in Transition (RAFT) program -- $2 million; the Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program (MRVP) -- $3.2 million; and $1.5 million from the Soft Second Mortgage program. These cuts will no doubt impact people who are trying to avoid homelessness, rent housing, or purchase their first home. The RAFT program will most likely have to stop accepting applications immediately and will probably not be able to provide assistance to everyone who has already applied. For MRVP, DHCD will not be able to honor its agreement with statewide housing organizations to provide 500 new vouchers and to provide funds to preserve existing project-based apartments whose rents were cut a few years ago. In fact, it is unknown whether the Governor's cut (back to the FY 05 level) may actually require vouchers that have been issued but not leased to be returned and whether vouchers! that are handed in will be able to be reissued.
The members of the Building Blocks Coalition are meeting tomorrow to discuss a uniform response to these unnecessary cuts, and we will be in touch soon with action steps and how you can help.
Commission to End Homelessness Created
On October 26, House No. 5206 was signed as Chapter 2 of the Resolves of 2006. The bill creates "a special commission for the purpose of devising a statewide strategy to end homelessness" in Massachusetts. According to the bill, "The commission's strategy shall outline the necessary steps to replace the decade-old system of ad hoc and disparate emergency responses to homelessness with a coordinated and consolidated plan for permanent solutions to homelessness. . .". The commission is to complete its work (develop a comprehensive housing plan and a consensus budget) by June 30, 2007.
More Municipalities Adopt Community Preservation Act
The November 7 election saw seven more municipalities adopt the Community Preservation Act (CPA). One municipality, Amherst, passed an increase to its exisiting CPA surchqarge, and Hingham, rebuffed an attempt to repeal CPA. These successes mean that more than one-third of the state's cities and towns have adopted CPA. A complete write-up can be found on the Massachusetts Community Preservation Coalition's web site by clicking here, and election results can be found here.
