No Vacancy

"The homeless are performing a great service ((to the nation)) by making clear how bad the housing situation is." So says James Rouse, a commercial developer and chairman of a 26-member National Housing Task Force that reported to Congress last week. His point: "Behind the homeless on the street are millions of Americans who are right on the edge, and could be on the street tomorrow if they lost their jobs or had a medical emergency."

Paychecks have fallen so far behind spiraling rents that half the 13 million American families living in poverty are devoting a crushing 50% or more of their meager incomes to shelter. Higher up the social scale, the housing market is thwarting the dream of home ownership for additional millions of mostly young people. They remain in apartments because they cannot afford the high cash down payments and interest rates needed to buy a house. In fact, the U.S. has reversed a four-decade trend toward greater home ownership. The percentage of all households that own their homes, after climbing to a peak of 65.6% in 1980, has since edged down to 63.8%.

What to do? Like other experts, the task force, which was set up last September at the request of the Senate's housing subcommittee, concluded that the only answer is building up federal housing subsidies dismantled by the Reagan Administration. Specifically, the group recommended adding almost $3.4 billion to the $13.8 billion budgeted for federally subsidized housing in fiscal 1988. Some $3 billion would be funneled to states to finance a new Housing Opportunity Program to build or rehabilitate low-cost housing; states would be required to match half that outlay, for a total of $4.5 billion. An additional $380 million would go to double the number of housing units for which the Department of Housing and Urban Development pays part of the rent for needy tenants.

These would be only start-up costs. The task force recommended that the Government commit itself to keep HOP going through the end of the century at first-year levels or higher. That would imply an outlay of perhaps more than $36 billion in additional federal cash alone over the next twelve years. Less costly proposals would ease the terms on which FHA mortgages are made available to home buyers. Prospects for immediate action are dim. Under terms of the budget compromise reached last fall between the White House and Congress, an extra $3.4 billion for housing would have to be taken out of some other type of domestic spending, a prospect no legislator relishes. Though a Senate subcommittee will consider legislation this spring, Rouse concedes that "realistically, until there is a new President, there is not going to be a new housing program." But there is growing pressure not to put off consideration of such a program forever. The housing report is the third in recent months making essentially the same point: agonizing as the situation of the homeless is, it is only the tip of a very dangerous iceberg.