“State nonprofit community development associations can’t simply close up shop because their states are in various stages of budgetary free-fall. A dozen associations at the annual conference of the National Alliance of Community Economic Development Associations (NACEDA) in Washington, D.C., on Monday and Tuesday, volunteered difficult answers to what they have accomplished for the nonprofit community development industry despite the horrible budgetary and economic times, the continuing and new challenges they face going forward, and emerging from these crisis conditions, what might be opportunities for making progress, even if only haltingly.
So what defines an accomplishment when state budgets are pockmarked with deficits and shortfalls? For some at the conference, they say it is stemming the slide in funding for affordable housing production, despite gubernatorial and legislative plans to cut 50 to 60 percent as faced by Housing Action Illinois. For others, such as New Jersey’s Affordable Housing Network, facing a high-flying budget-cutting Republican governor, an impressive success is full funding for the state’s rental assistance program. And in Connecticut, it has an entirely different flavor, with the new Democratic governor and legislature putting $80 million dollars into affordable housing production, including $30 million for supportive housing. ”
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