ADAPT Housing Forum Exposes HUD Inaction

[Traveling_Home]

For Immediate Release
September 9, 2007

For Information contact:
Bruce Darling 585-370-6690
Marsha Katz 406-544-9504
Gary Arnold 773-425-2536

ADAPT Housing Forum Exposes Individual Problems and HUD Inaction

Chicago---Officials from HUD traveled to Chicago from Washington, D.C. to meet with 500 ADAPT activists, but incited the crowd to anger when they communicated a tired message that hasn't
been supported with action promised in May by HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson. Their appearance at the National Housing Forum sponsored by ADAPT followed two hours of testimony about the lack of affordable, accessible integrated housing articulated by disability rights activists from across the nation.

“We just heard the same old rhetoric, lots of promises, but no action,” said Cassie James, ADAPT Organizer from Philadelphia who moderated the Housing Forum. Last May, Sec. Jackson made a number of commitments to us, and he hasn't honored one of them.

In a May meeting in Washington, D.C., ADAPT confronted Secretary Jackson about the 58% loss in housing vouchers that the disability community suffered due to a combination of federal budget cuts, and misappropriation of the vouchers by local entities that administer the voucher program in communities across the country. Jackson promised to report to ADAPT before the September action in Chicago how many of those housing vouchers for people with disabilities he has recovered.

Jackson, who had also promised in May to meet with ADAPT three times a year, failed to show in Chicago, sending Kim Kendrick, Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, and Paula Blunt, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing in his place. Neither Kendrick nor Blunt provided the numbers promised by their boss in May.

The all-talk-and-no-action we heard today is the same thing we experienced with HUD here in Chicago last May, said Darrell Price of Chicago ADAPT, “We had a housing conference where Ms. Kendrick was also present and heard Mike Grice talk about how long he'd been waiting for his landlord to make his kitchen accessible. Ms. Kendrick talked to the landlord, but it's four months later and the landlord hasn't done a thing. Mike testified at the forum today that he still can't use his kitchen, and once again the HUD folks said they'd look into it, but we aren't holding out any hope on the follow through.

ADAPT is in Chicago all week to send a clear message to HUD, the Governor of Illinois, the nation's medical community, and Congress that denying affordable, accessible housing to people with disabilities and thus supporting the incarceration of people in institutions for the crime of disability will not be tolerated.

And we won't listen to any more we feel your pain speeches from HUD and other officials in suits. added James, while our brothers and sisters are stuck in nursing homes and other institutions because there is no affordable, accessible housing in their communities. We're done with promises, we want action!

[fed-up]

1. HUD house down the street was rented to HUD employee last two years-now empty last 2 months nt

[pop goes the weasel]

2. no point in having accessible housing

when the goal of the government is to put as many disabled people as possible into nursing homes. Bastards.