The U.S. Congress recently created the Millennial Housing Commission to make recommendations about housing policy, especially with respect to affordable housing. The commission is soliciting insight and proposals from national organizations—including the AIA and its members—on how this nation can better support decent, affordable housing in healthy communities. Due to limited time, the commission cannot contact each member individually and has asked the AIA to compile its members' replies to the issues and questions outlined below.

If you would like to have input to the commission's deliberations, please email your comments to the author no later than June 22, 2001. The AIA will compile all the replies into one document that we will send to the commission. We will try to represent the views of our membership as fully as possible. (If you would prefer to send in your comments individually, the commission can be contacted at mhc@mhc.gov. Its Web site is www.mhc.gov.)

Here are the questions the commission is studying. Please reply to the ones about which you have the most expertise and experience. Specific facts or case studies would be useful. If you can link your comments to specific questions, it will make it easier to compile the responses:

Consumer-based assistance
1. How well or badly are vouchers working in different markets? What
factors lead to success with vouchers for tenants?
2. How can vouchers best support mobility and self-sufficiency for the
families that receive them?
3. To what extent should vouchers be project-based or otherwise linked to
production programs? If so, how and how many?
4. Should consumer-based assistance also be made available to low-income
homeowners with severe housing-cost burdens? If so, how should this be
done?

Housing finance
1. How can access to capital for homeownership (for refinancing as well as
purchasing) be improved for those who currently fall through the gaps?
2. How can the multifamily housing finance delivery system be improved for
housing production and preservation?

Preservation
1. How can we best provide the capital to finance the rehabilitation needs
of the affordable housing stock (both public housing and the assisted
inventory)?
2. How can this existing stock be preserved so that the properties involved
are self-supporting in the future?

Production
1. How well do current programs operate as production tools (e.g., HOME,
CDBG, HOPE VI, Section 202, Section 811)? How well do they work with each
other? How can they be improved?
2. What are the merits of the various proposals to create a new housing
production program? What unmet needs are being addressed in each proposal?
3. What innovative and creative programs are being used by states and local
governments to produce affordable housing?

Tax policy
1. How could the various tax policy "tools" (e.g., tax credits, bonds,
passive loss allowances) be better used to promote (a) the production of
affordable rental housing, including housing for extremely low-income
families, and (b) homeownership?
2. Regarding the preservation of affordable housing, what changes to tax
policy would enable owners of assisted properties and older Low-Income
Housing Tax Credit units to either maintain these properties as affordable
housing or sell them to owners who would rehabilitate them?

Community linkages
1. How can the eligibility requirement and planning requirements that govern
housing programs be coordinated with non-housing programs (such as
transportation, child care, and health care) so that housing policy
reinforces welfare reform to assist strong, self-sufficient families?
2. Are there best practices that should be used in affordable housing
programs so that housing assistance has a positive impact on the broader
community and helps create healthy neighborhoods? Are mixed-income,
mixed-use developments preferable?

Millennial housing cross-cutting issues
1. How are the challenges of meeting very low-income and extremely
low-income households' housing needs best met? To what extent should this
challenge be met with debt subsidies, capital subsidies, or tenant-based
subsidies?
2. How should technology be best used to meet housing challenges?
3. How should quality control be best ensured in an era of devolution? How
can accountability be assured without unnecessary bureaucracy?
4. How should housing policies best intersect with issues of place,
including sprawl, smart growth, and neighborhood revitalization?
5. How should policies to increase housing availability and affordability
best intersect with fair housing policies?

Copyright 2001 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved.