"Lower-middle income families need affordable housing!" shouted a crowd of several hundred rallying in front of City Hall yesterday to show support for State Assembly Housing Committee Chairman Vito Lopez's new proposal to revitalize affordable housing in New York.

The demonstrators, who hailed from affordable housing groups all across the state and also included many elected officials, gathered to support a plan which would create an Empire State Housing Investment Fund and allot $500 from next year's budget to buy 30-year bonds which would finance affordable housing.

The Empire State Housing Investment Fund would be established using excess reserves from the State's Mortgage Insurance Fund and the Federal Housing Trust Fund. At present, 43 states in the United States have established housing funds using similar methods thereby solving the problem of stable funding for housing plans.

Lopez' other measure would call on Governor Paterson to allot $500 million from next year's budget to buy 30-year bonds, which would provide $33.5 million in funding per year. This funding source could finance 16,000 units of affordable housing, which could bring in $1.4 billion in state revenues and increase employment by 168,000.

With New York State facing an unprecedented housing crisis, the state government has an obligation to establish and protect affordable housing for senior citizens and veterans, Lopez said. Word has it that State Senate Housing Committee Chairman Pedro Espada has presented a similar plan to the Senate.

Groups represented at the rally included Habitat for Humanity, Housing First!, New York State Rural Housing Coalition, and the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development. Protestors of various ethnic groups waved placards and shouted slogans calling on the government to provide more affordable housing.

Investment in affordable housing can stimulate local economy and increase employment opportunities, noted Josh Lockwood, president of the New York chapter of Habitat for Humanity. He cited a nationwide statistical report showing that building one new unit of affordable housing provides 1.51 new jobs, and that building a new one-family unit provides 3.24 jobs.