by Catherine Hollingsworth

Housing for those with MCS is the number one item for health and recovery, at any level. We urgently need your help to insure the needed funding to keep those with MCS, and others, in these vital HUD Housing programs and off the streets. Stable housing is urgently needed for those who have no means to pay the rent other than these much-needed HUD programs.

This Thursday, July 1st, the House Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (known as T-HUD) appropriations Subcommittee is scheduled to mark up the Fiscal Year 2011 spending bill. The bill will propose funding levels for HUD programs affecting people experiencing, or at risk of homelessness, including McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grants, Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers, and many others.

In the FY-2011 Budget Proposal, the Administration proposed a funding level of $2.055 billion, a 10 percent increase over FY 2010. The FY 2011 Budget needs to be 2.4 billion to support the HUD programs.

Please call or email your Representatives and those who sit on the T-HUD Subcommittee.

House T-HUD Subcommittee Members:
• Olver (MA), Chair
• Pastor (AZ)
• Rodriguez (TX)
• Kaptur (OH) Price (NC)
• Roybal-Allard (CA)
• Berry (AR)
• Kilpatrick (MI)
• Latham (IA), Ranking Member
• Wolf (VA)
• Carter (TX)
• LaTourette (OH)

Urge them to re-iterate their support to Chairman Olver and Ranking Member Latham for this needed housing funding. Congressional office phone numbers can be found by calling U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

If you don’t have a Representative on the T-HUD Subcommittee, urge other Representatives, especially members of the full Appropriations committee, to also express their support to Chairman Olver and Ranking Member Latham for a funding level of 2.4 billion. Call or email your Representative and ask that they write a letter to support this needed funding.

Thank you for your assistance in this urgent housing matter.

Catherine Hollingsworth is an interior designer, artist, knitting designer, educator and columnist, poet, writer, and MCS activist and advocate. A supporter of alternative energy for many years, she was the owner of an experimental HUD Cycle V passive-hybrid solar home in 1979, and was an engineering assistant on the hydrogen fuel cell at Los Alamos National Labs in 1983. Catherine currently lives in Anchorage, Alaska and leads the Alaska MCS Association and support group.