HOUSING MARCHERS ASSEMBLING HERE WITH FOCUS ON 'AFFORDABILITY CRISIS'

They've traveled miles this week to walk through Washington neighborhoods, knock on doors of Congress and gather in churches to underscore what they say is obvious: For too many Americans, affordable housing has become an oxymoron.

They might be right.

As the organizers of a march tomorrow dubbed "Housing Now!" prepare for what they hope will be the largest housing demonstration since the 1960s -- organizers estimate 100,000 will march -- policy experts across the political spectrum agree that a decades-old commitment to ensure every American a safe and decent place to live has been shaken.

While a major focus of the march will be homelessness, many analysts say the critical issue is not a shortage of housing, but a shortage of housing that people can afford.

Millions now struggle to buy their first house or find an apartment that fits their budget. The problem is particularly acute for the poor, whose numbers have grown while the supply of low-cost housing has dwindled.

"We are a nation with a very, very bad housing problem," said Gerald McMurray, staff director of the House subcommittee on housing and community development.

It is, in fact, an old complaint. "Most of the housing now being built is for sale, or for rent, at prices far above the reach of the average American family," President Truman said after calling a special session of Congress to discuss housing in 1948.

Irving Welfeld, a senior analyst in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, believes that the talk of a crisis is overstated. "There is a general attitude in this country that the sky is always falling . . . somehow there is always a housing crisis."

But to Savina Martin, a member of the National Coalition for the Homeless, this crisis is all too real. "You don't have another decade to play with our lives . . . . We will not disappear. No housing, no peace," she said at a news conference this week.

The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University has called the situation alarming. In a report, it found: The number of renters and homeowners who meet federal poverty standards and who spend more than half their income on housing rose from 3.2 million in 1974 to 6.6 million in 1985.

Adjusted for inflation, the poor were paying 28 percent more for housing in 1985 than they did in 1974. The number of those not receiving federal housing subsidies and paying more than $300 a month in rent rose from 1.3 million to 3 million.

The number of poor who were not receiving federal help in meeting housing costs rose from 3.5 million in 1974 to 5 million in 1985.

The percentage of young families owning homes fell from 71.1 percent in 1980 to 62.7 percent in 1988.

The portrait in Virginia, Maryland and the District is similar. In the District, for example, 43 percent of all renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing, which the government says is the limit of affordability. About 10 percent pay more than 75 percent, a recent city survey shows.

Of those who are poor, half spend more than 30 percent for housing, the city survey shows. Increasingly, many -- an estimated 20 percent of the city's total household population -- live in doubled-up households for financial reasons and live in jeopardy of becoming homeless.

"I think there are very broad agreements among reasonable people that you've got a big problem of affordability," said Stuart Butler, director of domestic policy studies for the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Those coming to Washington to gather on the Mall have a simple answer: Spend more money.

"Housing Now! is made up of people who are coming to Congress to say, What do you think is going on out there? We want to be able to afford a home. If it means raising taxes, if it means making adjustments, then do it," said Barry Zigas, a march organizer and head of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition.

Zigas and others particularly blame the Reagan years, during which the budget appropriation for HUD was cut dramatically.

But economic experts said the reasons extend beyond decisions made by Reagan's HUD, which recently has come under congressional scrutiny amid allegations of fraud, waste and mismanagement.

Real estate prices have soared as the baby-boom generation competes for housing. Rent controls, enacted by local governments, have further changed the market. And as the economy has shifted from manufacturing to service jobs, more people have found themselves making less.

The Reagan administration's response to the affordability crisis may well bear the blame for exacerbating it, housing advocates said. At a time when other social welfare "safety nets" such as food stamps and other cash assistance programs were being scaled back or merely maintained at current levels, government housing officials did not do enough to ensure that the bare minimum -- a home -- would be safe from economic jeopardy, they said.

From 1977 to 1980, HUD added an average of 316,000 new households each year to assistance rolls. Beginning in 1981, the average of new additions dropped to 82,000 a year, according to the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities, a liberal research organization specializing in issues affecting low- and moderate-income families.

"It's not that they were cutting back. It's that they were not adding to that {subsidized} stock at a very fast pace," said Ed Lazere, research associate at the budget policy center.

If the federal government is to blame for anything, said Anthony Downs, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, "the indictment you could make is that it did not respond . . . . There was a concerted national effort to do as little as possible about {housing} . The Reagan administration had no interest in the constituency of the urban poor."

At the same time that the demand for subsidies grew, private housing costs rose steadily. In 1970, 7.3 million households earning less than $10,000 competed for 9.7 million rental units costing $250 or less a month.

Fifteen years later, the number of households earning less than $10,000 had risen to 11.6 million and the number of rental units still costing $250 or less had shrunk to 7.9 million, according to a study by Lazere's group and the Low-Income Housing Information Service.

Much of the debate over affordable housing revolves around what to do about it. Housing Now! has made no efforts to support specific bills now before Congress, but many of its supporters believe more units need to be built to answer the need.

"The will to spend is not there," said Mitch Snyder, a march organizer and leader of the Community for Creative Non-Violence, which operates an overnight shelter for 1,200 people in the District. "We want to put pressure on Congress to do what they have done for the S&Ls or the defense industry. We want {affordable housing} placed on the budget agenda."

Housing analysts from the Heritage Foundation and the Brookings Institution agree that the federal government should stay out of the construction business. Rather, they said, the government should help pay for the cost of renting, buying housing or improving the existing public housing stock.

"When you try to house people by building new homes," said Butler of the Heritage Foundation, "it costs roughly double what it costs to provide them income assistance. Vouchers, now used in a federal program known as the Section 8 housing program, should be the "preponderant" federal housing program.

"There's nothing wrong with their housing," Downs of the Brookings Institution said of those struggling to make their monthly housing payments. "They need more money. What we're talking about fundamentally is poverty."

So far, Downs said, the Bush administration policy is that "we should take a rhetorically thrilling and positive approach but spend no money. Which is a delusion . . . . I think we ought to raise taxes to beat hell, especially raising taxes to beat the deficit."

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.