Discussing employer-assisted housing at the National Housing Conference symposium in Boston last week are: (from left) Kevin Canavan, investment officer with the Homeownership Opportunity Initiative; Robin Snyderman, housing director of the Metropolitan Planning Council in Chicago; Madeline Pill, research assistant with the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University; and Barry Zigas, executive director of the National Housing Impact Division for Fannie Mae.

Affordable housing is likely to be pushed down state and federal leaders’ priority lists given the current economic conditions, according to housing leaders and lenders.

In Massachusetts, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, a five-year, $100 million trust that was set up to create and preserve affordable housing, is likely to suffer the most.

“The trust fund is most definitely at risk,” of being unfunded, said Rep. Michael Cahill, D-Beverly, who appeared at the National Housing Conference Symposium held in Boston last week.

Cahill, who is the House chairman of the Joint Legislative Committee on Housing and Urban Development, was one of more than 20 speakers at the symposium. The event featured the official release of NHC’s latest report, “Paycheck to Paycheck: Working Families and the Cost of Housing in America,” which focuses on whether people in five occupations – teachers, sales clerks, nurses, police officers and janitors – could afford to rent or buy homes in 60 metropolitan areas.

The study found that Boston, along with San Francisco, ranked as one of the most unaffordable places for people in those occupations to purchase a home. The Boston area was also one of the most unaffordable regions for janitors and sales clerks to rent one- and two-bedroom apartments, according to the study.

The study is an expansion of last year’s “Housing America’s Working Families,” a report which showed that more than 13 million families in America are using more than half of their incomes to pay for housing.

In addition to releasing the study results, symposium panelists also discussed ways to preserve affordable housing and to get more employers – including those in the private sector – involved in helping employees find housing.

During the end of the symposium, one of the moderators, Aaron Gornstein, executive director of the Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association, asked panelists how affordable housing projects in Massachusetts will fare during these tough economic conditions.

Cahill said the trust fund is likely to face the biggest hurdle. The trust was funded for the first time during fiscal budget 2001 using surplus revenue, said Cahill. It was intended to provide $20 million per year for the next five years to subsidize affordable housing projects.

Cahill said leaders wanted to fund the trust using surplus revenue this year as well. Earlier this year, some House leaders pushed to cut funding for the trust fund because they felt the state couldn’t afford the spending, but later agreed not to make cuts. At the time, Senate leaders said money promised last year automatically gets put into the fund unless the law is repealed.

With the recent job layoffs and major security concerns facing the state and nation since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Massachusetts leaders are now saying that projects like the trust fund will likely be put on the back burner.

‘Off the Table’
While the trust fund is at risk, according to Cahill, the $508 million housing bond bill – which, among other things, provides money to renovate public-assisted housing – passed by the Senate more than two weeks ago, is likely to be unaffected. Earlier this summer, the House passed a similar housing bond bill.

Cahill said he expects House and Senate leaders to reach a compromise on the housing package, including the bond bill and changes to the state’s so-called anti-snob zoning laws, or Chapter 40B, before they recess in November.

On a national level, housing will probably take a back seat to military spending and unemployment insurance, according to economists and housing experts at the symposium.

Barry Bluestone, director of the Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University, said the $60 billion to $75 billion stimulus package for which President Bush is pushing is likely to focus on boosting the military and unemployment benefits.

“Unfortunately, many of the domestic agenda items … are off the table now,” said Bluestone.

Bluestone said as lawmakers discuss what other areas to fund, they may consider infrastructure improvements – including housing production. But he predicted that even if the stimulus package is passed, it will have a minimal impact on the housing-demand and lack-of-housing-supply issues that confront the state and other parts of the nation.

Bluestone was the key author behind a study supported by the Archdiocese of Boston that called for the creation of 36,000 new housing units in the next five years. Since the study’s release last September, the commonwealth has seen an increase in housing production because local colleges and universities are responding.

Northeastern University, for example, recently opened Davenport Commons, a mixture of affordable and student housing, and Boston University also has built more student units. In addition, the University of Massachusetts at Boston and Boston College have discussed plans to build to more student housing.

But state and federal spending has fallen short of what housing advocates wanted, he said.