On a day when many affordable housing advocates were celebrating, retired U.S. Rep. Barney Frank came to them with a stern word of warning, as well as some encouragement.

Yesterday, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency Mel Watt announced that he was going to direct Fannie and Freddie to begin to fund the Low Income Housing Trust Fund, a federal program aimed at enabling sates to protect their existing affordable housing and provide more of it, through a variety of means. The program was initial passed as part of the financial reforms of 2008, but had been left unfunded as Fannie and Freddie recovered from the housing crash. Watt’s move will enable about $300 to $350 million in funding in fiscal year 2015, with potentially more to come in future years.

Speaking to a gathering of affordable housing advocates from around New England in attendance at today’s Citizens Housing And Planning Association-sponsored conference in Needham, Frank crowed, "We now have a major stream of revenue protected from the appropriations process," but, he warned, "We have to be prepared for the Republican Congress to try [to] repeal it."

Frank called upon the assembled group to coordinate their advocacy once the holidays are over to make sure that their representatives were on board, pointing out that two Republican senators from New England are up for re-election in 2016 – Susan Collins of Maine and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire – and that they may be under particular pressure to support repeal.

You have to "get to every member of congress and get them to fight to the death to support this," he said, saying the trust fund "has the potential to be transformative … enabling us to produce new housing. … One of the things we need to stress is that adding this supply of low income housing will help everybody that is in the market."

He suggested that such a well-coordinated effort could be very effective, saying "if they hear enough passion from enough of their voters … you can make [repealing the affordable housing trust fund] a low, low, low priority."

Looking back on a long career as a prominent advocate of low income housing, Frank bemoaned the lack of focus by policy makers on low income housing in recent decades, saying that "We have laws that prosecute bad landlords. If we were to bring a prosecution against the worst landlord in America, it would be against the U.S. government," because of the poor state of public housing across the country. In the long term, Frank warned all non-defense discretionary programs, but especially those aimed at helping the poor, were under threat because of the huge amount of the budget dedicated to military spending, saying that unless the federal government curtailed its military budget all other departments would be under the constant threat of cuts.

"I want America to be the strongest nation in the world. Some of my friends say that’s xenophobic, but it’s a fact, somebody’s going to be the strongest nation in the world, and when I look at the available candidates, I support us," said Frank.