§1441a — Title 42 The Public Health and Welfare | U.S. Code

Summary

Congress sets a goal to build or fix 26 million housing units in the next ten years, and says 6 million of those must be for low- and moderate-income families. The aim is to help every American family have a decent place to live. Congress also says too little attention has gone to saving and repairing existing homes. Older housing for lower-income families is getting worse and being abandoned. To meet the goal, more work must go into preserving and modestly rehabbing homes, improving how housing is managed and kept up, and making sure local services back up those neighborhoods. The effort should focus on areas where decline is visible but not yet severe.

Title 42, §1441a

The Public Health and Welfare — Source: USLM XML via OLRC

(a)The Congress finds that the supply of the Nation’s housing is not increasing rapidly enough to meet the national housing goal, established in the Housing Act of 1949 [42 U.S.C. 1441 et seq.], of the “realization as soon as feasible of the goal of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family”. The Congress reaffirms this national housing goal and determines that it can be substantially achieved within the next decade by the construction or rehabilitation of twenty-six million housing units, six million of these for low and moderate income families.

(b)The Congress further finds that policies designed to contribute to the achievement of the national housing goal have not directed sufficient attention and resources to the preservation of existing housing and neighborhoods, that the deterioration and abandonment of housing for the Nation’s lower income families has accelerated over the last decade, and that this acceleration has contributed to neighborhood disintegration and has partially negated the progress toward achieving the national housing goal which has been made primarily through new housing construction.

(c)The Congress declares that if the national housing goal is to be achieved, a greater effort must be made to encourage the preservation of existing housing and neighborhoods through such measures as housing preservation, moderate rehabilitation, and improvements in housing management and maintenance, in conjunction with the provision of adequate municipal services. Such an effort should concentrate, to a greater extent than it has in the past, on housing and neighborhoods where deterioration is evident but has not yet become acute.

Notes & Related Subsidiaries

Editorial Notes

References in Text

The Housing Act of 1949, referred to in subsec. (a), is act July 15, 1949, ch. 338, 63 Stat. 413, which is classified principally to this chapter (§ 1441 et seq.). For complete classification of this Act to the Code, see

Short Title

note set out under section 1441 of this title and Tables. Codification Section was not enacted as part of the Housing Act of 1949 which comprises this chapter.

Amendments

1974—Pub. L. 93–383 designated existing provisions as subsec. (a) and added subsecs. (b) and (c).

§1441a National Housing Goals