| For Immediate Release 10/19/2005 |
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| NCRP DENOUNCES LEGISLATORS' ATTEMPTS TO CURB NONPROFIT ADVOCACY & PARTICIPATION IN NATIONAL HOUSING TRUST FUND | |||
| Amendments to GSE legislation prevents nonprofits from applying to national housing trust fund | |||
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OCTOBER 19, 2005, WASHINGTON, D.C.-The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, NCRP, is the nation's premier nonprofit and philanthropic watchdog. At NCRP we are committed to making sure that the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors function at the highest levels of accountability and probity, and that nonprofits function as well as they possibly can to assist disadvantaged and disenfranchised populations. The pending government-sponsored enterprises (GSE) legislation represents a divergence of new levels of accountability and new resources for low- and moderate-income people in the U.S. NCRP has been a longtime supporter of the National Low Income Housing Coalition's efforts to knit together a bipartisan consensus to use the GSE legislation to create our nation's first national affordable housing trust fund. I can only underscore the importance of this, since in my prior life, I was a director of housing and economic development for a mid-sized city, and a national affordable housing trust fund would have been a godsend for my city's efforts to develop thousands of affordable housing units. NCRP denounces the efforts of a handful of members of Congress to try to amend the GSE bill to prevent nonprofits-and only nonprofits-from applying to the trust fund if they are engaged in advocacy activities that are completely, 100 percent legal and appropriate. The proposed restrictive amendments are unacceptable and should be rejected by the majority in Congress that supports the overall GSE legislation. The supporters of the trust fund have made many compromises in |
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