Asia Coney, a PHA contract employee and director of the National Coalition to Preserve Public and Assisted Housing, which organized the demonstration, said she would organize a letter-writing campaign, a petition drive and a phone bank to persuade lawmakers to restore funding as soon as possible for federal public-housing programs.
"I firmly believe that if you say things loud enough, long enough and often enough, they will hear you," said Coney, who presides over PHA's residents' advisory board.
Coney said the war in Iraq has diverted funds that might otherwise have been spent on domestic programs, including public and assisted housing.
"The federal government seems to be getting out of the housing business," she said.
Citing federal budget cuts, PHA in January laid off 350 employees, or more than one-fifth of its 1,600-person workforce. Two years ago, PHA's annual budget was $358 million, while this year it is $313 million, according to PHA spokesman Kirk Dorn.
The cut in federal spending has had a real impact on PHA's 84,000 clients, who live in 49 public-housing developments and 10 scatter-site subsidized clusters. Prior to the layoffs, a routine service request took 15 days to fulfill. Dorn said it now takes 30 days.
The Philadelphia layoffs were prompted by an advisory issued late last year by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which said that it would fund all local housing authorities this year at only 76 percent of the amount the agency said was needed for them to operate at an optimal level.
Because of the delay in construction of housing units, Coney said, more than 3,000 elderly and low-income people now are on a waiting list for public housing in Philadelphia.
