It’s exciting and encouraging to see that the Democratic candidates are taking seriously our nation’s housing crisis and offering solutions such as these:
- Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren calls for a $500 billion federal investment over the next 10 years in new affordable housing. She says her plan would create 3 million new units and lower rents by 10%. Warren would also give grants to first-time homebuyers who live in areas where black families were once excluded from getting home loans. “Everybody who lives or lived in a formerly red-lined district can get some housing assistance now to be able to buy a home,” Warren told attendees at the She the People Presidential Forum in Houston this spring.
- New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker would provide financial incentives to encourage local governments to get rid of zoning laws that limit the construction of affordable housing. He would also provide a renters’ tax credit, legal assistance for tenants facing eviction and protect against housing discrimination, something he’s made part of his personal appeal. “When I was a baby, my parents tried to move us into a neighborhood with great public schools, but realtors wouldn’t sell us a home because of the color of our skin,” Booker recounts in an online campaign video.
- Sen. Kamala Harris has also introduced a plan for a renters’ tax credit of up to $6,000 for families making $100,000 or less.
- New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has signed on to both the Harris and Warren plans, which have been introduced as legislation.
As this LA Times editorial makes clear, in order to address our state’s housing crisis, cities need to zone for enough housing to meet the needs of all its residents, not just high end and single-family residents. Unfortunately, the California Assn. of Governments isn’t helping.
Southern California is mired in a housing affordability and homelessness crisis that is undermining the region’s quality of life and threatening its economic prosperity. But local elected leaders apparently haven’t gotten the memo or simply don’t care.
How else to explain a recent vote by the board of the Southern California Assn. of Governments, which is composed of city and county elected officials from across the region, that vastly underestimates the number of homes needed to ease the existing shortage and to house the next generation of Californians.
“Investors” are grabbing homes and making it increasingly difficult for home buyers to find an affordable home. Another example of how the “free market” is exacerbating our nation’s housing crisis. Has the time come for the government to start building affordable homes, as it did in the 1970s?
A confluence of factors — rising construction costs, restrictive zoning rules and shifting consumer preferences, among others — has already led to a scarcity of affordably priced housing in many big cities. Investors, fueled by Wall Street capital, are snapping up much of what remains.
“If it weren’t bad enough out there for first-time home buyers, the additional competition from investors is increasingly pushing starter homes out of the reach of many households,” said Ralph McLaughlin, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic, a provider of real estate data.
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