The 2020 presidential election is exactly 1 year from today. The first major contest of the presidential primary season, the Iowa Caucus, is exactly 3 months from today. It is during this event that presidential candidates will collect their first delegate votes on their quest to secure the majority of their party’s delegate votes and become the presidential nominee for their party.
I started this blog in March of 2016. For 32 weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election, I chose an issue a week and just showed where the candidates stood on it. My purpose was just to educate, not necessarily persuade. At the time, I felt like a person’s vote reflected more of how much they liked or didn’t like a candidate and they couldn’t really speak to their candidate’s issues. I wanted to change that.
Today, I feel that I find more and more that people are saying that they don’t care about the character of their candidate as long as they agree on policy. But, they still can’t speak much to that policy. I still want to change that.
So, I continue with my quest for a more educated electorate. In preparation, I identified 80 issues, but I’ve boiled it down to 52 issues that I plan to cover over the next 52 weeks. I hope that those of you who follow this find that you are better able to speak to how your vote affects your daily lives and are able to feel confident in your choice on election day.
Affordable Housing
So, we begin with Affordable Housing. But what does that even mean? Essentially, affordable housing is access to safety, security, wealth, and opportunity because wealth accrual often begins with homeownership.
But, we can’t really talk about affordable housing until we talk about how our nation’s housing policies have historically directly invested in white homeownership while purposely excluding Black Americans. In fact, the argument can be made that America’s racial wealth gap is really a homeownership gap.
I’m ashamed to admit that it wasn’t until a couple of years ago when I saw the episode of Adam Ruins Everything called “The Disturbing History of the Suburbs”, that I truly became aware of this issue. I strongly recommend you take 6 minutes to watch it. It is no accident that the suburbs are primarily white.
Let’s start with the New Deal of the 1930’s. As a part of the New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created a series of programs to help America recover from the Great Depression, including a loan program to help Americans finance their homes. To decide who received those loans, the federal government created color-coded maps in which green neighborhoods were good and red neighborhoods were bad. This eventually became known as redlining. African Americans and other minorities lived in the red neighborhoods. Americans living in the green neighborhoods had no problem securing loans, but there were no loans available for those living in the red neighborhoods, so racial minorities could not secure home loans.
So, just move to a green neighborhood, right? That was not permitted. White people and Black people lived in different neighborhoods for a reason. Early suburb developers instituted rules stating that their homes “could not be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasion race.” So, from 1934 to 1968, 98% of home loans were given to white families.
As I stated earlier, for most, homeownership leads to wealth accrual. When the housing market goes up, homeowners can sell their houses for a profit and buy bigger ones. If you don’t have a home to sell, it is that much harder to accrue wealth. Wealth attracts business which causes property values to go up again, which means white families can sell their homes, send their kids to college, passing down their wealth to future generations, while red neighborhoods, without the ability to attract business, own homes, or improve property values, remain trapped in poverty. 74% of neighborhoods that were redlined in the 1930s, remain low-income to this day and 64% remain non-white. Furthermore, banks still regularly charge higher interest rates on loans secured by black homebuyers than white homebuyers even when they have the same credit.
The standard metric for determining whether housing is affordable or not is if a household is spending 30% of their income on housing. If a household makes $30,000 a year they shouldn’t spend more than $750 on rent/mortgage & utilities. If they make $100,000, they shouldn’t spend more than $2,500. If you pay more than the 30% mark, you are cost-burdened. Over 18 million families are paying more than 50% of their income on housing.
Rates of homeownership have reached historic lows in recent years. Affordable housing has decreased by more than 50% from 1964 to 2009. Much of this is due to restrictive zoning rules and land use regulations that make it harder and more expensive to build affordable housing. Average housing prices have gone up by 188% over the past three decades while median rent has increased by 60% since 1960.
43 million U.S. households rent their homes, which is a larger percentage of U.S. households than any point in the last 50 years. Yet, there isn’t a single county in America where a full time worker making the federal minimum wage can afford a two-bedroom apartment. In the 1960’s, 1 in 5 of all renters spent more than 30% of their income on their rent, but now it is more than half or all renters. 71% of extremely low-income renters spend more than half of their income on rent. Nearly half of these people are seniors or people with disabilities. 7.7 million of these families are eligible for Section 8 rental assistance but do not receive it because of lack of federal resources and are therefore put on a waiting list. And, there is a shortage of 7.2 million affordable homes for the lowest income renters.
Furthermore, despite the passage of the Fair Housing Act 50 years ago, discrimination runs rampant in rental communities where landlords discriminate againts renters based on their race, sex, religion, country of origin, income, whether or not they use housing vouchers or receive disability benefits, and on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and veteran status. This obviously makes it even harder to find housing for numerous subgroups of people.
Stagnant job growth and flat wages have created an affordable housing crisis across rural America and Indian Country. Even when housing supply is plentiful, it is often substandard. An estimated 40% of housing on Indian reservations is considered substandard.
Of course, the above outlines statistics concerning those who do have homes, regardless of whether they are affordable or not. Meanwhile, approximately 500,000 people are homeless at any given time. 1.5 million people will find themselves homeless at some point this year.
Of course, there are some government programs that already help with the issue of affordable housing. One of those is the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund. It is administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and funded by revenue from the government sponsored housing agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Formed through legislation in 2016, it was the first new affordable housing legislation passed in several decades, and it has so far invested $905 million on the construction, rehabilitation, and preservation of affordable housing throughout the country. Additionally, Section 515 Rural Rental Housing is a rural housing program authorized to make loans to provide rental housing for low and moderate income families in rural areas. The Indian Housing Block Grant Program provides affordable housing on Indian reservations and Indian areas.
Presidential Plans (If this is a stand alone issue for a candidate, I have linked their entire plan to their name):
Joe Biden: While Affordable Housing is not a stand alone issue for Biden, under his Plan for Strengthening America’s Commitment to Justice, he sets a national goal of ensuring that 100% of formerly incarcerated individuals have housing upon re-entry. He would expand funding for transitional housing.
Cory Booker: Booker will create a Renters Credit to help cap rental costs at 30% of income for working and middle-class Americans, with a median credit of $4,800. He says this will help 57 million Americans cover their rent costs, including nearly 17 million children, and lift 9.4 million Americans out of poverty. He will give all Americans a fair shot at home ownership with “Baby Bonds”, a federally funded savings account for every child at birth seeded with $1,000. By age 18, low-income account-holders would have $50,000 in seed capital to create wealth. He says this would be fully paid for by restoring 2009-era estate tax rules and closing loopholes that allow wealthy families to avoid paying taxes on investments held at death. He will fund the Housing Trust Fund which will fund construction of new units for low-income renters. He will expand the supply of affordable housing by reforming restrictive zoning laws. He will invest in affordable housing in rural America and Indian Country. He will also combat discrimination and predatory practices in the housing market, expand the Right to Counsel for tenants facing eviction, and eliminate homelessness through major new investment in evidence-based programs to find, keep safe, and move back into housing anyone in need.
Pete Buttigieg: Buttigieg believes in national affordable housing investment and protections for tenants rights. As a part of his detailed Community Homestead Act, he would launch a public trust that would purchase abandoned properties and provide them to eligible residents in pilot cities while investing in the revitalization of surrounding communities. He says that this plan will attack the racial wealth gap by “directly fostering asset ownership among those previously prevented from accumulating capital.” He says that “equalizing homeownership rates amongst the races would reduce the racial wealth gap between white and Black families by 31%.” He also seeks to end homelessness for families with children, fund a national investment in affordable housing construction, and expand federal protections for tenants against eviction and unjust harassment.
Kamala Harris: Affordable Housing is not a stand alone issue on Harris’s website, however she has introduced legislation as a Senator to address issues of housing. In April, she reintroduced the Rent Relief Act to address the rising cost of rent for low-income households. It creates a new, refundable tax credit for renter household paying more than 30% of their gross income on rent. The tax credit would be paid by the Treasury monthly. In July, she partnered with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to roll out a plan that would increase housing assistance to formerly incarcerated individuals and prevent unnecessary evictions. She argues that this will reduce recidivism rates by providing stable housing.
Amy Klobuchar: Klobuchar will provide access to counsel for people dealing with evictions, prohibit landlords from discriminating against renters, combat segregation in housing, and reinstate the Office of Fair Lending and Opportunity’s enforcement and oversight powers. She will increase affordable rental housing in rural communities, improve access to information about rural housing programs, and encourage innovative strategies to attract private investment. She will increase access to affordable housing by investing in Housing Choice Vouchers, promoting effective zoning rules, giving renters access to emergency funds for rent, supporting housing for people with disabilities, and ensuring that all federal housing programs implement strong standards to reduce carbon emissions. She will encourage mobility for renters, increase the supply of affordable housing in high opportunity neighborhoods, reduce homelessness, and help seniors age in place. She will increase access to homeownership by revitalizing and building value in neglected neighborhoods, promoting home ownership through down payment assistance and credit development, protecting the Community Reinvestment Act, and improving education for homebuyers. Her plan to pay for all of this is to raise the capital gains rate to the income tax rate for households making over $400,000 and raising the corporate tax rate to 25%.
Bernie Sanders: Sanders first introduced legislation in 2001 that ultimately led to the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund that was formed 15 years later. He says we need to build millions of apartments and homes throughout the country that will remain affordable. He says this will create millions of good paying jobs in the process. To do this, he will invest $1.48 trillion in the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund. He will invest and additional $400 billion to build 2 million mixed-income social housing units to help desegregate and integrate communities. He will expand the USDA’s Section 515 program by $500 million to build new, affordable developments in rural areas and protect existing units. He will increase funding for the Indian Housing Block Grant program to $3 billion. He will invest $70 billion to repair and modernize public housing. He will fully fund the Section 8 rental assistance $410 billion over the next 10 years and make it a mandatory funding program. He will enact a cap on an annual rent increases, allow cities and states to pass even stronger rent control standards, and provide $2 billion in federal matching grants for states and communities that provide right to counsel for persons in eviction or foreclosure proceedings. To end homelessness, he will prioritize 25,000 National Affordable Housing Trust Fund units in the first year to build housing for the homeless, double homelessness assistance grants to more than $26 billion over the next 5 years to build permanent supportive housing, and provide $500 million in funding to states and communities to provide outreach to the homeless. He will invest an additional $2 billion at the USDA and $6 billion at HUD to create first time homebuyer assistance programs and expand pre-purchase housing counseling for first time home buyers. And, this isn’t nearly a conclusive list for Sanders. I skipped over entire chunks of his plan related to decarbonizing housing, ending predatory lending and modern day redlining, expanding sustainable home ownership, fair housing, gentrification, exclusionary zoning, and segregation.
Tom Steyer: Affordable Housing is not a stand alone issue for Steyer and I couldn’t find anything that addressed his plans for the issue. When asked what he would do to address homelessness, he really just outlined the problem, but didn’t propose any solutions.
Donald Trump: This is not a stand alone issue on Trump’s website. However, here are some things he has done as president. In June, Trump signed an executive order to establish the White House Council on Eliminating Barriers to Affordable Housing Development. Chaired by Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Ben Carson, the council will “address, reduce, and remove the multitude of overly burdensome regulatory barriers that artificially raise the cost of housing development and help to cause the lack of housing supply.” On the other hand, Trump wants to cut federal housing programs by 9.6 billion, or 18%. He has proposed tripling what some of the poorest senior citizens and people with disabilities are paying for rent today. He wants to eliminate the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund which invests in affordable housing. And, his tax legislation further enriches wealthy real estate investors.
Elizabeth Warren: Warren’s housing plan will lower rents by 10%, help close the racial wealth gap, and create 1.5 million new jobs. Her plan invests $500 billion over the next 10 years to build, preserve, and rehab units that will be affordable to lower income families. By building millions of new units, she argues that that will reduce the cost of rent for everyone based on the laws of supply and demand. This is supported by an independent analysis from the Chief Economist at Moody’s Analytics. Also supported in the analysis is her claim that it will create 1.5 million new jobs. She will cover these costs by changing tax policy that would affect the wealthiest 14,000 families. She will also invest $500 million in rural housing programs, $2.5 billion in the Indian Housing Block Grant Program and the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant Program. She will also invest $4 billion in a new Middle Class Housing Emergency Fund which will support the construction of new housing catered to middle class renters in communities with severe housing shortages. She will put $10 billion in to a new competitive grant program. For states, regions, and cities to apply for these grants, they must reform the land use rules (such as minimum lot size or mandatory parking requirements which drive up costs) to be eligible. To address the racial wealth gap, she will create a first of its kind down payment assistance program for first time homebuyers who live in formerly red-lined communities. Like Sanders, this isn’t a comprehensive list of Warren’s plan. Her plan also addresses discrimination in housing, lack of access to credit, support for underwater borrowers, and tenant protection.
Andrew Yang: The closest stand alone issue related to Affordable Housing for Yang, is his policy on zoning. He says that zoning laws have made the creation of affordable housing impossible in the country's largest cities forcing the people who work there into multi-hour commutes. He says he will make housing more affordable by working with localities to relax zoning ordinances in order to create more affordable housing. He will also encourage the building of new innovative housing options like micro-apartments and communal living in high density areas.
