5/1/18
Last week, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson proposed legislation to make affordable housing “work” by making it stingier. The bill would force low-income households to pay more of their scarce earnings in rent, tripling the rent for the poorest. That flies in the face of research showing that making housing more affordable helps to improve economic self-sufficiency and increases children’s future earnings. Harvard University’s report on rental housing shows that more than 20 million households pay more than 30 percent of their income on rent. That’s before any other expenses, let alone saving for a rainy day or retirement. And 43 percent of very low-income households pay more than half their earnings in rent or live in severely inadequate units. For the most vulnerable, the shortage is even more acute. According to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, there are 7.2 million fewer “affordable and available” homes than needed for extremely low-income households. Nevada, for example, has an 85 percent shortfall in affordable homes. The Trump tax cut legislation made matters worse. What is to be done? In the short term, several priorities loom:
First, the administration’s plan to strip out the omnibus’s funding for HUD and weaken other affordable housing programs must be blocked. Now is not the time to reduce HUD’s rental assistance and eliminate the Housing Trust Funds. Second, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) should be safeguarded and enhanced, beginning by making its temporary funding increase permanent. Finally, while the lack of federal funding is a huge problem, so are many state and local zoning rules and land-use restrictions. What’s needed is ambitious, innovative policy-making at all levels of government. Our main federal policies to support affordable rental housing, HUD’s Section 8 programs and LIHTC, were enacted in 1974 and 1986, respectively. We’re long overdue for a re-think that draws on decades of experience. The Trump Administration appears to believe that affordable housing programs will “work” if they are simply less generous. The evidence suggests the exact opposite. Policymakers and legislators must embrace the idea that access to decent affordable housing is a basic right as well as an economic imperative. Voters, for their part, must demand that they do.
