The Democratic National Committee (DNC) released a draft of its 2024 party platform on July 13, and the Republican National Committee (RNC) officially adopted its 2024 party platform at the Republican National Convention on July 18. While both platforms discuss housing and homelessness, the parties propose sharply divergent responses to the housing affordability challenges that voters are confronting. Prior to the release of the platforms, NLIHC sent identical, nonpartisan letters to the DNC and RNC leadership, urging each party to make the housing needs of the lowest-income renters a central pillar of its 2024 platform (see Memo, 6/17).
The housing plank of the DNC’s platform, outlined in its “Lowering Costs” chapter, begins with the acknowledgment that “[a] home is more than a roof over your head, it’s a place to raise your family, to build community, and to grow the American dream.” The platform lists the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to date that aim to “help Americans rent, buy, and build.” These actions to benefit renters include the American Rescue Plan’s eviction prevention measures; the administration’s actions to cap rent hikes in LIHTC properties (see Memo, 4/2); the “biggest expansion of rental assistance for low-income families in 20 years”; “cracking down on slumlords who don’t play by the rules”; and “going after unfair rental ‘junk fees’, like fees people are charged just to pay rent online or to receive sorted mail.” The platform also cites the administration’s commitment to “rooting bias out of the home appraisal process, which perpetuates the racial wealth gap by unjustly undervaluing millions of Black- and Latino-owned homes.”
Referencing All In: The Federal Strategic Plan to End and Prevent Homelessness, the platform uplifts the administration’s efforts to end homelessness: “Based on a ‘housing first’ principle, it’s helping states and cities prioritize housing as the foundational step in delivering support, services, and jobs to rebuild lives.”
The DNC platform reviews the highlights of the administration’s housing plan, which “expands rental assistance to a half-million new households, including to low-income veterans and young people aging out of foster care,” “calls for funding to help build or renovate 2 million homes nationwide” through expansion of LIHTC and a new Neighborhood Homes Tax Credit for homeowners, and proposes a $10,000 mortgage-relief tax credit for first-time homebuyers and $25,000 in downpayment assistance for first-generation homebuyers. The plans would also “crack down on corporate landlords who are gouging tenants, for example by capping the amount they can raise the rent each year” (see NLIHC’s statement in response to this proposal here). The administration’s housing plan also proposes a Housing Innovation Fund “to help state and local governments find new ways to increase supply, like by converting empty office or hotel space into apartments” and “encourages state and local efforts to take on barriers to building new housing.”
The DNC platform also calls for “increasing the supply of an array of housing options like duplexes, triplexes, and townhomes that bridge the gap between single-family homes and large apartment buildings” and “reducing barriers to building housing and providing federal tax incentives for the development of housing for people of all incomes.” The platform outlines a commitment to workforce housing, stating that “[w]orkforce housing must also be prioritized to ensure that our nation’s teachers, nurses, firefighters, and other essential workers can afford to live in the communities they serve. We recognize that these workers are the backbone of our society, but they are left to struggle with housing costs that outpace their incomes, leaving them unable to live near their workplaces. Democrats will meet this challenge head-on by increasing funding for programs that support the creation and preservation of affordable housing options for essential workers, as well as collaborating with state and local governments to accelerate the development of workforce housing, ensuring that our communities remain accessible and affordable for all.”
The term workforce housing, when used to refer to middle-income housing programs, does not acknowledge that low-income renters constitute a significant portion of the workforce (see Memo, 7/15). While middle-income renters are facing an uptick in housing affordability challenges, it is the lowest-income renters who face the greatest housing cost-burdens: according to NLIHC’s Gap report, 74% of extremely low-income renters pay more than half of their limited incomes on rent, compared to just 3% of middle-income renters. New federal housing investments should be targeted towards the lowest-income renters, who face the greatest shortage of affordable homes and are at the most severe risk of housing instability and homelessness.
The fourth chapter of the RNC platform, “Bring Back the American Dream and Make it Affordable Again for Families, Young People, and Everyone,” commits to “reducing Housing, Education, and Healthcare costs, while lowering everyday expenses, and increasing opportunities.” The first pillar of this chapter, Housing Affordability, lists the RNC’s policy priorities: “To help new home buyers, Republicans will reduce mortgage rates by slashing inflation, open limited portions of Federal Lands to allow for new home construction, promote homeownership through Tax Incentives and support for first-time buyers, and cut unnecessary Regulations that raise housing costs.”
The eighth chapter of the RNC platform, “Bring Common Sense to Government and Renew the Pillars of American Civilization,” commits to “Take Care of Our Veterans.” The pillar includes a call to “end luxury housing and Taxpayer benefits for Illegal Immigrants and use those savings to shelter and treat homeless Veterans.”
This pillar presents a false tradeoff between ending veteran homelessness and assisting migrants. Decades of underinvestment in deeply affordable homes and supportive services – not immigration – are responsible for the shortage of affordable homes and rising rates of homelessness. The U.S. has the resources both to end veteran homelessness and welcome migrants with dignity. Furthermore, bipartisan efforts to end veteran homelessness with a Housing First approach have proven effective, cutting veteran homelessness in half over the past decade. To end veteran homelessness, candidates and policymakers must commit to an evidence-based approach that invests in housing and supportive services.
NLIHC sent identical, nonpartisan letters to the DNC and RNC leadership on June 13, calling on each party to make the housing needs of the lowest-income renters a central pillar of its 2024 party platform. The letters provide background information on the nation’s affordable housing and homelessness crisis and urge each party to adopt a 2024 policy platform that commits to bridging the gap between incomes and housing costs, expanding and preserving the supply of deeply affordable rental homes, providing emergency rental assistance to stabilize families in crisis, strengthening and enforcing renter protections, advancing evidence-based solutions to homelessness, and fixing our country’s broken disaster recovery system. The nonpartisan letters can be found here and here.
To learn more about the Our Homes, Our Votes campaign and its ongoing efforts to raise the profile of low-income housing as an election issue, visit: www.ourhomes-ourvotes.org/candidate-engagement