Presidential candidates Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) and former Representative Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) have joined other Democratic presidential candidates in proposing bold plans to address the nation’s affordable housing crisis.
Released on October 10, Senator Bennet’s plan would build more affordable homes for the lowest-income people in America through an investment of $400 billion over ten years in the national Housing Trust Fund (HTF). The plan would also dramatically increase the supply of opportunity housing vouchers to eventually “meet the full demand for all eligible families” within 15 years. The senator’s plan also includes measures to reduce exclusionary zoning, ban source-of-income discrimination, expand the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program and Capital Magnet Fund, create a $7.5 billion per-year grant program for housing with supportive services, reform federal housing tax incentives, and more.
Representative O’Rourke’s proposal, released on October 11, would create 2 million homes for extremely low-income households with a $400 billion investment in the HTF over 10 years. It would invest $50 billion to rehabilitate public housing and $10 billion for rural housing. The plan calls for fully funding Housing Choice Vouchers for all very low-income families and for helping voucher holders move to areas of opportunity. It includes measures to ensure housing, homelessness prevention, and other protections for formerly incarcerated individuals, victims of domestic violence, LGBTQ+ people, and youth experiencing homelessness. And it combats state and local exclusionary zoning laws and bans source-of-income and other discrimination, protects fair housing rules, provides a national right to counsel for those facing eviction, and more.
The nation is experiencing a severe shortage of affordable homes for those most in need. Nationwide there are fewer than four rental homes affordable and available to every ten of the lowest-income renter households, and just one in four deeply poor families that qualify for housing assistance receives it. In 99% of counties in the U.S., a full-time minimum-wage worker cannot afford a one-bedroom rental home at the fair market rent, and seven out of the ten fastest-growing occupations in the U.S. do not pay enough to afford even a modest one-bedroom rental.
According to a national public opinion poll commissioned by NLIHC’s Opportunity Starts at Home multisector affordable homes campaign, support for significant federal investments in housing solutions has grown dramatically over the last several years. Today, most people in America (85%) believe ensuring everyone has a safe, decent, affordable place to live should be a “top national priority.” Eighty percent believe – on a bipartisan basis that Congress should “take major action” to make housing more affordable for low-income people. The public overwhelmingly supports significant federal investments in programs like the HTF, rental assistance through tax credits or vouchers, and emergency cash assistance to help low-income families experiencing a financial set-back avoid eviction.
NLIHC’s nonpartisan Our Homes, Our Votes: 2020 candidate and voter engagement project is elevating solutions to the nation’s housing crisis in the presidential campaign and tracking what all the candidates have to say about housing and homelessness: www.ourhomes-ourvotes.org