The United States is in the midst of a historic housing crisis, with housing coming closer to the fore of the national agenda than ever before. For years, housing advocates had languished over the lack of coverage of housing issues. Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, joked that they used to celebrate the rare mention of words as simple as “neighborhoods” and “house” in presidential debates. Today, presidential candidates are releasing various housing plans, emphasizing the issue on the stump, and, yes, debating the issue on TV.
At the core of America’s housing crisis is a housing shortage, bolstered by suburban sprawl, underfunded subsidies, inadequate transit, discrimination, and more. Even before announcing her presidential campaign, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced a historic bill to boost affordable housing and fundamentally reshape the housing crisis. Known for her detailed policy “plans,” Warren has also proposed grant incentives for local governments to loosen zoning rules to bolster the housing supply, as well as anti-discrimination measures and special new protections for renters. She takes a uniquely robust, market-oriented approach that addresses the root causes of the housing crisis. A President Warren would represent the best chance out of the 2020 field to revitalize the American housing market.
A Plan for That
When it comes to housing, as her campaign motto goes, Warren has “a plan for that.” Leveraging every city’s thirst for federal infrastructure funds, she would seek to incentivize local governments to repeal draconian zoning rules that restrict development to expensive single family homes. The plan would offer $10 billion in competitive infrastructure grant funding to localities that allow for the construction of more affordable housing closer to downtown areas — allowing more people to live closer to employment and transit, improving environmental sustainability and quality of life. By disincentivizing minimum lot sizes and mandatory parking requirements, Warren’s plan accomplishes the essential task of pushing greater housing density in metropolitan areas, providing much-needed relief to an industry that has been underfunded and overregulated.
These are not just campaign platitudes for Warren; she introduced the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act in the Senate in 2018, partnering with colleagues in the House of Representatives to introduce the same legislation there. The law would provide $500 billion over the next 10 years in a combination of public and private funding toward building, preserving, and rehabbing affordable housing units, creating 3.2 million new units and 1.5 million jobs in the process. Rents are projected to fall by 10% under the plan. She also a plan for “protecting and empowering renters” by creating a Tenant Protection Bureau to enforce new rules like a just-cause eviction standard and rights to lease renewal, tenant organizing, and the ability to sue landlords. Importantly, Warren has included policies to pay for these ambitious proposals, including returning the estate tax thresholds to 2009 levels with more progressive rates.
At its core, Warren’s approach addresses the root problem behind the market’s shortage-driven housing crisis. Her plan aptly identifies that “the rising cost of rent reflects a basic supply-and-demand problem,” offering the most holistic restructuring of the market. It is a reflection of her belief that progressives should leverage economic markets to regulate and improve the capitalist economy — not skirt around it. Her commitment to finding the smartest solutions to the country’s challenges has earned her the endorsement of former candidate Julián Castro, who was the secretary of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Obama.
Warren’s experience as an effective advocate for the middle class speaks for itself. For decades, Warren has been a top expert on financial markets, dating back to her time researching bankruptcy at Harvard. She was sounding the alarm about the 2008 mortgage crisis as early as 2003 and saved taxpayers $1 billion as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Known for her persistence in holding the leadership of banks like Wells Fargo accountable, her crowning achievement was designing and setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB is the federal government’s top consumer watchdog agency, returning over $12 billion in illegal bank fees directly to consumers. This experience informs her bill’s measure to invest $2 billion in borrowers still recovering from the financial crisis with negative home equity. It is easy for candidates to express their anger about the right problems, but Warren’s life story shows the powerful difference it makes to understand how to accomplish change in Washington.
Crucially, Warren’s plan also addresses the ongoing legacy of housing inequality and discrimination. Writing in The Atlantic, Madeleine Carlisise described her bill as “perhaps the most far-reaching assault on housing discrimination since the 1968 Fair Housing Act.” The bill would provide down payment assistance to Black families who were affected by redlining, a practice of discriminating against Black mortgage applicants that has contributed to the still-widening racial wealth gap. It would also broaden the Community Reinvestment Act’s measures against mortgage discrimination and expand the Fair Housing Act’s antidiscrimination protections to include gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, and source of income. Warren’s championship of this issue came to light when she called out Michael Bloomberg at the Nevada Democratic debate for falsely blaming the 2008 financial crisis on the end of redlining. She has been endorsed by advocacy groups like Black Womxn For and Black To the Future Action Fund, which was formed by Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza.
The Other Housing Candidate
Often seen as the contender most in line with Warren’s progressive ideals, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has attracted many supporters who share Warren’s goals. Piper Winkler, a founding member of Harvard Students for Bernie, wrote an article in the HPR entitled “Housing for All, Sanders for President,” as part of the HPR’s initiative to publish an op-ed from each of the student campaign subgroups on campus. While Sanders has expressed a genuine concern for housing access, his calls for a “right” to housing do not stack up to his misguided policy approach. He does not emphasize local zoning reform to legalize more high-density development and increase housing supply, and he has a record of opposing affordable housing initiatives at the local level.
The Boston area is ground zero of the housing crisis, but Sanders has inserted himself into local politics to stand in the way of housing reform. He helped elect anti-housing lawmakers in Cambridge, killing the city government’s much needed Affordable Housing Overlay proposal. The candidates he endorsed rejected the fact that boosting housing supply will lower rents, a basic tenet of supply and demand. This earned him the headline “Is Bernie Sanders a NIMBY?” in reference to “Not In My Backyard” anti-housing activism. Sanders recently angered local housing activists by speaking out against a plan to develop 10,000 new housing units, including 2,000 designated affordable units, on the site of a closed racetrack in East Boston. He blames “luxury developments” for the housing crisis, mistaking cause and effect, because short supply drives up rents to ‘luxury’ levels. Blocking new development exacerbates the crisis by pushing up the prices of existing units and forcing out longtime residents — precisely the gentrification that Sanders purports to oppose.
Other policies Sanders supports would also be counterproductive in the housing market. Economists have shown that his extreme national rent control proposal of a 3% annual cap on rent hikes — far below the more reasonable caps of between seven and 10% after inflation in California and Oregon — would reduce the housing supply and raise rents in the long run. “Moderate” candidates like Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, and Pete Buttigieg, on the other hand, would fund the backlogged National Housing Trust Fund by less than half of what the National Low Income Housing Coalition says is needed, suggesting the housing crisis is not a priority for them. Warren is the only candidate who combines Sanders’ progressive vision with the practical approach to make a real difference.
Of course, no one expects that Warren will be able to enact every single detail of the policy proposals she has put forward, but she has a long record of effective lawmaking and bipartisan achievements in the Senate. She wrote the second-most bills in the Senate and the fifth-most bills to become law in the Democratic caucus; 39% of her bills had Republican cosponsors, more than both Sanders’ and Biden’s Senate records. Her approach holds the greatest promise for the most progress over the next four years. In a country where the housing crisis still struggles to see the light of day in news and speeches, let alone legislation, it matters that Warren is actually making this issue a priority in her campaign and in her plans for a Warren administration. As Yentel put it, “Senator Warren’s proposal has the power to transform lives and communities.”
Image Source: Pexel/Jeffrey Czum