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JAYAPAL, SANDERS, AND KHANNA SAY US HOUSING CRISIS MUST BE ‘AT THE
TOP OF OUR AGENDA’  
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Jake Johnson
April 10, 2024
Common Dreams
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_ "We really need a revolution in housing and how we deal with
housing," said Sen. Bernie Sanders at a gathering on the issue. _

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Rep.
Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) speak during a panel discussion at the Sanders
Institute Gathering that was held in Los Angeles, California on April
4, 2024., (Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli/The Sanders Institute)

 

Rent is so high in the United States that half of the nation's
tenants can't afford their monthly payments
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Last year, more Americans than ever experienced homelessness
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the temporary pandemic safety net collapsed. Mortgage rates and
through-the-roof prices have left younger generations increasingly
hopeless
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owning a home.

Those and other alarming facts constitute what's broadly known as the
U.S. housing crisis, which a group of leading progressive lawmakers is
working to elevate to the top of the Democratic Party's list of
priorities ahead of the critical 2024 elections and beyond.

Sen. Bernie Sanders
[[link removed]] (I-Vt.),
Rep. Pramila Jayapal
[[link removed]] (D-Wash.), and
Rep. Ro Khanna
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case for a bold affordable housing push during a gathering last week
in Los Angeles, California, the epicenter of the crisis. The trio of
lawmakers and other participants touted a wide range of potential
policy solutions during the three-day event, from national rent
control to social housing to a Green New Deal for public housing
[[link removed]].

"Housing has not been at the level it should be on the progressive
agenda," Sanders said during a panel discussion with Jayapal and
Khanna at the Los Angeles gathering, which was organized by the
Sanders Institute—a think tank co-founded by the Vermont senator's
wife, Jane O'Meara Sanders, and their son, executive director Dave
Driscoll.

"This is the richest country on Earth. We're not a poor country," the
senator continued. "Can we build affordable housing that we need? Can
we protect? And the answer is of course we can. But it will require a
massive grassroots effort to transform our political system to do
that."

The other two panelists agreed, stressing that housing intersects with
every aspect of life and should be a human right, not a commodity.

"How do you apply for a job if you don't have an address? How do you
get your health insurance if you don't have a stable place? How do you
deal with kids if you're houseless?" asked Jayapal, the chair of the
Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC). "I think the good news is
housing is at the top of our agenda now."

"Pramila is right," said Khanna, "that housing has become front and
center."

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Rep. Ro Khanna discuss
housing at the Los Angeles gathering. (Photo: J. Queally/Common
Dreams)

In November 2021, in the midst of a deadly pandemic that left tens of
millions of Americans
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imminent risk of eviction, the U.S. House passed legislation that
would have made the single largest investment
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affordable housing in the nation's history—over $170 billion
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That legislation, known as the Build Back Better Act, died in the U.S.
Senate, felled by the unanimous opposition of the chamber's
Republicans and two right-wing Democrats—Sens. Joe Manchin
[[link removed]] of West Virginia
and Kyrsten Sinema
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since left the party to become an Independent.

The ire for Manchin and Sinema was palpable at the gathering; "two
sellout Democrats" was how Sanders described the pair.

But the framework offered by the ill-fated Build Back Better
package—which included
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of billions of dollars in funds for rental assistance and much-needed
public housing renovations—remains a guidepost for progressives, who
pushed housing to the forefront of negotiations over the bill.

"We laid the groundwork for this investment. We made the arguments for
why this has to be a top priority," Jayapal said in a speech at the
event. "The rent is too damn high. And that is true everywhere across
the country."

The daunting situation facing tenants, prospective homeowners, and
unhoused people appears even more stark when contrasted with the
exploding fortunes of private equity behemoths
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billionaire investors fueling—and benefiting from—soaring housing
costs.

In recent years, private equity firms notorious for gutting companies
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making off with a quick profit have been on a buying spree
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the American housing sector, snatching up
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buildings and single-family rental homes—sometimes with no intention
of even housing tenants.

The reach of corporate landlords extends from student apartments to
senior housing, from older buildings to newer luxury high-rises. One
recent analysis
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institutional investors could control as much as40% of all
single-family homes in the U.S. by decade's end.

Growing corporate ownership of the nation's housing stock has been
disastrous for tenants already squeezed by other elevated living
costs. The experiences of tenants across the U.S. and empirical
research have shown
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private-equity landlords are more likely to jack up rent (sometimes
with the help of profit-maximizing algorithms
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on basic maintenance
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and aggressively pursue evictions.

A 2022 report
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by city officials in Berkeley, California expressed alarm at the
"nationwide trend where large institutional investors have since the
beginning of the pandemic purchased an enormous number of homes; over
75% of these offers are in all cash, and many without any inspections,
pricing prospective homeowners out of the real estate market."

That trend has drawn scrutiny from local and national lawmakers,
including attendees of the Sanders Institute gathering in Los Angeles.

Khanna, the lead sponsor of the Stop Wall Street Landlords Act
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told _Common Dreams_ on the sidelines of the gathering that
preventing large institutional investors from seizing an ever-growing
share of the U.S. housing market is an important part of tackling the
broader affordability crisis—but isn't sufficient on its own.

"I would say that the defining theme of this conference is that there
needs to be some regulation on rent, and then in addition, there needs
to be an increase of housing supply and a prevention of Wall Street
from buying up single-family homes."

Sanders echoed that message in a separate interview with _Common
Dreams_.

"We really need a revolution in housing and how we deal with housing,"
said Sanders, calling for a comprehensive approach that "deals with
tenants' rights, deals with taking on the corporate interests, deals
with building massive amounts of affordable housing, deals with public
housing."

"It's got to be placed way up in the agenda," Sanders added.

[Attendees at The Sanders Institute housing crisis Gathering]

Opening night attendees at The Sanders Institute's conference focused
on the national housing crisis. (In front, from left): Prof. Tyrone
Howard, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Dr. Jane O'Meara Sanders, The Sanders
Institute's Dave Driscoll, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg. (Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli/The
Sanders Institute)

There's not a single state in the U.S. [[link removed]] that
has an adequate supply of affordable rental housing for the
lowest-income renters, according to the National Low Income Housing
Coalition, which estimates that the nation's shortage of affordable
housing has grown to roughly 7.3 million units
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A recent Harvard study
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that more than 12 million Americans are paying more than 50% of their
income on housing.

The dearth of affordable housing nationwide has fueled state and
local efforts
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boost supply and rein in out-of-control rent. An initiative
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California—which has the largest unhoused population in the
country—aims to repeal a real estate industry-backed state law
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limits the power of local governments to implement rent control
measures.

Such rent control preemption laws exist in at least 30 states
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underscoring the need for federal action.

"We really need the federal government's help here," Margot Kushel, a
professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco
who led the largest study
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U.S. homelessness in decades, said at the gathering.

The study, which examined homelessness in California, concluded that
"for most of the participants, the cost of housing had simply become
unsustainable."

In the face of sky-high housing costs across the country, lawmakers
and advocates convened by the Sanders Institute made the case for
pursuing rent control measures at the national level. Polling
indicates that would be popular: A survey
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by Data for Progress and YouGov found that 56% of U.S. voters would
support "a policy to cap rent increases to 5% a year."

Speaking on the event's opening night, Khanna rejected the neoliberal
economic orthodoxy
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says rent control—like other price controls—would limit supply,
worsening the nation's shortage of affordable housing.

Khanna pointed to studies
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of New Jersey and elsewhere showing that local rent control measures
did not, in fact, negatively affect housing supply.

"It reminds me of the arguments they used to give about the minimum
wage," said Khanna, pointing to the debunked notion
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minimum wage hikes harm employment. "We need to argue very clearly
that rent regulation—making sure that rent doesn't go too high,
making sure that it doesn't exceed inflation—is about creating
balance for renters in the market and not being exploited by landlords
in a time of scarcity. At the same time, we should build more housing.
These two aren't mutually exclusive."

Experts agree. Last year, as _Common Dreams_reported
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time, a group of economists including Mark Paul of Rutgers University,
James K. Galbraith of the University of Texas at Austin, and Isabella
Weber of the University of Massachusetts Amherst signed a letter
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the Biden administration to mandate rent caps and other tenant
protections as conditions for federally backed mortgages, which
support nearly half of the country's rental units.

The economists' push was part of a broader tenant-led rent control
campaign backed by climate researchers
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elected officials
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and others.

In an op-ed
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American Prospect_ last year, Paul argued that "to truly transform
the housing sector, the United States will need to embrace
complementary policies to increase the number of affordable and
market-rate housing units, encourage more construction and density
through changes to zoning laws, and build millions of units of social
housing—high-quality public housing for people across the income
spectrum."

"It's a tall order," he wrote. "But embracing rent control is a
commonsense place to start."

Khanna, who served as national co-chair of Sanders' 2020 presidential
campaign, told _Common Dreams_ that he wants President Joe Biden to
embrace rent control as a plank of his 2024 bid, as the Vermont
senator did four years ago
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"I think the president should endorse caps on rent," Khanna said. "I
think that would be one of the ways to win back a lot of younger
voters, a lot of progressive voters who feel that they're having a
hard time making ends meet and they're saddled with student debt
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high rent. They often have high credit card payments because of the
interest rates and they're struggling in an economy that isn't working
for them."

Last week, the Biden administration announced that it would limit rent
increases at properties funded by the federal Low-Income Housing Tax
Credit—a limited move that affordable housing campaigners welcomed
as a step in the right direction.

“The rent is still too damn high, but this cap will provide
stability to more than a million tenants," Tara Raghuveer, the
director of the National Tenant Union Federation, said
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response.

"The idea that we have millions of families in America paying 50% or
more of their income on housing is unconscionable." —Sen. Bernie
Sanders

In recent years, progressives in Congress have introduced numerous
bills aimed at curbing runaway housing costs, boosting supply,
bolstering tenants' rights, and ensuring the nation's housing stock is
climate-resilient.

The Green New Deal
[[link removed]] for Public Housing
Act, spearheaded by Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
[[link removed]] (D-N.Y.),
would repeal the Faircloth Amendment—which artificially limits
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construction of new public housing—and invest over $230 billion into
making the country's public housing stock energy-efficient and
zero-carbon.

Other legislation includes Rep. Cori Bush's (D-Mo.) Unhoused Bill of
Rights
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Jayapal's Housing Is a Human Right Act
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Delia Ramirez's (D-Ill.) Tenants' Right to Organize Act
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and Rep. Maxwell Frost's (D-Fla.) End Junk Fees for Renters Act
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Some of those bills make up part of the first-of-its-kind Renters
Agenda
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last month by the congressional Renters Caucus, which was founded
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Gomez (D-Calif.), a Los Angeles representative who also spoke at the
Sanders Institute gathering.

"Our goal is to make sure that the Renters Agenda is at the top of the
Democratic Party agenda," Gomez said. "We have to tackle this problem
if we want a healthy economy and we want our families to thrive."

But such legislation stands no chance of passing without major shifts
in the composition of Congress and a president committed to ambitious
solutions to the housing crisis.

During his State of the Union address
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month, Biden pointed to steps his administration has taken to combat
algorithmic price-fixing in the housing market and urged Congress to
take action to provide relief for renters and boost the nation's
lagging supply of affordable housing.

In an interview with _Common Dreams_, Jayapal emphasized that there's
a lot more the president can do through executive action—some of
which is laid out in the CPC's executive action agenda
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She also argued that Biden should put housing costs at the forefront
of his campaign against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, who
repeatedly sought steep cuts
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federal housing programs during his first four years in office.

"We don't suffer from scarcity in this country, we suffer from greed,"
Jayapal said. "We have enough money to house people, and to create
situations where people aren't going to fear for what tomorrow's going
to look like, and are able to raise a family and think about more
opportunity for themselves in the future. So I think housing is at the
center of that."

Sanders said Jayapal is "exactly right."

"The idea that we have millions of families in America paying 50% or
more of their income on housing is unconscionable," the Vermont
senator told _Common Dreams_. "And the idea that you're having these
private equity firms, Blackstone, et cetera, gobbling more and more of
these houses up is unacceptable."

That, Sanders said, "we've got to deal with."

_Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams._

* Housing Crisis
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* homelessness
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* corporate profits
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* high rents
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