Stop almost anyone on the street today and you’ll hear we’re in a housing crisis. In most American counties, minimum-wage workers can’t afford to rent even a modest one-bedroom apartment. Working families are bidding against the world’s biggest financial firms for homes. On top of it all, people living in public housing complexes across the country are increasingly exposed to inhumane conditions after years of federal neglect and underinvestment.
It’s becoming nearly impossible for working-class people to buy and keep a roof over their heads. Congress must respond with a plan that matches the scale of this crisis.
For generations, the federal government’s approach to housing policy has been primarily focused on encouraging single-family homeownership and private investment in rental housing. The mortgage-interest deduction provides roughly $30 billion in tax write-offs to homeowners annually. In addition to their support of the mortgage market, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac provide up to $150 billion in financial backing to the multifamily rental market every year, but much of it goes to large, corporate landlords. These lucrative loans come with very few tenant protections or labor requirements. And the largest affordable housing incentive our government offers — the low-income housing tax credit — too often ends up in the hands of for-profit developers.
Outsourcing development to the private market leaves affordable housing subject to the boom-and-bust cycle of private investment. What’s more, the federal government relinquishes the oversight needed to protect tenants from abusive landlords and racial discrimination.
The result is a housing market where corporate landlords make record profits while half of America’s 44 million renters struggle to pay rent. For a generation of young people, the idea of home has become loaded with anxiety; too many know they can’t find an affordable, stable place to rent, let alone buy.
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Why is this happening? For decades, thanks to restrictive zoning laws and increasing construction costs, we simply haven’t built enough new housing.
There is another way: social housing. Instead of treating real estate as a commodity, we can underwrite the construction of millions of homes and apartments that, by law, must remain affordable. Some would be rental units; others would offer Americans the opportunity to build equity. These models of rent caps and homeownership are already working around the world, such as in Vienna, and in some parts of the United States.
In Congress, the two of us represent very different parts of the country, but New Yorkers and Minnesotans have both benefited from social housing.
The Electchester complex in Queens and Co-op City in the Bronx today house over 50,000 New Yorkers. Co-op City stands as not only one of the largest housing cooperatives in the world — with its own schools and power plant — but also the largest, naturally occurring retirement community in the country, a testament to its financial and social sustainability.
In Minnesota, trusts, such as Saint Paul’s Rondo Community Land Trust, give people the chance at more affordable homeownership, because the homeowners don’t buy the land; instead, it’s held in trust and leased to homeowners on a long-term, renewable basis. The model has expanded across Minnesota, in rural and suburban communities alike.
Because we believe that housing is a human right, like food or health care, we believe that more Americans deserve the option of social housing. That’s why we’re introducing the Homes Act, a plan to establish a new, federally backed development authority to finance and build homes in big cities and small towns across America. These homes would be built to last by union workers and then turned over to entities that agree to manage them for permanent affordability: public and tribal housing authorities, cooperatives, tenant unions, community land trusts, nonprofits and local governments.
Our housing development authority wouldn’t be focused on maximizing profit or returns to shareholders. Rent would be capped at 25 percent of a household’s adjusted annual gross income. Homes would be set aside for lower-income families in mixed-income buildings and communities. And every home would be built to modern, efficient standards, which would cut residents’ utility costs. Renters wouldn’t have to worry about the prospect of a big corporation buying up the building and evicting everyone. Some could even come together to purchase their buildings outright.
To fund social housing construction, our development authority would rely on a combination of congressional spending and Treasury-backed loans, making financing resilient to the volatility of our housing market and the political winds of the annual appropriations process.
Our bill would also invest in public housing and repeal the Faircloth Amendment, which prevents the construction of new public housing. Passed in 1998, with the support of both parties, the amendment helped entrench a cycle of stigmatization and disinvestment. Our legislation would reinvest federal money in local public housing authorities to fund the backlog of much-needed repairs.
We know that housing looks a lot different in Bemidji, Minn., than in the Bronx. It shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all approach. That’s why our bill would task local governments, unions and established local nonprofits with developing homes that blend seamlessly into the landscape of the town and fit the needs of the people living in them.
Research from New York University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Climate and Community Institute estimates that our bill could build and preserve more than 1.25 million homes, including more than 850,000 for the lowest-income households.
We can’t wait for the private market alone to solve the housing crisis. This is the federal government’s chance to invest in social housing and give millions of Americans a safe, comfortable and affordable place to call home — with the sense of security and dignity that come with it.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a Democratic U.S. representative from New York. Tina Smith is a Democratic U.S. senator from Minnesota.
