Affordable Housing
The other night, ten Democratic presidential, hopeful, nominees took stage and debated their plans for America’s future. There never was a mention beyond a few garbled words hastily thrown together about an issue which is plaguing many young voters ing to raise families and one which has surfaced in my community, the shortage of affordable homes. Senator Elizabeth Warren knows of the issue as she has discussed it in one of her talks, “The Two Income Family.”
Moderators have bypassed the issue and not asked the question of a candidate’s plan for Affordable Housing which is a growing problem for many people in the US especially young people. In lieu of their not asking, here is a site 2020 Because Housing is Built with Ballots from which you can read each of the candidate’s plans.
The housing crisis has hit urban, suburban, and rural areas with some states being worst(see chart above) than others with regard to supply. Nationally, there is a shortage of 7 million homes affordable and available to the lowest-income renters. Rents have risen faster than renters’ incomes over the last two decades, more people are renting than ever, and the supply of apartments they can afford has lagged. Fewer than four affordable and available rental homes exist for every 10 of the lowest-income renter households nationwide. People of color are disproportionately impacted. Racial segregation persists and concentrated poverty is growing.
Meanwhile, policy makers have disinvested in the nation’s public housing infrastructure, leaving families living in unsafe, unhealthy, and unacceptable conditions. After almost a decade of decline, homelessness is back on the rise, and is in the news in an adversarial manner. The same as with immigrants, people do not want to provide solutions and they want the homeless to disappear. Where they should go has not been determined.
Jumping on this bandwagon pre – election, the one man who has a history of discrimination as learned from a father who was depicted by in song by Woodie Guthrie, President Donald Trump has signaled his intentions to address California’s homeless crisis in a harmful, unjust, and unlawful manner. Involving criminalization, sweeps of unsheltered people living on the streets, they will (potentially?) be moved to federal homeless camps.
Affordable housing and homelessness has been in the news across the country and debate moderators have yet to ask the question of what can be done or what are your solutions to the crisis.
While providing good and affordable healthcare is important; housing, besides a cardboard box, is one of the prerequisites to having good health. One way or another, we will be paying for it.
The Question the Presidential Candidates Don’t Get Asked, City Lab, Diane Yentel
The GAP, A Shortage of Affordable Homes March 2018
People keep trying to find band aid solutions to fix this – https://otb.cachefly.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/wages-productivity-Figure-A.png
There is no band aid solution. If this underying cause is not fixed we will eventually have guillotines or their modern equivalents in the town squares. We can either pay people what they are worth or confiscate it from the wealthy.
Hank:
I agree income is an issue and the skewing of it to a small percentage of the population has been an issue. Even so and when confronted with plans the need for affordable housing, the message I have heard while on a planning commission has always been “It is only affordable once.” Then they allowed a new builder to deviate from the original plan. We do not even try.
“President Donald Trump has signaled his intentions to address California’s homeless crisis in a harmful, unjust, and unlawful manner.”
The current news stories from California include the tech companies busing their employees from the inner cities, working people sleeping in cars or campers because they can not afford the available housing, and homeless people sleeping in cardboard boxes surrounded by filth and used syringes.
CALIFORNIA IS NOT A POOR STATE. It has problems and it should deal with them. It is shameful that local government officials have allowed drug users to live on the sidewalks and foul the neighborhood! It is shameful that the local governments have not allowed developers to build more low cost housing!
There is a place for rent controls, but obviously they are not a substitute for building low cost housing. (Flood the city with low cost housing and rents will fall.)
But California has been going its own way for decades. Political correctness has run amok there. For years, virtue signaling has been the order of the day. At some point, local democratically elected officials have an obligation to ACT!
The rot that we see on the national nightly news is a testament to California local officials’ “deer caught in the headlights” type of INACTION.
I believe that President Trump’s only mistake was deciding to involve the federal government in Democratically run California.
On a side note, I first saw Elizabeth Warren on a 2004 PBS Frontline program titled “Secret History of the Credit Card”. If you haven’t seen that program, then you should. She was refreshingly blunt.
Here is a link: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/
Jim:
But, but, we are at capacity for labor? Theoretically everyone has a job. The Federal government has done little to solve the issue of employment except blame immigrants from the South and now the homeless. Trump will do nothing more than blame the poor and minorities as this si what he has done previously and what his father has done. It is not California’s problem, it is the federal government’s problem to skew wealth and income to the 1% of the population instead of creating jobs even if it was digging holes and filling them in again like China does.
“Then they allowed a new builder to deviate from the original plan.”
This is part of the same underlying issue. It is not just about productivity vs. income, but about pushing costs and risks of all types downwards and profits and benefits of all kinds upwards.This is the Republican party goal and the end result of 40 years of Reaganism.