Like Richard Nixon going to China, sometimes a change in policy is sold best by an unlikely proponent. Vice President Kamala Harris leading the charge for more housing supply in the United States shows just how far her party has come. Democrats have long been skeptical about overhauling supply and regulation to make housing more affordable. Harris’ $40 billion housing agenda, released last week, is a welcome recognition that drastic changes are needed to close a national shortage of 4.5 million homes.
Harris, who hails from California, the western epicenter of the national housing crisis, wants three million new homes in four years, on top of what homebuilders were already planning. That’s a punchy target: developers completed just 1.5 million units in 2023. Her campaign aims to encourage what it calls “innovative” approaches to affordable housing, like providing grants and loans to local developers and non-profit organizations. The plan leans heavily on zoning reforms and employs language about cutting red tape usually used by Republicans. Former President Barack Obama endorsed the shift in his speech to the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night, saying his party needed to “clear away the ideas of the past” and slash outdated rules.
Nevertheless, a nationwide housing drive risks stoking homeowners’ ire in a country where the middle class derives most of its wealth from real estate and two-thirds of dwellings are occupied by their owners. Residents seek to defend property, opens new tab values at planning board meetings, for example by delaying projects so they become uneconomical. Harris’ plan would not remove local control but would use federal power to support more building.
The housing crisis is closely linked with another crisis: homelessness*, a persistent issue even in the world’s wealthiest societies4,5. While individual circumstances leading to homelessness are diverse, at a population level, the largest predictor is a lack of affordable housing6,7, which has been associated with a 38% increase in homelessness in the largest American cities in the past year8. The two crises are exacerbated by unforeseen circumstances such as natural disasters, humanitarian crises, and economic downturns9.
https://m3challenge.siam.org/2024-problem/#2024-data-links-temp https://books.google.com/books?id=guxcEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/ahar/2022-ahar-part-1-pit-estimates-of-homelessness-in-the-us.html https://www.usich.gov/sites/default/files/document/All_In.pdf
Ok. But how is that proving your statement that “there is no housing shortage causing there not to be enough homes for people”?
> While individual circumstances leading to homelessness are diverse, at a population level, the largest predictor is a lack of affordable housing6,7
https://books.google.com/books?id=guxcEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (University of California Press, 2022) https://www.usich.gov/sites/default/files/document/All_In.pdf (U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness)
Excerpt from 2021 GAP Report
https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/gap/Gap-Report_2021.pdf
and the next question is ‘Why is more affordable housing needed?’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States
which where you can scroll to the bottom and find ‘External Links’ which will provide with the GAP report link posted as well as others
And again that doesn’t answer the question.
If people were paid living wages, then they could afford housing options thus explaining how instead of a housing shortage we have a population that is under paid to the point housing is unaffordable.
How about instead of trying to fix the symptom (homelessness) we instead fix the cause (investor-owned housing AND limiting Airbnb)?
Increasing wages does sfa to help the housing crisis (but they should be increased anyway to help with food costs).