Pearl River There can’t be any doubt to most public and elected officials that affordable housing is almost a contradiction in terms. If they do have any doubt, they can get straight by talking to almost any family renting or even trying to buy in most cities these days. Almost in cities everywhere, if there is housing at all, it’s definitely not affordable. Additionally in many cities, where jobs are concentrated and population is growing, there’s simply not enough housing period, at least for working and lower income families.
Unbelievably, it is now going to get worse. Much worse.
Once upon a time, sixty and seventy years ago, the solution for lower income families was public housing. When I began as an organizer with ACORN, it was obvious where we would begin our work, and it was in housing projects and the neighborhoods immediately around them. It’s where our constituency lived. That was then, but over the last fifty years the footprint of public housing has shrunk to a shadow of what it was. For lower income families, the main policy substitution of neoliberalism was Section 8, which for qualified families would subsidize your rent to a level that aligned with the family’s income and size. The program wasn’t an entitlement, because there were always more eligible families, than there were Section 8 vouchers. Worse, if you were lucky enough to win or receive a voucher, you still had to find a landlord that would accept it within a fixed time period, which has also become harder and harder.
Now in another terrible battle in the Trump administration’s war against the poor, HUD is proposing a 43% $27 billion cut in rental assistance. Cities all over the country are canceling distribution of vouchers and guarantees to affordable housing developers that there will be available Section 8 funding that contributed to the sustainability of these projects. More than 5 million people across the country depend on Section 8. Reportedly, the House Appropriations Committee stripped the rental assistance money from the HUD shrinkage proposal, “but that hasn’t deterred the Trump administration from pushing ahead.”
Not only are existing Section 8 recipients at risk, developments of critically needed new construction of affordable housing units are imperiled. “About $50 billion of multifamily loans purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac between 2018 and 2023 would be at risk of default….” Those are projects that are shovel ready and in process. Projects that are on the drawing board are stuck there, because without Section 8 guarantees, the numbers don’t work financially, so cities and financial institutions have frozen them in their tracks. These projects at risk now are spread between red and blue states, whether Florida and Texas or California and New York.
Low Income Housing Tax Credits have also been a major HUD program, directed through state agencies, that has spurred affordable housing construction. Developers receiving the credits had to maintain affordable rent caps for 30 years for lower income tenants. An ACORN organizer forwarded me a report from Philadelphia, where a developer has announced that he’s looking to offload his portfolio of 3000 such units as the credits expire, which has city officials and tenants scurrying to try and figure out a plan to keep these units available. Many are in gentrifying neighborhoods, where any new owners would quickly convert to market rents. Over the years, when we’ve fought these conversions, sometimes successfully, there was usually some HUD leverage and support. Under the current regime, forget about that as HUD becomes shrink-wrapped.
With one hand, Trump put out yet another executive order that would attempt to institutionalize homeless people, if he can get around legal impediments at the state and local level. With the other hand, he and his people seem to be doing everything possible to increase homelessness. Less food, no healthcare, and less housing all wrapped up in one package.
Neither heart nor shame are left in the White House and Congress.