The Decline of Affordable Housing
Some may find it strange that a high school student is thinking about the growing shortage of affordable housing in the U.S. today. However, I became interested in this topic after reading several recent articles about the growing number of homeless people in cities across the nation. These articles caught my attention due to the contemporary novel I studied in my English class last term, The Hate U Give, which deals with the complexities of housing, community and poverty in urban America.
In her novel, author Angie Thomas describes an inner-city community where residents are besieged by gang violence, police brutality, racism, substance abuse and overall crumbling infrastructure. When the main character leaves this community to attend a private high school almost an hour away, she enters a suburban world of opportunity, safety and modern buildings with manicured lawns. But Thomas does not imply that her main character is unquestionably better off in the suburbs; instead, Thomas escapes the stereotypes of inner city versus suburb by depicting another side of these two communities.
The inner-city community, though not devoid of its problems, is populated by people with strong family and neighborhood bonds who find support in the social and religious communities around them.
Today, urban communities like these are at risk, as the new federal tax law accelerates the discrepancy between the growing number of people who need affordable housing and the shrinking supply of it.
At a time when affordable housing should be a central national concern, the government is taking away incentives, personnel and funding that supported affordable housing at the end of the last century.
Affordable housing in the United States, a relatively new development in our country’s history, has struggled since its beginnings in 1934 with the creation of the Federal Housing Administration. The new federal tax plan which Congress recently enacted has further set back the progress of affordable housing, making it harder for those most vulnerable members of our society to find decent, reasonably-priced housing. Everyone in our society is affected by the decreasing availability of affordable housing. Our government needs to undo these consequences of the new tax law and to continue finding solutions to allow low-income citizens the simple right to an affordable roof over their heads.
Since 1986, the federal government has created tax credits to encouraged private investors to invest in affordable housing projects. These are valuable because they reduce the amount of money a taxpayer (an investor) must pay to the government. With affordable housing, tax credits are given by the government to affordable housing developers and the developers give those tax credits to investors, in exchange for the money needed to build the affordable housing developments. The investors, mostly comprising companies and wealthy individuals, use these valuable credits to reduce their own tax bill.
What is now a $9 billion-a-year social program, according to a recent New York Times article, is in trouble because the new tax law lowers the investor-company’s tax bill and makes the tax credits worth less. The new tax law is estimated to reduce the growth of affordable housing by 235,000 units per year, which already adds to a shortage of such housing. It also increases the cost of building a housing unit by $50,000, making affordable housing less attractive to developers.
Another problem is that the number of renters in the country has increased by one million per year since 2010. And those who are renting are wealthier, with more than one-third of renters over the past ten years making more than $100,000 per household. This is placing low income residents, whose numbers are increasing, out of the housing market. A crisis now looms with declining rate of affordable housing construction, a problem worsened by the new tax law. Add to this the fact that President Trump’s proposed budget for next year reduces funding for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by 14%, and the impending crisis is accelerating.
Why should every citizen, and not just those who are in need of affordable housing, care about this problem?
Look closer, and we can see that this will affect everyone. In addition to the basic moral issue of taking care of American society’s most vulnerable citizens, a lack of low-income housing increases the number of homeless people and contributes to an increase in many urban problems, including the spread of disease. The New York Times reported that a recent hepatitis outbreak in San Diego, attributed to the city’s growing homeless population has killed 20 people. Middle-income workers are being pushed far outside of the cities in which they work, leading to commutes for these workers of up to three hours each way.
Mahatma Gandhi said that “[a] nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” From rent control and more public funding to decreasing building regulations and increasing available tax credits, solutions are being proposed. But the problem of inadequate affordable housing in various parts of our country continues to worsen.
How do we judge ourselves, and how do we want “our nation’s greatness to be measured,” in Gandhi’s words, if our vulnerable fellow citizens do not even have a place to live?