The U.S. has a shortage of 7 million rentable homes for people with low incomes — but as Rep. Earl Blumenauer explains, that’s just the tip of the housing iceberg.
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In US news and current events today, Rep. Earl Blumenauer has created this video to explain the housing crisis facing the U.S.
Blumenauer: ' The United States of America has a housing crisis. Let me provide you with a few numbers. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, for housing to be considered affordable, people should pay, at most, 30% of their income for housing. If you pay more than 30%, you are considered cost burdened.
If you pay more than 50%, you are considered severely cost burdened. Today, nearly half of renters are “cost-burdened” and nearly a quarter of renters are ‘severely cost burdened.’ Rent is usually the first thing family pays. If you’re paying half of your income in rent, you’re forced to choose between food, utilities, transportation, to say nothing about healthcare. Yet today, rents are rising faster than incomes, low-income and communities of color are being displaced by gentrification, last year more than 550,000 people experienced homelessness every night, and for extremely low-income renters, there is a shortage of seven million affordable rental homes. In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt led the United Nations to adopt a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 25 of that declaration Includes housing as a basic human right. But the United States hasn’t ratified the declaration and to this day, fails to live up to those standards. That is unacceptable, and it is no accident. It’s the result of decades of deliberate choices from policymakers to segregate housing and, more recently, to reduce the federal government’s partnership for affordable housing. The federal government has long provided a home for some, often at the expense of others. Communities of color were systematically denied wealth-building opportunities in the form of property ownership and faced blatant discrimination in accessing housing. By the end of the 20th century, Congress and the Nixon and Reagan administrations systematically shifted federal housing policies to produce less housing, focused on rental assistance rather than construction, and ultimately all were less impactful. The effects of these decisions linger today. The federal government needs to get back in the game of housing policy and treat housing like the fundamental human right that it is, and we know it should be. I recently released a report detailing some of these challenges and potential solutions titled “Locked Out: Reversing Federal Housing Failures and Unlocking Opportunity.” The proposals are simple. We should begin by fully-funding all public housing capital maintenance needs, repealing the outrageous cap on public housing construction, and build millions of new homes for low-income people. We need to double homelessness assistance funding, permanently fund the federal government’s interagency response to homelessness, expand legal assistance for people facing evictions, and promote housing first policies that give people a home without preconditions. We cannot make people with serious challenges jump through unnecessary hoops. We should create a Renter’s Tax Credit or make Section 8 vouchers an entitlement program, like food assistance or Medicaid. At the same time, we should commit to building more affordable housing through the Housing Trust Fund and Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. No matter where you start in life, everyone should have a chance at homeownership.
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