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National Convention on Tuesday night, saying his party needed to “clear away the ideas of the past” and slash outdated rules.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.

    • @[email protected]English
      6•3 months ago

      There are roughly 28 vacant homes, for every person without one.

      It’s not so much a supply issue, as a miss-allocation by the market. Housing is too expensive relative to median incomes. Back in the '70s housing averaged 3x the median income. Now it’s nearly 8x.

      Stagnant incomes for 50 years, is the primary cause. It’s made worse by bad housing policy designed by NIMBYs to ensure prices rise, and corporate mass buying of homes to rent for profit, and people buying additional homes for short term AirB&B rentals. And, and, and.

    • Verdant BananaEnglish
      -2•3 months ago

      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

      • @[email protected]OP
        1•3 months ago

        Ok. But how is that proving your statement that “there is no housing shortage causing there not to be enough homes for people”?

        • Verdant BananaEnglish
          -1•3 months ago

          > 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

          Even if rents at the bottom-end of the market fall during a downturn, they will not fall sufficiently to provide extremely low-income renters with an adequate supply of affordable housing. Owners have an incentive to abandon their rental properties or convert them to other uses when rental income is too low to cover basic operating costs and maintenance. They have little incentive to provide housing in the private-market at rents that are affordable to extremely low-income renters.

          During periods of economic growth, the private market on its own still does not provide an adequate supply of rental housing affordable to low-income households. The rents that the lowest-income households can afford to pay typically do not cover the development costs and operating expenses of new housing. While new construction for higher-income renters encourages a chain of household moves that eventually benefits lower-income renters, new luxury units may not impact rents at the bottom of the market as much as they do rents at the top ( Jacobus, 2019).

          Because the market consistently fails to provide adequate, affordable housing for these renters, the government has an essential role to play to correct for this structural failure. The construction of public housing, subsidies to private developers to construct and operate affordable housing, and deeply income targeted rental assistance to tenants renting in the private market are needed.

          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

            • Verdant BananaEnglish
              -1•3 months ago

              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.

              • @[email protected]OP
                0•3 months ago

                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).