Commentary: Support for affordable housing should continue [View all]
By Jared Bernstein and Mark Zandi / Special to The Washington Post
Many low- and middle-income Americans are struggling to find an affordable place to live. Unemployment is low, and wages are up, but they aren’t keeping pace with the rapid increases in rents and house prices in much of the country. There is a severe affordable housing crisis, and it is set to get much worse.
Given the facts we’ll walk through in a moment, lawmakers need to address this crisis, which is why we wanted to highlight an idea that’s a timely part of the solution: a bill in Congress (H.R. 5599) designed to channel significant resources into the Housing Trust Fund, a program with a strong track record in supporting affordable rental housing. The bill calls for no new funding relative to current policy: Its funding comes from preventing the scheduled sunset of a small, existing fee paid by homeowners getting mortgages insured by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Simply put, the legislation would significantly increase the number of affordable rental apartments by preventing a housing-related revenue source from expiring.
The scale of the affordable housing crisis is daunting. Since the supply of new rental units and homes has been consistently lagging the demand for new homes created by forming households, there is a housing shortfall of 1.6 million units. This is equal to more than one year of construction at the current pace of home building. And the shortage is intensifying as housing demand is outpacing supply by about 250,000 units each year.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/commentary-support-for-affordable-housing-should-continue/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=29ae2b591e-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-29ae2b591e-228635337
= new reply since forum marked as read
