Trump’s vanity wall is a solution in search of a problem.
Alexis Goldstein, who is a former Wall Street professional who now works on financial policy, has more. The only emergency is the one created by Trump and the Department of Homeland Security with their brutal repression and moves to deny migrants their legal right to seek asylum. Research shows that immigrants are actually an economic boon, so this manufactured crisis aimed at repressing asylum seekers literally costs American people all. Meanwhile, everyone agrees that the American people are facing an epic crisis in housing in the United States. Instead of building a wall, the US should build more public housing.
The Trump/McConnell shutdown puts the US’s major affordable housing programs — public housing, Section 8 vouchers and project-based rental assistance — at risk. Project-based rental assistance has been hit the hardest. Tens of thousands of low-income renters and families risk eviction because the shutdown has caused funding to lapse on 650 of these properties. The shutdown also hurts residents of public housing because broken boilers or leaking roofs may go unfixed, as housing authorities can’t access money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to make repairs. And arguably the most long-term vulnerable are renters with Section 8 vouchers, through which housing authorities pay a portion of tenants’ rent directly to private landlords. The vouchers are funded through February, but are at risk if the shutdown extends to March. Private landlords may decide that accepting Section 8 vouchers is a risk they no longer want to take, due to the threat of future government shutdowns.
Even before the shutdown, the country was already facing an affordable housing crisis. In New York City, there are more than 209,180 families on the waiting list for its 175,636 units of public housing. A 2018 report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that average renter wages are not enough to afford modest rental apartments.
The problem has gotten so bad that even private companies like Microsoft devote money to new loans for affordable housing development. But rather than wait for Band-Aids from corporate actors, one could choose to invest in housing as a nation. However, Congress has created major barriers to addressing this crisis. A key example of this is the Faircloth Limit, which effectively bans any new public housing from being created. The attack on public housing began with Richard Nixon, who declared a moratorium on the construction of new housing by Housing and Urban Development in 1973. The Nixon era also brought the Section 8 program, which began the shift from the government constructing and administering housing to instead relying on the private market. But it was Bill Clinton who signed into law the Faircloth Limit, which legally caps the total number of public housing units that can exist at its 1999 level. The author of this provision was one-term Senator Lauch Faircloth (R-North Carolina), who tried and failed to ban unwed teen mothers from receiving any welfare assistance. Since then, the country has been losing 10,000 to 15,000 units of public housing annually, due to them falling into disrepair. In 2011, the Housing and Urban Development estimated the backlog of repairs in public housing to be $26 billion. It has undoubtedly grown by billions since, as Congress continues to starve public housing, but the Housing and Urban Development has not conducted a more recent study. Huge investment has been made for building these properties, but for years the administration has abdicated its responsibility to maintain and fix them. It is now time to push the boundaries of political possibility and start addressing the housing crisis by repealing draconian limits like the welfare-reform-era Faircloth Limit.
Meanwhile, the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the second Obama-era economic stimulus, invalidated the Faircloth Limit for the purposes of the stimulus funds. Congress could also have Housing and Urban Development create new project-based contracts, a move it has not made in decades. These are buildings that Housing and Urban Development contracts with private or nonprofit developers to build and maintain. Rather than give them to any developer, HUD could insist they only contract with non-profits, and put additional restrictions or incentives on the properties, such as requiring that they are built in particularly tight housing markets. Congress could also add new Section 8 vouchers — something that has been done incrementally for certain populations, including homeless veterans, but could be done more broadly in an effort to address the housing crisis.
Why did public housing become so underfunded in the first place? Part of it is the larger neoliberal shift away from government building and maintaining housing, and toward government contracts being doled out to the private sector.
At the current juncture, the United States is failing abysmally to provide this: Only 1 in 5 families eligible for federal housing assistance is getting the help they need. Housing is an issue that touches everyone, and it shouldn’t be relegated to the bottom of the legislative agenda. With so many different ways to add affordable housing, the 116th Congress in the United States shouldn’t just abolish the draconian Faircloth Limit and address the longstanding and desperately needed repairs. It should truly invest in this most basic of rights: the right to a place to call home.
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