WEST COAST DEBATE



West Coast PublishingMarket Rate HousingMain FilePublic Forum March 2019Thanks for using our Policy, LD, Public Forum, and Extemp Materials.Please don’t share this material with anyone outside of your schoolincluding via print, email, dropbox, google drive, the web, etc. We’re a small non-profit; please help us continue to provide our products.Contact us at jim@ WEST COAST DEBATEPublic Forum March 2019Market Rate Housing Main FileFinding Arguments in this FileUse the table of contents on the next pages to find the evidence you need or the navigation bar on the left. We have tried to make the table of contents as easy to use as possible.Using the arguments in this FileWe encourage you to be familiar with the evidence you use. Highlight (underline) the key lines you will use in the evidence. Cut evidence from our files, incorporate your and others’ research and make new files. File the evidence so that you can easily retrieve it when you need it in debate rounds. 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Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u WEST COAST DEBATE PAGEREF _Toc553093 \h 2Table of Contents PAGEREF _Toc553094 \h 3Topic Overview PAGEREF _Toc553095 \h 5Definitions PAGEREF _Toc553096 \h 7Promote PAGEREF _Toc553097 \h 7Development PAGEREF _Toc553098 \h 8Market rate housing PAGEREF _Toc553099 \h 9Urban neighborhoods PAGEREF _Toc553100 \h 10PRO PAGEREF _Toc553101 \h 11Pro Case PAGEREF _Toc553102 \h 12Contention One: America is in a Housing Crisis PAGEREF _Toc553103 \h 12Contention Two: The Federal Government is the Best Actor PAGEREF _Toc553104 \h 13Pro Case Extensions PAGEREF _Toc553105 \h 16Market-rate housing good PAGEREF _Toc553106 \h 16Market-rate is affordable PAGEREF _Toc553107 \h 16High rent bad PAGEREF _Toc553108 \h 17State governments bad PAGEREF _Toc553109 \h 18Nonprofits bad PAGEREF _Toc553110 \h 19Local governments bad PAGEREF _Toc553111 \h 20Segregated neighborhoods impacts PAGEREF _Toc553112 \h 24Answers to affordable housing PAGEREF _Toc553113 \h 27Answers to: Displacement PAGEREF _Toc553114 \h 29CON PAGEREF _Toc553115 \h 31Con Case PAGEREF _Toc553116 \h 32Contention One: Market-rate is class warfare PAGEREF _Toc553117 \h 32Contention Two: Do not trust the federal government PAGEREF _Toc553118 \h 34Con Case Extensions PAGEREF _Toc553119 \h 36Displacement PAGEREF _Toc553120 \h 36Market-rate does not solve PAGEREF _Toc553121 \h 37Market-rate is expensive PAGEREF _Toc553122 \h 38Homelessness Impacts PAGEREF _Toc553123 \h 40Affordable housing at risk now PAGEREF _Toc553124 \h 42Race Impacts PAGEREF _Toc553125 \h 44Non-profits solve PAGEREF _Toc553126 \h 45Local governments solve PAGEREF _Toc553127 \h 46Federal government bad PAGEREF _Toc553128 \h 47Topic OverviewHousing is a fundamental human need. As a result, the creation, distribution, and ownership of housing is an issue of intrinsic importance, one which merits political consideration. The United States is facing a housing crisis. On the heels of the 2008 Recession, triggered in large part by a collapse of the housing market, prices have risen exponentially on properties. Gentrification is a part of this equation, the process by which rich people crowd out poor people in neighborhoods, and also the process by which white people crowd out people of color as well. Overall, only the wealthy are able to afford home ownership, and there are not enough affordable houses for the lower class. The middle class struggles to pay rent without government assistance. As a result, the federal government has an obligation to act, and promoting the development of market-rate rent in urban neighborhoods is one manner of doing so.The pro case argues that the housing crisis is in place because there are not enough houses overall for individuals to live in. As a result, the middle class is forced to compete with the lower class for low rent properties, crowding out affordable housing as it exists on the market. Promoting the development of market-rate rent in urban neighborhoods would increase the overall supply of houses, meaning that the lower class can get the most affordable houses while the middle class can still afford to pay rent. The federal government is uniquely key to this endeavor, as it is the only level of government with sufficient funds to enact such a policy nationwide. Local and state governments are all too often willing to uphold segregation through exclusive zoning regulations. Nonprofit organizations are often too cash-strapped to create any change.The con case disagrees at a fundamental level about the manner of addressing the housing crisis. The choice to focus on market-rate rent is a choice not to prioritize subsidizing housing to make it more affordable. This is an issue, as affordable housing programs are set to expire en masse within the next ten years, converting half a million subsidized houses to the free market, where rent will certainly increase. In addition, market-rate housing tends to crowd out people experiencing poverty by increasing rental rates, causing displacement that can even push people into homelessness. Homelessness is an extreme form of poverty with severe health impacts which should be avoided. As such, addressing the housing crisis by creating more market-rate rental units will only exacerbate the crisis for the most vulnerable and impoverished people.The con case also have some embedded clash against the pro case, directly on the question of who the best actor is to address the housing crisis. Based on racist regulatory practices and a sprawling, inept bureaucracy, the answer is emphatically not the federal government. Rather, city governments, which are robust and closely attuned to their constituents needs, can best tailor policy to the specific neighborhoods and situations. States are also able to act as sources of funding and regulatory oversight for city governments. Both of these levels of government are able to work in close cooperation with nonprofit organizations in order to address the housing crisis. Together, these three different types of organizations can act effectively to end the housing crisis without the federal government.The pro case responds to the con case on more than just the level of who the best actor is to address the housing crisis. Specifically, the claim that market-rate rent displaces residents is almost impossible to prove. Individuals move in and out of neighborhoods for a variety of reasons, so it is impossible to assign intent to any wide swathe of people. In addition, what statistical evidence there is suggests that people may be even more likely to stay in their neighborhood if it gentrifies. Moreover, just because the federal government is promoting market-rate rental housing, does not mean that the federal government cannot also promote affordable housing with subsidies. Affordable housing actually becomes more available for impoverished people when the middle class is not attempting to occupy it. The other insinuation of the increase in affordable housing is that focusing solely on affordable housing abandons the middle class.DefinitionsPromotePromote means to encourage to exist and , No Date, “Promote,” (accessed 2/4/19)Promote - verb (used with object), pro·mot·ed, pro·mot·ing. to help or encourage to exist or flourish; further: to promote world peace. to advance in rank, dignity, position, etc. (opposed to demote). Education . to put ahead to the next higher stage or grade of a course or series of classes. to aid in organizing (business undertakings). to encourage the sales, acceptance, etc., of (a product), especially through advertising or other publicity. Informal . to obtain (something) by cunning or trickery; wangle.Promote means to actively supportOxford Living Dictionary, No Date, “Promote,” (accessed 2/4/19)promote verb [with object] 1Support or actively encourage (a cause, venture, etc.); further the progress of. ‘some regulation is still required to promote competition’ 1.1 Give publicity to (a product, organization, or venture) so as to increase sales or public awareness. ‘they are using famous personalities to promote the library nationally’ 1.2 Attempt to ensure the passing of (a private Act of Parliament) ‘the government of the day would not be promoting the bill’Promote means to help bring something into beingMerriam-Webster, No Date, “Promote,” (accessed 2/4/19)promote verb pro·?mote | \ pr?-?mōt \ promoted; promoting Definition of promote transitive verb 1a : to advance in station, rank, or honor : raise b : to change (a pawn) into a piece in chess by moving to the eighth rank c : to advance (a student) from one grade to the next higher grade 2a : to contribute to the growth or prosperity of : further promote international understanding b : to help bring (something, such as an enterprise) into being : launch c : to present (merchandise) for buyer acceptance through advertising, publicity, or discounting 3 slang : to get possession of by doubtful means or by ingenuityDevelopmentDevelopment in housing means an area of houses close together, built at the same timeCambridge Dictionary, No Date, “Housing Development,” (accessed 2/4/19)housing development noun [ C ] uk ? us ? PROPERTY ? an area containing a large number of houses or apartments built close together at the same time: Without this money a much-needed housing development in one of the poorest areas of London cannot go ahead.Housing development means a large number of houses built close together at the same timeCollins Dictionary, No Date, “Housing Development,” (accessed 2/4/19)housing development Word forms: housing developments countable noun A housing development is a large number of houses or apartments built close together at the same time.Development means promoting growth and availability, especially for residential purposesMerriam-Webster, No Date, “Develop,” (accessed 2/4/19)Development : to make active or promote the growth of developed his muscles developing your mental abilities b(1) : to make available or usable develop natural resources (2) : to make suitable for commercial or residential purposes develop land c games : to move (a chess piece) from the original position to one providing more opportunity for effective use develop the rookMarket rate housingMarket rate housing has no rent restrictions or affordable housing regulationRon Leshnower, real estate attorney, September 7, 2018, “What Is Market-Rate Housing?” The Spruce, (accessed 2/4/19)Market rate housing is an apartment that has no rent restrictions. A landlord who owns market-rate housing is free to attempt to rent the space at whatever price the local market may fetch. In other words, the term applies to conventional rentals that are not restricted by affordable housing laws.Market rate housing means that the landlord sets the price of rentCity of Vancouver, No Date, “Affordable Housing: Basic Definitions,” (accessed 2/4/19)MARKET-RATE RENTAL HOUSING: Privately owned housing with rents determined by the owner or landlord.Market rate housing is privately-owned with rent set by the ownerChatam County Housing Project, No Date, “Affordable Housing: Glossary of Terms,” (accessed 2/4/19)Market Rate Rental Housing: Privately-owned housing that rents at whatever the owner or property manager deems reasonable, which is usually dictated by the market or local economy, and varies by location and quality of amenities.Urban neighborhoodsUrban neighborhoods are located in the downtown or heart of major metropolitan areasBekins Moving Solutions, No Date, “What is an urban neighborhood?” urban neighborhood is usually found in the downtown core of a city. These neighborhoods are not exclusive to any particular state but will always be found in the heart of a major metro area. In larger cities, the majority of homes may consist of apartment buildings, condos, and townhouses.Urban neighborhoods are neighborhoods in high or low density urban areasUrban Land Institute, 2018, “The New Geography of Urban Neighborhoods,” (accessed 2/4/19)In Housing in the Evolving American Suburb, RCLCO focused specifically on the last three categories to illustrate housing dynamics in the suburbs. For these types of census tracts, RCLCO identified five suburban paradigms to reflect the impact of land value and availability on development trends and to group locations that are likely to have similar existing conditions, supply and demand dynamics, property values, and types of available development sites among suburban areas. For the purpose of this original report, urban neighborhoods— defined as those classified as high-density urban, urban, or low-density urban—were placed in one category, as a point of comparison to the five suburban typologies.Urban neighborhoods are embedded in the cityAlbert Hunt, sociologist, March 2, 1979, “The Urban Neighborhood Its Analytical and Social Contexts,” (accessed 2/4/19)This introductory paper summarizes three analytical approaches to the study of neighbor hoods : (1) typologies, (2) stages of change, and (3) functions-which include economic, administrative, political, and social. A central characteristic of urban neighborhoods is seen to be their embeddedness in city, metropolitan, and national contexts. This, in turn, is hypothesized as leading to a newly emergent organization of neighborhoods into a "hierarchy of community." A central persisting dilemma for neighborhoods is seen to be that between diffuse "sentiments of place" and the more formal "organization of interests." The urban neighborhood is a unique locus of the convergence and clash of these elements.PROPro CaseMarket rate means that the rent is not subsidizedHome Base for Housing, No Date, “Housing Type Definitions,” (accessed 2/4/19)Market Rate Housing Refers to properties that are rented or owned by people who pay market rent to lease the property or paid market value when they bought the property. There is no subsidy for the housing.Contention One: America is in a Housing Crisis High rent is causing a housing crisis due to lagging constructionPatrick Sisson, senior reporter, May 19, 2016, “Why the rent is too damn high: The affordable housing crisis,” Curbed, (accessed 2/8/19)If you’ve spent any time in the last few years searching for an apartment in the United States, you’ve likely come to the conclusion that current prices are, in a word, unprecedented. The state of rental markets in major cities, fueled by increased demand, stunted Millennial homeownership rates, and the slow pace of new construction, suggests the question isn’t whether rent is rising, but by how much; last year, renters saw an 8.3 percent jump in L.A. County, a 4.5 percent rise in San Francisco, and double-digit increases across many of the country’s most desirable neighborhoods. Beyond the frightening amount of money the average renter will be sending away on the first of every month, the truly scary part of this situation is that the math actually adds up. This steady rent increase is the rational result of a series of economic trends that have made this moment unique in the history of American housing.Nowhere in the US can a minimum wage worker afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment right nowTracy Jan, journalist, June 13, 2018, “A minimum-wage worker can't afford a 2-bedroom apartment anywhere in the U.S., report finds,” Chicago Tribune, (accessed 2/6/19) The economy's booming. Some states have raised minimum wages. But even with recent wage growth for the lowest-paid workers, there is still nowhere in the country where someone working a full-time minimum-wage job could afford to rent a modest two-bedroom apartment, according to an annual report released Wednesday by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Not even in Arkansas, the state with the cheapest housing in the country. One would need to earn $13.84 an hour - about $29,000 a year - to afford a two-bedroom apartment there. The minimum wage in Arkansas is $8.50 an hour. Even the $15 living wage championed by Democrats would not make a dent in the vast majority of states.Market-rate housing is key to affordable housing – lowers pricing by reducing scarcityScott Weiner, California state senator, April 16, 2017, “Market-Rate Housing Isn’t a Bad Word, and We Won’t Solve the Housing Crisis Without It,” Art Plus Marketing, (accessed 2/7/19)Which means: In addition to expanding the supply of subsidized income-based affordable units, we must increase the overall supply of housing, and that means?—?you guessed it?—?market-rate housing. Some describe all new market-rate housing as “luxury housing,” because it’s expensive. Well, of course it’s expensive, since for decades we haven’t built enough of it. According to California’s Legislative Analyst, the state needs to produce about 180,000 units of housing a year to keep up with growth. In practice, we produce less than half that number. And, let’s be real. While the new apartment or condo project down the street is expensive, so is the 75-year-old house or apartment you’re trying to buy or rent. It’s *all* expensive, and that’s not because it’s “luxury.” It’s because it’s scarce.Market-rate housing can be affordable and outnumber subsidized housing unitsJeffrey Lubell, Director of Housing and Community Initiatives at Abt Associates, 2016, “Preserving and Expanding Affordability in Neighborhoods Experiencing Rising Rents and Property Values,” Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, Volume 18, Number 3, p. 135A large share of the nation’s affordable rental housing stock consists of privately owned unsubsidized units—usually older units in which rents have filtered down over time as newer units with more amenities have come on line. Many of these rental units are single-family homes or homes that provide two or three units. Others are in small, midsize or larger multifamily buildings. In many neighborhoods with rents that are low compared with those in the city or metropolitan area as a whole, these units—sometimes called “market-rate affordable” units—significantly outnumber the number of subsidized rental units.Contention Two: The Federal Government is the Best ActorFederal action is key – the scope of the housing crisis is too largeJared Brey, policy analyst October 22, 2018, “What Happens When Affordability Restrictions Expire for Half a Million Homes?” Next City, (accessed 2/6/19)Aurand and Stater both said they’ve been encouraged by attention to the housing crisis at the federal level, including proposals from senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker (though both stopped short of endorsing any particular proposal.) They hope that the report will lend some hard evidence to the growing national recognition of the issue. “I definitely think cities and states are stepping up and trying to think about how to make the necessary investments,” Stater says. “It’s just that the problem is so huge. The scale of the problem really requires a huge federal investment.”State housing policies are short-sighted and make the housing crisis worseTeresa Wiltz, journalist, October 16, 2018, “Once Seen as a Local Issue, Affordable Housing Is Becoming a State Focus,” Governing, (accessed 2/8/19)As a result, more states are beginning to intervene in what was once a purely local matter. “We’re really seeing things heat up this year,” said Meghan McCann, senior policy specialist for the National Conference of State Legislatures. “Most states do not have a housing strategy,” said Elisha Harig-Blaine, program manager for housing at the National League of Cities. “And as states are figuring out what to do, you’re starting to see a bit of a [divided] response.” “You’re seeing the formation of these policies that could have unforeseen consequences and could make the housing crisis worse,” Harig-Blaine said.Local governments are responsible for modern and ongoing racially segregated neighborhoodsDaniel C. Vock et al, infrastructure analyst, January 23, 2019, “Houses Divided,” Governing, (accessed 2/8/19)What’s more, we found local governments bear much of the responsibility for creating and maintaining segregated communities. Mayors and other city officials are often focused on immediate concerns, such as balancing tight budgets or attracting economic development. While those are legitimate, pressing issues, the resulting policies can often reinforce segregation. Through unspoken traditions and ingrained attitudes, as well as explicit government actions, city officials are in many ways responsible for maintaining a system that still divides whites and blacks. When it comes to land use -- what gets built where -- governments use zoning restrictions to keep out rental housing, which attracts blacks and other minorities, from predominantly white areas. They approve new residential subdivisions with strict deed restrictions that make large swaths of communities unaffordable to low-income residents and often explicitly bar any use other than single-family homes. As they restrict where apartments can be built, local governments also play a big role in deciding where public housing and other taxpayer-supported affordable housing projects are located. That often leads to concentrated areas of low-income housing in black neighborhoods. Those changes almost inevitably become permanent, because the income restrictions and other rules that come with public subsidies last for decades.Nonprofits lack funding due to Trump tax cutsBenjamin Soskis and Brice McKeever, journalists, April 6, 2017, “How vulnerable are nonprofits under Trump’s skinny budget?” Urban Institute, (accessed 2/8/19)When President Trump unveiled his preliminary budget proposal two weeks ago, nonprofit leaders were some of the loudest registering alarm. “California’s nonprofit community…would be devastated by the cuts,” declared the California Association of Nonprofits. Or as one lobbyist for charities recently told the New York Times, “This isn’t a political threat, it’s life and death.” Not only did the administration announce its intent to get rid of the Corporation for National and Community Service (which houses the AmeriCorps civil society and volunteering program), but the budget also would slash funding to, or abolish, agencies, initiatives, and programs that provide significant financial support to nonprofits across the country, including the Legal Services Corporation, Choice Neighborhoods, and Community Development Block Grants.Pro Case ExtensionsMarket-rate housing goodChildren being in low-poverty neighborhoods correlates to higher adult earningsRobert J. Sampson, Harvard University professor, April 2, 2015, “Individual and Community Economic Mobility in the Great Recession Era: The Spatial Foundations of Persistent Inequality,” Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, (accessed 2/5/19)There is also experimental evidence of long-term neighborhood effects on adult income attainment. A recent study of the MTO participants found that voucher-induced moves to a lower-poverty neighborhood during childhood are associated with higher adult earnings and that the magnitude of this effect declines with age, eventually flattening out to no effect among those who were adolescents at the time of moving (Chetty, Hendren, and Katz 2015). This pattern strongly suggests that the duration and timing of exposure to concentrated poverty is important for later adult outcomes, especially upward economic mobility. Moreover, when researchers compared the MTO voucher study to observational studies obtained from the same city, they found convergent negative effects of concentrated poverty on cognitive skills that were larger for those children who moved out of the most severely disadvantaged environments (Burdick-Will et al. 2011). Comparing across MTO sites, children’s test scores were also found to improve the most when residential changes led to major reductions in exposure to violent crime.Market-rate is affordableIncreasing the supply of affordable housing does not help the middle class – an increase in market-rate housing is neededScott Weiner, California state senator, April 16, 2017, “Market-Rate Housing Isn’t a Bad Word, and We Won’t Solve the Housing Crisis Without It,” Art Plus Marketing, (accessed 2/7/19)This conclusion is also very true for the middle class, which receives very little benefit from subsidized units and can’t receive much benefit since the amount of funding necessary to subsidize housing for the broad middle class would be absolutely massive. Moreover, creating a large middle class subsidized housing program would inevitably cause the middle class to compete with low income residents for housing subsidies?—?not a good result. Meanwhile, housing prices have escalated dramatically. In San Francisco, rental housing prices have more than doubled in the last ten years for the 91% of people who either don’t qualify for, or didn’t win a spot in, the affordable housing lottery?—?up to $4830 (2015) for an average two-bedroom apartment from $2400 (2007). And only 11% of San Franciscans can afford a median priced house in the city based on their income. In Los Angeles, rents increased by 25% between 2002 and 2012 and have continued to escalate.High rent badHigh rent is a ticking time bomb for the economy Michael Hobbes, journalist, June 19, 2018, “America’s Housing Crisis Is A Ticking Time Bomb,” Huffington Post, (accessed 2/8/19)By nearly every measure, the American housing sector is broken. For decades, city, state and federal policies have contributed to rising rents, falling subsidies and the systematic shift of homeownership to older, richer and whiter Americans. That’s the undeniable upshot of a new report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. The report compiles hundreds of metrics on the health of America’s housing sector and finds that, despite some short-term progress since the recession, the long-term prognosis is grim. The housing crisis is the ticking time bomb at the heart of the American economy, wiping out savings, increasing inequality and reducing the ability of workers to weather the next recession. It has been in front of us all along, but now, finally, it is impossible to ignore.High rent prevents people from becoming home owners – impossible to save for a down paymentBen Bergman and Chris Keller, reporters, No Date, “high rent, few options,” South California Public Radio, (accessed 2/7/19)“L.A. actually does stand out as having the highest share of people renting which in part is a reflection of the high housing costs in the area and a younger population as well,” said Chris Herbert, Research Director at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. Paying more for rent means residents don’t have much money left to spend on other things, which hurts the overall economy. From 2000-2012, the percentage of owners decreased in L.A. County by about 2 percent while the percentage of renters increased by about the same amount, according to the California Housing Partnership Corporation. That’s partly because for many renters, saving up to buy a house has become cost prohibitive. “Saving for a down payment is nearly impossible if you’re paying half of your income in rent,” said Green. KPCC spent the last few weeks talking to renters in different parts of Los Angeles about living in a city where owning an apartment often comes with the cost of squeezing savings accounts dry.America needs more houses – lack of supply is driving up rentMichael Hobbes, journalist, June 19, 2018, “America’s Housing Crisis Is A Ticking Time Bomb,” Huffington Post, (accessed 2/8/19)Before the recession, America built around 1.1 million new homes per year. In its best year since, the country built just 849,000. This makes no sense. Though the American population has been growing steadily, there are now fewer homes on the market than in any year since 1982. Despite seemingly bottomless demand, the construction of apartment buildings fell by 10 percent last year. James Madden, an affordable housing developer in Seattle, said the reasons for the slowdown are complex. Americans move less now than they used to, meaning fewer are putting their homes up for sale. Construction costs are also booming due to higher material costs. And major cities have fewer plots available for development. State governments badStates take a one-size-fits-all approach – fails to solve the housing crisisTeresa Wiltz, journalist, October 16, 2018, “Once Seen as a Local Issue, Affordable Housing Is Becoming a State Focus,” Governing, (accessed 2/8/19)State-mandated housing policy tends to take a one-size-fits-all approach that doesn’t work for local communities, said Geoff Beckwith, executive director and CEO of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, an advocacy group representing cities and towns in the state. Beckwith isn’t opposed to state legislation on zoning, but it’s far better, he said, when state lawmakers collaborate with local governments to find a solution. “With zoning, one size misfits all,” he said. For example, in the eastern part of Massachusetts, affordable housing is at crisis levels — even for the middle class, necessitating zoning changes to build more units. But in the more rural and suburban western Massachusetts, where finding housing isn’t so fraught, strict zoning laws wouldn’t make any sense, he said.Nonprofits badNonprofits in housing have a funding problemAlyssa Katz, senior fellow with the Pratt Center for Community Development, June 28, 2018, “The Harm to Affordable Housing,” The American Prospect, (accessed 2/8/19)A construction fence surrounds the decaying Church of the Redeemer in Flatbush, one of Brooklyn’s many gentrifying neighborhoods. The congregation has provided the land to the nonprofit Mutual Housing Association of New York to create an oasis of 75 affordable apartments. Rents will start at $935 a month, and will be guaranteed affordable for 30 years. The church, meanwhile, will build itself a new home, tapping $5 million from selling construction rights to the housing group. The key subsidy making this deal possible is the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, a better-than-nothing gimmick that helps the poor by rewarding the rich. Over the past three decades, LIHTC—pronounced lie-tek to people in the business—has helped finance more than two million affordable apartments, or about double the number of remaining traditional public housing units produced in its heyday from the 1930s to the 1970s. In this case, Bank of America will supply most of the $20 million to finance construction of the Flatbush apartments, because the law allows the bank to use this credit to reduce its corporate taxes by one dollar for every dollar it provides to a developer of low-income housing. But thanks to the 2017 Republican Tax Act, the housing credit is suddenly worth a lot less. Why? Because the Tax Act dropped the corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.Nonprofits are ineffectivePaul Klein, news analyst, May 15, 2015, “Are Nonprofits Getting in the Way of Social Change?” Stanford Social Innovation Review, (accessed 2/8/19) According to the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, business as usual isn’t enough to deliver the results we need. “The nature of our times is such that the magnitude and degree of complexity of our challenges exceed the capacity of any one sector to resolve,” said Stephen Huddart, McConnell’s president and CEO. To support transformation of the nonprofit sector, McConnell created Innoweave to help leaders of community organizations learn about, select, and implement new tools and approaches to generate greater impact and advance their missions. However, at a time when we need change more than ever, too many nonprofits are constrained by a slow-moving, institutional, and self-interested model. “One of the reasons that I left being a nonprofit executive director was that I realized that I was consistently putting the needs of my organization above the interests and the needs of the clients we were serving,” said David Wertheimer, deputy director for the Pacific Northwest Initiative at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.Local governments badFederal government is key to local government – our case solvesJoe Cortwright, director of Urban Institute, February 6, 2018, “Cities Alone Can't Fix What's Wrong With American Government,” CityLab, (accessed 2/8/19)If you care about cities and believe local initiative can lead to solutions, you need to be marching on Washington and fighting for a federal government that does its job well. The hollowing out of the federal government now underway is the clearest threat to creative, effective localism. Ultimately, the magic of our federal system is that both national and local government have important and complementary roles to play. It’s not either/or. It is both/and. Innovative cities require a supportive federal government. Rather than turning their backs on the federal government and national debates, cities and civic leaders ought to be pooling their energy and efforts to kindle a new dialog about how we appropriately divide responsibilities between national and local governments. We must insist that the national government do its job well and that it provide the room and in some cases some of the resources to help cities tackle problems at a more local level. We need a 21st century federalism that envisions strong and mutually supporting actions at both the national and local levels, not a retreat to homogenous but balkanized localities.The federal government work with local governments on housing policy Patrick Sisson, senior reporter, May 19, 2016, ”Why the rent is too damn high: The affordable housing crisis,” Curbed, (accessed 2/8/19)While increasing the supply of affordable housing is often a local issue, federal money does provide needed housing support in the form of housing choice vouchers, public housing units, and project-based rental assistance or low-income housing assistance tax credits. Yet it often falls far short of the need, which has been growing rapidly. According to the Furman Center, much of the growth of rental housing stock from 2006 to 2014 came from single-family homes, which often don’t meet the needs, or budgets, of renters, all while the growth of the rental population is outpacing the growth of rental units in major cities. Local governments segregate and then target policing on black neighborhoodsDaniel C. Vock et al, infrastructure analyst, January 23, 2019, “Houses Divided,” Governing, (accessed 2/8/19)Finally, residents in predominantly black neighborhoods routinely face more scrutiny from police and other government agencies, which reinforces the patterns of segregation that have already emerged. Government actions such as increased code enforcement, zero tolerance policies for drugs in public housing and disproportionately targeting black neighborhoods for traffic stops result in black residents facing more municipal fines or other minor punishments. Though seemingly small, those infractions, combined with the fact that blacks are far more likely to be arrested and imprisoned than whites, can make it harder for residents to clear their name and qualify for good-paying jobs that require criminal background checks. That barrier to jobs is significant for downstate communities: The Peoria, Decatur, Rockford and Carbondale metropolitan areas were all ranked among the top 10 for highest black unemployment rates in the country in 2017. Taken together, the policies of local governments have helped divide black and white residents into groups of citizens who are still separate, and still unequal. City governments have caused the housing crisis and cannot be trusted to fix itJoe Cortwright, director of Urban Institute, February 6, 2018, “Cities Alone Can't Fix What's Wrong With American Government,” CityLab, (accessed 2/8/19)It’s also worth noting that a key aspect of localism that has been effectively exempt from federal control—local control of zoning and land use—has worsened the economic segregation of our nation’s metropolitan areas. In sprawling metros, separate suburban cities have used the power of land use regulation to exclude apartments, directly contributing to the problem of concentrated poverty that intensifies and perpetuates the worst aspects of income inequality. Cities have been implicated in the nation’s housing affordability and segregation problems, but that’s hardly mentioned in Katz & Nowak. The word “segregation” appears only once in the book (page 40). The word “zoning” occurs on 8 pages. Housing affordability is mentioned just once (page 28). The root of the problem here is too much localism. The most localized governments have the strongest incentives to exclude neighborhood groups within cities lobby against density. Suburbs within metropolitan areas do the same. Only larger units of government have the incentives and ability to challenge this kind of parochialism. Notably, two initiatives of the Obama administration–HUD’s affirmatively furthering fair housing rule and the Council of Economic Adviser’s critique of local zoning–represented important national steps pushing local governments to confront this issue. Both are going nowhere under the current administration.Exclusionary zoning by local governments favor the rich and abandon the poorRichard V. Reeves, journalist, June 10, 2017, “Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich,” New York Times, (accessed 2/8/19)Things turn ugly, however, when the upper middle class starts to rig markets in its own favor, to the detriment of others. Take housing, perhaps the most significant example. Exclusionary zoning practices allow the upper middle class to live in enclaves. Gated communities, in effect, even if the gates are not visible. Since schools typically draw from their surrounding area, the physical separation of upper-middle-class neighborhoods is replicated in the classroom. Good schools make the area more desirable, further inflating the value of our houses. The federal tax system gives us a handout, through the mortgage-interest deduction, to help us purchase these pricey homes. For the upper middle classes, regardless of their professed political preferences, zoning, wealth, tax deductions and educational opportunity reinforce one another in a virtuous cycle. It takes a brave politician to question the privileges enjoyed by the upper middle class. Recently, there have been failed attempts to make zoning laws more inclusive in supposedly liberal cities like Seattle and states like California and Massachusetts. The handout on mortgage interest appears to be an indestructible deduction (unlike in Britain, where the equivalent tax break was phased out under both Conservative and Labour governments by 2000).Local governments are discriminatory and cause segregationJ. Brian Charles et al, policy analysts, January 23, 2019, “Broken Homes,” Governing, (accessed 2/8/19)In each of these cities, as in the rest of the country, segregation means not just a physical divide between blacks and whites, but a huge disparity in resources. Local governments help create those divides in several ways, but one of the most important is by regulating land use, especially residential development. The regulations include zoning restrictions, housing subsidies, tax incentives, public housing policy and restrictive covenants. None of them are necessarily discriminatory by themselves, but the way they are routinely used combines to create that effect. “At the bottom of all that is that are whites trying to preserve opportunities for themselves,” says Domenico “Mimmo” Parisi, a sociology professor at Mississippi State University and the executive director of the National Strategic Planning and Analysis Research Center. “When a group tries to distance itself from others, it’s because they want to make sure their investment for themselves stays intact. That means there are limited opportunities for other groups.”Local public policy creates racially segregated neighborhoods, which hurts education for students of colorReed Jordan, education analyst, May 13, 2015, “A closer look at income and race concentration in public schools,” Urban Institute, (accessed 2/8/19)Race has profound importance in school poverty. Research has documented decades of public policy and private action that systematically exclude people of color—especially black people—from good neighborhoods, jobs, and wealth-building opportunities. Those same policies created and perpetuate poor, racially segregated communities and schools, resulting in students of color disproportionately experiencing poverty concentration. So white students’ public school experiences are most often characterized by attending a low-poverty school, while black students experience incredible levels of concentrated poverty in both their schools and their neighborhoods. Nationally, about 30 percent of white students attend low-poverty schools, while only 8 percent attend high-poverty schools. In other words, white students are about four times more likely to attend low-poverty schools than high-poverty schools. The pattern is flipped for black students, for whom attending high-poverty schools is commonplace. Over 45 percent of black students (about 3.4 million) attend high-poverty schools, and only about 7 percent attend low-poverty schools. This means that black students are over six times more likely to attend high-poverty schools than low-poverty schools and about six times more likely than white students to attend high-poverty schools.Federal government can take city government innovations to a national scaleJoe Cortwright, director of Urban Institute, February 6, 2018, “Cities Alone Can't Fix What's Wrong With American Government,” CityLab, (accessed 2/8/19)Katz and Nowak marshal an impressive list of inspiring local innovations from cities, such as Indianapolis, Chattanooga, Oklahoma City, and St. Louis. Mayors and civic leaders in these places are generally pragmatic and entrepreneurial and are developing solutions that cut across partisan and ideological lines. Cities are, as the saying goes, the laboratories of democracy. But for the most part, they are the small-scale, bench-test laboratories for incubating ideas and showing that they can work at a municipal scale. Implementing these ideas at a national scale is essential to their success. The key lesson of policy experimentation is that while ideas can be tested and refined at the state or local level, they ultimately need to be national in scope. States experimented with minimum wage laws, unemployment insurance, and old age pensions, but none of these were began to address our problems until extended nationwide in the New Deal.Segregated neighborhoods impactsRacially segregated neighborhoods create racially segregated schoolsHalley Potter, Kimberly Quick and Elizabeth Davies, senior fellow and policy associate, February 9, 2016, “A New Wave of School Integration: Districts and Charters Pursuing Socioeconomic Diversity,” The Century Foundation, (accessed 2/8/19)Increasing socioeconomic and racial stratification of schools is also a result of changing education policies. As busing-based integration efforts largely ended in the early 1980s and courts began to severely limit districts’ ability to use racial and ethnic identifiers to achieve demographic balance, most communities gradually returned to so-called neighborhood schools that tether school attendance zones to real estate. Today, many higher income families who have purchased high-property-value homes in certain districts feel as if their child deserves to attend the school that they shopped for through the housing market, regardless of the implications for children whose families cannot access those spaces. Socioeconomic and racial segregation have become related and often overlapping phenomena—a trend that the Civil Rights Project calls “double segregation.”11 Schools with mostly black and Latino students also tend to be overwhelmingly low-income.12 At the kindergarten level, for example, a majority of black and Latino students attend schools with more than 75 percent non-white classmates and high average poverty rates. However, most white kindergartners, even those from poor families, attend schools with mostly middle-class, white classmates.13 We see related patterns in housing: poor black and Hispanic families are more likely than poor white families to live in neighborhoods with the most extreme poverty.14Housing policies are the root cause of segregationEmily Richmond, journalist, June 11, 2012, “Schools Are More Segregated Today Than During the Late 1960s,” The Atlantic, (accessed 2/8/19)Indeed, Kennedy made reference in his remarks to the segregated schools of the South and the "de facto" segregation in the North. Many of the underlying problems of segregation haven't been solved, even if it's no longer legal, Rotherham said. "Laws that sentenced blacks to third-class educations -- those were the easy targets," said Rotherham, who was a special assistant for domestic policy during the Clinton administration. "What's driving segregation now is housing patterns, and that's much more difficult to solve. It's also not necessarily a problem you can solve with education." There are public policy initiatives that can "nudge things along," Rotherham said, "but no one runs for school board on a platform for changing the school boundaries. There's a reason for that." High-poverty neighborhoods are racially segregated, hurting children of color mostPaul A. Jargowsky, research fellow, August 9, 2015, “Architecture of Segregation: Civil Unrest, the Concentration of Poverty, and Public Policy,” The Century Foundation, (accessed 2/8/19)One of the primary concerns about high-poverty neighborhoods is the potential impact on child and adolescent development.11 Indeed, William Julius Wilson stressed the lack of positive role models within the social milieu of urban ghettos.12 High-poverty neighborhoods produce high-poverty schools, and both the school and neighborhood contexts affect student achievement.13 Unfortunately, poor children are more likely to live in high-poverty neighborhoods than poor adults. Table 5 shows the percentage of persons living in high-poverty neighborhoods nationwide by race/ethnicity, poverty status, and age. The gap is largest for poor children under 6 years of age, by 16.5 percent compared to 13.8 percent for poor adults. The gap in high-poverty neighborhood residence is even larger for the black poor, with 28 percent of black poor children less than 6 years old residing in concentrated poverty compared to 24.2 percent of black poor adults. For Hispanics, the comparable figures are 18.1 percent and 16.9 percent. Whites, however, show the opposite pattern, with white poor children less likely to live in high-poverty neighborhoods than white poor adults. Not surprisingly, non-poor persons are far less likely to live in areas of poverty concentration than poor persons regardless of age. In contrast to poor children, non-poor children are less often found in high-poverty areas than non-poor adults, regardless of racial/ethnic group. A cause for concern, however, is that non-poor blacks are more likely to reside in a high-poverty zone than poor whites of any comparable age. For example, 7.9 percent of non-poor black children less than 6 years old live in a high-poverty census tract compared to 6.2 percent of poor white children in that age group.Segregation is legal dehumanization of people of colorUlysses G. Plummer, legal practitioner, May 2001, “Alternative Perspective: Black Americans Should Seek Redress for Losses During the Jim Crow Era,” Los Angeles Sentinel, (accessed 2/8/19)Segregation was a system of laws, customs and traditions that relegated descendants of slaves to second-class citizenship. The U.S. Supreme Court concluded in 1954 in Brown vs. Board of Education that so-called "separate but equal" facilities were inherently unequal. Although the issue addressed by the court dealt with segregated schools, the system of segregation permeated all aspects of life. Few, except those minds also likely to deny the Holocaust, would deny the existence of a system of segregation in the South from 1940 through 1965. Few likewise would disagree that such segregation existed under state law and with the tacit, if not actual, approval of the federal government. Descendants of slaves in such states were denied the benefits of public facilities and institutions funded in part by their tax dollars. Their tax dollars thus were misappropriated, and they are entitled to compensation. The amount of compensation can be measured and determined by the amount of city, county, state and federal taxes they paid, less that percentage of public expenditures to which they were entitled, but denied. Segregation was mean-spirited and dehumanizing. There are still living millions of citizens who, in accordance with state law, were forbidden access to parks, swimming pools and other public facilities. Further, the system of segregation fostered, supported and legally enforced lynching, beatings, denial of due process and immeasurable loss of property, hopes and dreams.Status quo housing policies segregate - this is the direct root cause of overpolicing people of colorPaul A. Jargowsky, research fellow, August 9, 2015, “Architecture of Segregation: Civil Unrest, the Concentration of Poverty, and Public Policy,” The Century Foundation, (2/8/19)Nick Kristof, in a recent New York Times column, quoted Joe Stiglitz’s conclusion that “Inequality is a choice.”21 Concentration of poverty is also a choice, whether we want to admit it or not. Concentration of poverty is the product of larger structural forces, political decisions, and institutional arrangements that are too often taken for granted. Our governance and development practices ensure that significant segments of our population live in neighborhoods where there is no work, where there are underperforming schools, and where there is little access to opportunity. The police in these areas are then asked to patrol the tense boundary between poverty zones and “decent” neighborhoods. There is no excuse for police brutality, nor for over-zealous policing of poor, minority communities. But it is all too easy for those of us in the safety and security of gentrified neighborhoods and wealthy suburban enclaves to condemn police excesses without acknowledging our own complicity in creating the situation. No matter how we got here, we have to deal with the situation as it now exists. The problems of urban policing certainly must be addressed. But also, to ameliorate the tensions, we have to try to stabilize low-income areas, improve inner-city schools, and expand economic opportunities for those currently living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. And perhaps more importantly, we have to find a way to stop creating so many high-poverty neighborhoods in the first place. We must work to change the development paradigm that creates high-poverty neighborhoods. Answers to affordable housingThe con case is not mutually exclusive – we need an expansion of both market-rate and subsidized housingScott Weiner, California state senator, April 16, 2017, “Market-Rate Housing Isn’t a Bad Word, and We Won’t Solve the Housing Crisis Without It,” Art Plus Marketing, (accessed 2/7/19)So, particularly for the middle class but really for everyone, we simply need more housing. Not just more subsidized housing. More housing of every variety. Our anemic housing production as a state has two main origins: 1) stifling, exclusionary zoning that rejects height, density, and multi-unit buildings, 2) unreasonable housing approval processes that subject even zoning-compliant projects to years of bureaucratic hoops and hearings that increase costs and make projects smaller. This perfect storm of shortsighted policies and lack of political leadership has completely jacked up the cost of housing. For too long, California has put its head in the sand, pretended that we don’t need much new housing (or that, if we do need it, some other city or town will build it), and largely ignored the needs of the many people who struggle with housing. Call this California’s “housing last” policy?—?a policy that needs to end. We need reform, and we need it yesterday. There are good proposals pending in the California Legislature to make it easier to create both subsidized income-based affordable housing as well as market-rate housing. I’m the author of one of those proposals, Senate Bill 35, but there are other strong ideas from my colleagues and advocacy organizations.Focusing solely on affordable housing abandons the middle class and perpetuates the housing crisisScott Weiner, California state senator, April 16, 2017, “Market-Rate Housing Isn’t a Bad Word, and We Won’t Solve the Housing Crisis Without It,” Art Plus Marketing, (accessed 2/7/19)Just to be crystal clear: Anyone who advocates that we ignore these process and zoning problems and instead focus our housing policy exclusively or dominantly on subsidized, income-based housing is advocating to perpetuate the housing crisis. They’re advocating for housing a small subset of low-income people while leaving everyone else?—?both low-income people who don’t win a subsidized housing lottery and almost all middle class people?—?to play a game of musical chairs with a limited housing supply that is the result of our state’s refusal to reform our housing creation process. And, anyone who perpetuates the myth that building new market-rate housing makes housing more expensive should remember that his or her own home is likely yesterday’s “luxury” market-rate housing. Oh, and that house or apartment was almost certainly built by a developer who (*gasp*) made money by building it. And, now someone gets to live in that home! Imagine the gall!Affordable housing is used as a tool of segregation, as they are exclusively placed in high-poverty neighborhoodsPaul A. Jargowsky, research fellow, August 9, 2015, “Architecture of Segregation: Civil Unrest, the Concentration of Poverty, and Public Policy,” The Century Foundation, (accessed 6/13/17)The population movements were also highly selective. Through exclusionary zoning and outright housing market discrimination, the upper-middle class and affluent could move to the suburbs, and the poor were left behind.17 Public and assisted housing units were often constructed in ways that reinforced existing spatial disparities.18 Now, with gentrification driving up property values, rents, and taxes in many urban cores, some of the poor are moving out of central cities into decaying inner-ring suburbs. Ferguson is a prime example of how concentration of poverty is moving from the inner-city to the suburbs. As recently as 1990, Ferguson was 75 percent white, but by 2010 it was about two-thirds black. The poverty rate shot up from 7 percent to 22 percent over that period. Three out of ten neighborhoods in Ferguson now have poverty rates of more than 40 percent.19 It is unfortunate that well-meaning people who are reading the news and consuming the coverage of the events in Ferguson, Baltimore, and elsewhere are not getting the full picture. They are seeing places like Ferguson up close, but they are not seeing the larger set of forces that created Ferguson. Consider the fact that almost all of the high-poverty neighborhoods in the St. Louis metropolitan area are in the City of St. Louis, East St. Louis, and a handful of inner-ring suburbs such as Ferguson. Meanwhile, there are five hundred more suburbs that are part of the St. Louis metropolitan area that have exactly zero high-poverty neighborhoods. These richer suburbs have used exclusionary zoning to keep out affordable housing, so the poor and low-income people can only live in the central city and dying suburbs that are being abandoned as wealthier people move further and further out to the fringes for larger houses, bigger bathrooms, and walk-in closets.20 The whole process is legally enforced through zoning, and underwritten by the mortgage interest deduction and all the subsidies that go into building roads, sewers, and schools for the new suburbs. Given that the housing stock lasts for decades, these policies build a durable architecture of segregation that ensures that racial segregation and the concentration of poverty is entrenched for years to come.Increasing the overall market-rate housing supply reduces the need for affordable housingHUD, Department of Urban and Housing Development, May 2018, “Displacement of Lower-Income Families in Urban Areas Report,” Office of Policy Development and Research, (accessed 2/7/19)Encourage greater housing development, including but not limited to affordable housing. Housing costs have increased since the 1970s, building to today’s affordability crisis, and are particularly pronounced for renters. Issues of affordability are widespread and reach beyond the hottest coastal markets and gentrifying neighborhoods. Federal and local policies that incentivize greater development of housing can ease pressures on overall housing affordability.Answers to: DisplacementRent increases from gentrification do not cause displacementHUD, Department of Urban and Housing Development, May 2018, “Displacement of Lower-Income Families in Urban Areas Report,” Office of Policy Development and Research, (accessed 2/7/19)Although displacement may be the most common concern, most quantitative studies find little evidence of direct displacement occurring. In fact, Ellen and O’Regan (2011) found that turnover rates, or the share of households that left their housing units, did not rise among even the most vulnerable populations or in the neighborhoods with the largest gains in relative income. Surprisingly, their research found that exit rates were actually lower in gentrifying neighborhoods than in nongentrifying neighborhoods, even among renters or poor households. Similarly, Freeman and Braconi’s (2004) research on displacement in gentrifying neighborhoods of New York found that low-income households were actually less likely to move. Racial and ethnic minorities were significantly less likely to report displacement, after controlling for age and income, in other research (Newman and Wyly, 2006).Blocking market-rate housing fuels displacementJoe Cortwright, director of City Observatory, August 28, 2018, “If You Want Less Displacement, Build More Housing,” CityLab, (accessed 2/8/19)In city after city, we see the same refrain: As a neighborhood starts attracting new residents and new investment, current residents start to worry about gentrification. They show up at city council meetings or planning meetings to voice objection to new development. Just make it stop, so our neighborhood will stay the same, and residents won’t be displaced. They’re often urged to emulate the tactics of NIMBYs elsewhere, and stem the tide of change by blocking new development. Slowing or stopping new development, particularly new housing development, has exactly the opposite of the desired effect. It constricts the housing supply, drives up rents and fuels displacement. We’ve seen this time and again. A couple of months back, I profiled two Oakland neighborhoods, Uptown and Fruitvale. Both experienced almost identical increases in rents and home values as the Bay Area city boomed. But Fruitvale, which has built more housing has seen dramatically less demographic change, while Uptown, which has built almost no new housing, has seen its population shift.Lower-income families cannot afford to live in high-quality neighborhoods – this is segregationUlrish Boser and Perpetual Baffour, senior fellow and research associate, May 31, 2017, “Isolated and Segregated,” Center for American Progress, (accessed 2/8/19)The segregation of public schools often reflects larger trends of isolation in residential communities. Mixed-income neighborhoods are not the norm for most Americans. Residential areas tend to be homogenous in terms of race, ethnicity, and household income. Housing policies in the United States—from real-estate investments to lending practices and zoning ordinances—have formalized conditions of economic, residential isolation. While higher-income families can afford high-priced, affluent properties in sought-after neighborhoods, lower-income families are usually left with housing options located in lower-quality areas. In fact, a growing body of research shows that residential segregation by income has risen sharply over the past few decades.57 Schools have been a victim of this shift, and today students are more likely to attend schools with peers of similar backgrounds than they were 50 years ago.58 The growth of housing segregation is also inherently tied to a nationwide rise in income inequality. Since the 1980s, wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the top 10 percent of Americans. The number of people living in poverty, on the other hand, doubled between 2000 and 2013, reaching almost 14 million Americans.59CONCon CaseContention One: Market-rate is class warfareMarket-rate rent is growing faster than wages, threatening homelessnessBrittan Jenkins, journalist, September 27, 2017, “Rising Rents, Stagnant Wages, and the Burden of Unstable Housing,” Zillow Porchlight, (accessed 2/6/19)With rents rising faster than wages, the burden of affording rent is looming larger and larger for many Americans and, in, some cases becoming insurmountable. According to the Zillow Group Consumer Housing Trends Report 2017, 79 percent of renters who moved in the last 12 months experienced an increase in their monthly rent before moving to a new place. And over half (57 percent) said that hike was a factor in pushing them out the door and into another rental. Only 21 percent of renter households didn’t report experiencing a rent increase. Nearly a third (30 percent) of households nationwide, representing roughly 73 million adults, report they’re struggling or just getting by financially. And it’s no wonder; Americans spend on average a median of 29.1 percent of their income on rent, including many who spend a higher percentage but have lower incomes.Housing market-rates are high now, disproportionately hurting renters, spurring homelessnessRichard Florida and Ben Schneider, editors, April 11, 2018, “The Global Housing Crisis,” CityLab, (accessed 2/6/19)While the advantaged members of the knowledge, professional, and creative class have enough money left over even after paying the cost of housing in these cities, it’s the less-well-paid members of the service and working classes who get the short of end of the stick, with not nearly enough left over to afford the basic necessities of life. They are either pushed to the periphery of these places or pushed out all together. Many of the less advantaged are renters, not owners. Owners were essentially able to lock in their housing costs at the time of purchase, and thereby benefit from significant appreciation. And rents have increased even faster than housing prices in many metropolitan areas. Indeed, rents in the U.S. increased by 22 percent on average between 2006 and 2014, while average incomes decreased by 6 percent. This has meant escalating rent burdens, which, again, fall heaviest on the least advantaged. Nearly half of all renters across America are “cost burdened,” spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing. And nearly three-quarters of households earning less than $15,000 per year devote more than half of their income to housing. Little wonder that homelessness is growing across the U.S. The homeless encampments springing up in prosperous places like Orange County, California, and Seattle are reminiscent of the all-too-common informal settlements of the developing world.Housing inequality is the key link to economic inequalityRichard Florida, editor, April 13, 2018, “Is Housing Inequality the Main Driver of Economic Inequality?” CityLab, (accessed 2/6/19)Economic inequality is one of the most significant issues facing cities and entire nations today. But a mounting body of research suggests that housing inequality may well be the biggest contributor to our economic divides. Thomas Piketty’s influential book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, put economic inequality—and specifically, wealth inequality—front and center in the global conversation. But research by Matthew Rognlie found that housing inequality (that is, how much more expensive some houses are than others) is the key factor in rising wealth. Rognlie’s research documented that the share of wealth or capital income derived from housing has grown significantly since around 1950, and substantially more than for other forms of capital. In other words, those uber-expensive penthouses, luxury townhomes, and other real estate holdings in superstar cities like London and New York amount to a “physical manifestation” of Piketty’s insights into wealth inequality, as Felix Salmon so aptly puts it.Market-rate housing won’t solve – banks and lending spur the housing crisisKate Allen, financial analyst, October 14, 2018, “No, the housing crisis will not be solved by building more homes,” Financial Times, (accessed 2/8/19)Much of the reason why policymakers have failed to tackle the ‘housing crisis’ is because they have not grasped that land is fundamentally different to other economic inputs, Ryan-Collins argues: “Land is immobile, irreproducible and appreciates in value over time.” Lending to business supports capital investment and wages, fuelling growth, but lending on existing property and land is by comparison unproductive. Land is unusual in economic terms, in that it exists in fixed quantity; increased lending against it serves therefore only to drive up its value. And the banking sector's health has become dangerously intertwined with property prices. Breaking this cycle means radical banking reform, partly by changing their ownership structure - a shift from shareholder-driven banks to stakeholder-driven banks (though Alphaville hates the woolly word ‘stakeholder’). Contention Two: Do not trust the federal governmentFederal policies cause housing segregationJ. Brian Charles et al, policy analysts, January 23, 2019, “Broken Homes,” Governing, (accessed 2/8/19)The continued racial sorting was not merely the product of people wanting to live with people like themselves. It was driven by policies making it difficult for minorities to live in predominantly white communities, specifically by making it difficult to rent there. Today, 62 percent of black households in Illinois rent their homes, compared with 27 percent for whites. The wide gap was caused, at least in part, by discriminatory federal housing policy that dates back to the years before the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968, and in many cases to the period before World War II. During the Great Depression, Congress for the first time created federally guaranteed mortgages that were affordable to working-class homeowners. But the federal government, real estate agents and banks explicitly excluded blacks and black neighborhoods from those loans. The loans helped whites build wealth by accumulating equity in their homes and taking advantage of the mortgage interest deduction for state and federal income taxes. Black neighborhoods suffered because residents couldn’t get affordable loans to build, buy or renovate properties there. Existing houses fell into disrepair, and outside investors often bought them for rental units. And rent itself was a further barrier to minority residents who wanted to buy a home. That is still true. On the East Side of Springfield, the predominantly black part of town where Hightower lives, approximately half of renters spend at least 50 percent of their paychecks on rent and utilities.Other actors are better suited to solving the housing crisis. For example, non-profits are key to solving the housing crisisRebecca Regan, former president of Boston Community Loan Fund, May 30, 2018, “A New Approach to Solving the US Housing Crisis,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, (accessed 2/8/19)3. Support for organizations that create affordable housing. Another opportunity is to offer greater support for organizations like MidPen Housing, one of the nation’s leading nonprofit developers, and the owners and managers of high-quality affordable housing. MidPen has developed or rehabbed more than 8,000 affordable homes in San Francisco, with an additional 2,572 affordable homes currently in construction, entitlement, or pre-development. MidPen manages 103 properties with a total of 7,207 units, providing homes for more than 16,600 northern California residents. It also invests $6.3 million annually in resident services and partners with nearly 200 service providers.States are taking action on the housing crisis nowTeresa Wiltz, journalist, October 16, 2018, “Once Seen as a Local Issue, Affordable Housing Is Becoming a State Focus,” Governing, (accessed 2/8/19)Last month, California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed a passel of housing laws, most of which try to ease zoning restrictions around building affordable housing. Even so, some zoning bills, such as one that would have required cities to build apartments near transit hubs, failed. Last year, the Golden State passed a batch of housing laws that imposed real estate transaction fees, streamlined the approval process for developers and put a $4 billion bond on the 2018 ballot to help subsidize affordable housing. In April, the Connecticut House passed an affordable housing bill introduced by Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat. If it becomes law, it will require cities to end bans on multi-family housing units. It was aimed at roughly two dozen communities in the state with zoning laws that either restricted or outright banned affordable housing, according to the Connecticut Mirror. “Carrots” in the form of state incentives had not worked, Malloy told reporters in February in promoting the legislation. Lawmakers in other states — Massachusetts, New Jersey and South Carolina — have introduced bills that would encourage cities to either ease up on zoning restrictions or would require them to add so-called inclusionary zoning policies, which require developers to set aside affordable housing units. City governments are solving the housing crisis nowPatrick Sisson, senior reporter, May 19, 2016, “Why the rent is too damn high: The affordable housing crisis,” Curbed, (accessed 2/8/19)Williams says that the issue is far from figured out, but numerous cities have tried progressive experiments to help, resulting in a "flourishing of local innovation, and a holistic approach at a local level." While details differ, there are some common themes: generating a consistent source of local revenue to support development and rehab, such as local bonds or assessments; using zoning and taxing authority to create incentives for private development of affordable and mixed-income projects; and being strategic about the disposition and redevelopment of undeveloped or underutilized sites that the city or a local civic institution controls. Williams points to Seattle, where Mayor Ed Murray and the city council have been working on a multi-faceted housing program to combat what Murray calls "economic apartheid," that uses a property tax levy to support an affordable housing trust fund as well as tax incentives. Other cities include Atlanta, which enacted a policy requiring builders to set aside 15 percent of new buildings receiving public funds for low-income housing; Austin, which has introduced efforts to build more affordable housing near transit as well as multi-family housing; and New York, where Mayor de Blasio just introduced a set of Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning laws that have been approved by the City Council and are meant to create more mixed-income developments.Con Case ExtensionsDisplacementMarket-rate rent is pricing people out of urban neighborhoods and threatening their financial wellbeingBrittan Jenkins, journalist, September 27, 2017, “Rising Rents, Stagnant Wages, and the Burden of Unstable Housing,” Zillow Porchlight, (accessed 2/6/19)Increasingly, major metro areas are becoming out of reach for those who aren’t earning more than minimum wage, and this is becoming increasingly true even in markets that have historically been more affordable. Take Houston, for instance, where the median low-income earner spends 65.1 percent of their income on the median bottom-tier rent. Then there’s notoriously expensive New York, where — along with San Francisco and Los Angeles markets — the median low-income wage will not even cover a low-end apartment. In New York alone, to afford apartments with median bottom-tier rents, renters need to shill out 111.8 percent of the median low-income wage. With such large percentages of household incomes going toward rent, saving for the future is less of a priority — and a possibility. More than half (51 percent) of Americans say they don’t have enough money saved to support themselves for three months, according to a Zillow analysis of the Federal Reserve Board’s 2016 Survey of Household Economics and Decision-making.Renters are vulnerable to the market, making them vulnerable to homelessnessRichard Florida, editor, April 13, 2018, “Is Housing Inequality the Main Driver of Economic Inequality?” CityLab, (accessed 2/6/19)The study suggests this less severe pattern of rent inequality may be the result of measures like rent control and other affordable housing programs to assist lower-income renters, especially in expensive cities such as New York and San Francisco. That said, there also is an additional and potentially large wealth gap between owners and renters. Homeowners are able to basically lock in their housing costs after purchasing their home, and benefit from the appreciation of their properties thereafter. Renters, on the other hand, see rents increase in line with the market, and sometimes faster. This threatens their ability to maintain shelter, while they accumulate no equity in the place where they live.Rising rent rates leads to rising homelessness ratesBrittan Jenkins, journalist, September 27, 2017, “Rising Rents, Stagnant Wages, and the Burden of Unstable Housing,” Zillow Porchlight, (accessed 2/6/19)Coast to coast, there are an estimated 550,000 homeless people, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. But Zillow Research used statistical modeling to estimate the uncounted homeless population, unsheltered homeless people often missed during the One Night Counts, to estimate the true number of homeless people, a number much higher than the official estimates. And as rents climb, the numbers will only grow, especially in large, tight metros, where the rent burden can become life-altering. Take New York City, for example. The metro has the largest population of homeless people in the nation. Last year, there were an estimated 76,411 people experiencing homelessness, according to Zillow’s estimates. If rents were to rise 5 percent, an additional 2,982 people would be forced to the streets. And Los Angeles doesn’t fare much better. Given the same rent hike, an additional 1,993 people would fall into homelessness. And a rent hike of 5 percent isn’t implausible, especially given that in L.A., rents rose 4.4 percent over the past year.Market-rate does not solveNeighborhood characteristics are durable – market-rate housing cannot change the neighborhoodsRobert J. Sampson, Harvard University professor, April 2, 2015, “Individual and Community Economic Mobility in the Great Recession Era: The Spatial Foundations of Persistent Inequality,” Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, (accessed 2/5/19)The results of this paper militate against the idea that neighborhood income inequality is somehow recent or that neighborhoods have radically repositioned themselves. Just as individual income mobility has been fairly low for some time (Chetty et al. 2014b), the odds of neighborhood-level upgrading are relatively low and persistent neighborhood inequality has existed for decades. It is true that some cities have changed dramatically and that the middle class is in peril, but large-scale secular changes have been, for the most part, superim-posed on preexisting structures of inequality. These structures exist nationally and in both cities studied, although the persistence of concentrated extremes is as high or higher in the newer sunbelt city of Los Angeles than in the older city of Chicago that is typically considered more divided by place.Market-rate is expensiveFinancial speculation in real estate leads to high market-rates for rentRichard Florida and Ben Schneider, editors, April 11, 2018, “The Global Housing Crisis,” CityLab, (accessed 2/6/19)As Saskia Sassen has documented, the main players in this market are giant corporations and private equity firms—in 2015, corporations purchased $1 trillion in real estate in the world’s top 100 global cities. Sovereign banks from countries like China, which recently relaxed its foreign investment rules, as well as oil-rich countries looking to diversify their portfolios, like Norway and Qatar, are also notable players in the global real estate market. Laurence Fink, CEO of the private equity giant BlackRock, said apartments in cities like New York, London, and Vancouver have begun to replace gold as the primary store of wealth for the super-rich. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect about the financialization of housing is the fact that all of the money being poured into housing markets has not contributed to a significant increase in supply, but rather to an increase in ultra-high-end units that are extremely expensive to produce. If even a portion of this global housing investment was “directed towards affordable housing and access to credit for people in need of it,” the UN report notes, the UN’s sustainable development goal “to ensure adequate housing for all by 2030, would be well within reach.”Market rate means that landlords are able to charge the maximum amounts they want for rentIf the River Swells, March 28, 2015, “What is Market Rate?” (accessed 2/4/19)In reality, market rate has no element of fairness. It simply means that landlords are charging the maximum amount of rent that is bearable by the market, i.e. the most they can get away with. It is distinguished from other forms of housing, such as government subsidized or low-income housing (these days, often euphemistically called “workforce” housing).Market-rate housing is expensive – developers prioritize luxury housing and investment prioritiesRichard Florida and Ben Schneider, editors, April 11, 2018, “The Global Housing Crisis,” CityLab, (accessed 2/6/19)From reading the press, you’d think the housing crisis is mainly relevant to superstar cities like New York, London, and San Francisco. But housing is becoming increasingly expensive in a wide range of cities, including Philadelphia and Detroit. And the worst of the housing crisis by far is not in the wealthy cities of the advanced world, but in the rapidly urbanizing cities of the developing world, where hundreds of millions of people live in substandard housing, lacking electricity, running water, or basic sanitation. The global housing crisis reflects a fundamental paradox of contemporary capitalism. Cities around the world are more economically powerful and essential than ever. This creates tremendous demand for their land, leading to escalating housing costs and competition. Meanwhile, housing has been financialized and turned into an investment vehicle, which has caused an oversupply of luxury housing and a lack of affordable housing in many cities across the world. The global housing crisis is defined by a chronic shortage of housing for the least advantaged, and in many cases, for the working and middle classes as well.Even one-bedroom apartments are out of reach to minimum wage workers in most statesTracy Jan, journalist, June 13, 2018, “A minimum-wage worker can't afford a 2-bedroom apartment anywhere in the U.S., report finds,” Chicago Tribune, (accessed 2/6/19) Downsizing to a one-bedroom apartment will only help so much. According to the report, a one-bedroom is affordable for minimum-wage workers in only 22 counties in five states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington. Those states all set their minimum wages higher than the federal minimum of $7.25. Nationally, one would have to earn $17.90 an hour to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment or $22.10 an hour for a two-bedroom rental. That's based on the common budgeting standard of spending a maximum of 30 percent of income on housing. The report estimates that renters nationally make an average of $16.88 an hour. That means even those making above minimum wage struggle to afford rent. Housing costs have continued to rise with growing demand for rental housing in the decade since the Great Recession. At the same time, new rental construction has tilted toward the luxury market because of increasingly high development costs, the report said. The number of homes renting for $2,000 or more per month nearly doubled between 2005 and 2015. "While the housing market may have recovered for many, we are nonetheless experiencing an affordable housing crisis, especially for very low-income families," Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said in the report.Homelessness ImpactsAffordable housing is at risk nowAlyssa Katz, senior fellow with the Pratt Center for Community Development, June 28, 2018, “The Harm to Affordable Housing,” The American Prospect, (accessed 2/8/19)As homeownership becomes less affordable, more people rent despite a severe shortage of affordable rental housing. As the number of renting households grows, the share of income devoted to rent has risen, in many cases crushingly so: The Pew Charitable Trusts finds 38 percent of tenant households are rent-burdened, spending more than 30 percent of pretax income on rent; 17 percent spend more than half. Also on the line is the survival of what remains of the nation’s public housing, as federal subsidies lag behind the cost of upkeep. Congress in its budget bill expanded to 455,000 the number of public housing units that can participate in Rental Assistance Demonstration, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development program that converts public housing funding to aid to private investors and managers, enabling them to borrow in the bond market to finance renovations—and tap the accompanying tax credits. A sobering takeaway from the broad support for LIHTC, at a time when federal anti-poverty and direct housing programs are coming under renewed political attack: Give banks and businesses a piece of the action, while delivering visible, even transformative results, and you build the most popular program on the block. The nation’s taxpayers and renters surely deserve better. Homelessness causes adverse health effectsSandro Galea, dean of Boston University School of Public Health, February 28, 2016, “Homelessness, Its Consequences, and Its Causes,” Boston University, (accessed 2/8/19)There is abundant evidence about the health consequences of homelessness. At a fundamental level, the homeless have higher premature mortality than those who are appropriately housed, with injuries, unintentional overdose, and extreme weather events being important drivers of this mortality. The homeless also have poor quality of life, characterized, as noted in various studies, by chronic pain associated with poor sleeping conditions and limited access to medications and other salutary resources. Skin and foot problems, dental problems, and chronic infectious diseases are also well-described among homeless populations. For a comprehensive review of the health of the homeless, I would refer to this published work. The intractability of homelessness—we all know that homelessness is a challenge, and that it threatens health—presents challenges both to how we think of homelessness and its consequences, and how we might envision solutions. Perhaps one useful frame is to consider homelessness across the lifecourse, by way of highlighting the factors that are coincident with, and contribute to, homelessness.Homelessness hurts health, education, and educationBrittan Jenkins, journalist, September 27, 2017, “Rising Rents, Stagnant Wages, and the Burden of Unstable Housing,” Zillow Porchlight, (accessed 2/6/19)Unfortunately, for too many, lack of affordable housing can complicate other critical aspects of life, including health and future livelihoods. Individuals living in shelters are more than twice as likely to have a disability compared to the general population. This includes serious mental illnesses, conditions related to chronic substance abuse, diabetes, heart disease and HIV/AIDS, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Gudell says people have better outcomes when they aren’t constantly moving from place to place. “It’s been shown that you have better outcomes if you live in a stable environment with less frequent moves, which is easier to attain when you own versus rent,” Gudell said. “So, if you take stable environments away from people, their outcomes will most likely be worse than they are today, and that has an impact on education, on health and on income growth in the future.”Poverty leads to higher risk of death, shorter lifespan, and lost opportunities. Inaction is complicity in structural violence.Steven Lee, peace scholar, 1999, “Is Poverty Violence?” Institutional Violence, p. 10 (accessed 2/8/19)One of the primary injustices of a bad social order is poverty. Poverty results in a whole range of serious physical and psychological harms: higher risks of disease, shortened life spans, stunted mental and emotional development, and inadequate opportunity to lead a meaningful life. These are primarily institutionally imposed harms, because they are the result of the enforcement of systems of social, political, legal, and economical rules. But, though the harms are institutional, they are caused by individuals, in the sense that the acts of other individuals could avoid them. It is individuals who enforce the unjust legal norms of the social order and refrain from seeking to change these norms to achieve a fairer redistribution of wealth and power. It is the radical critique of a social order which calls to our attention these harms, the injustice they involve, and our individual and collective responsibility for them. But my point is that the radical critique does more than this. It implies that, if violence involves the transgression of a norm, then institutional violence may occur even in the absence of vigorous force. In pointing out the harms of social order, harms other than those of social disorder, the radical critique demonstrates the mere contingency of the link between the causing of harm and the application of vigorous force. This allows an extension of the notion of violence to cover such harms, and so reveals that vigorous force is not a necessary condition for violence.Affordable housing at risk nowAffordable housing is expiring now – half a million in the next ten yearsJared Brey, policy analyst October 22, 2018, “What Happens When Affordability Restrictions Expire for Half a Million Homes?” Next City, (accessed 2/6/19)Hundreds of thousands of affordable units created under one of the biggest federal housing programs ever could start disappearing soon, in a manner of speaking. According to a new report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the Public and Affordable Housing Research Corporation, nearly half a million units created with Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTCs) could be lost in the next ten years. Most LIHTC (“ly-tek”) units are required to remain affordable for 30 years, the report notes. The LIHTC program was created in 1987, and the affordability requirements have started to expire on the first funded units. Between 2020 and 2029, more than 485,000 units will reach year 30, and could become unaffordable to low-income residents — including their existing tenants — without additional subsidy, the report says. Some units in highly desirable neighborhoods could quickly be converted to market-rate rents, while many more units in neighborhoods with lower demand could start to physically deteriorate without additional capital for rehabilitation. The situation sets up a seemingly difficult choice, the report says: Reinvest in existing affordable housing to keep people housed or invest in new affordable housing to give low-income residents a chance to leave segregated, low-opportunity neighborhoods. But the choice is a false one, the authors say.Affordable housing is set to be converted into market-rate housing soonJared Brey, policy analyst, October 22, 2018, “What Happens When Affordability Restrictions Expire for Half a Million Homes?” Next City, (accessed 2/8/19)Hundreds of thousands of affordable units created under one of the biggest federal housing programs ever could start disappearing soon, in a manner of speaking. According to a new report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the Public and Affordable Housing Research Corporation, nearly half a million units created with Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTCs) could be lost in the next ten years. Most LIHTC (“ly-tek”) units are required to remain affordable for 30 years, the report notes. The LIHTC program was created in 1987, and the affordability requirements have started to expire on the first funded units. Between 2020 and 2029, more than 485,000 units will reach year 30, and could become unaffordable to low-income residents — including their existing tenants — without additional subsidy, the report says. Some units in highly desirable neighborhoods could quickly be converted to market-rate rents, while many more units in neighborhoods with lower demand could start to physically deteriorate without additional capital for rehabilitation. The situation sets up a seemingly difficult choice, the report says: Reinvest in existing affordable housing to keep people housed or invest in new affordable housing to give low-income residents a chance to leave segregated, low-opportunity neighborhoods. But the choice is a false one, the authors say.One in four affordable houses are set to expire in the next ten yearsDiane Yental, real estate analyst, September 9, 2017, “Affordability Set to Expire on 500,000 Units,” Affordable Housing Finance, (accessed 2/8/19)Nearly one in four of these units are funded by low-income housing tax credits. Previous experience suggests that as many as 8% (or 39,066) of these units could be permanently lost from the publicly assisted and affordable housing stock because their current owners could opt for the private market, report housing leaders. “We cannot afford to lose any of the federally assisted housing stock,” says Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC). “The rental housing crisis is hitting the lowest-income renters particularly hard, while federal resources for new subsidized housing is insufficient. Maintaining our current stock is critical.”Affordable housing is expiring soonChampaign Williams, policy analyst, October 23, 2018, “As 2020 Approaches, Thousands Of Affordable Housing Units Through The Federal LIHTC Program Are Set To Expire” Bisnow, (accessed 2/8/19)Hundreds of thousands of affordable apartment units built under the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program are slated to hit their 30-year mark between 2020 and 2029 — meaning these units will no longer have to be set aside for low-income housing, Affordable Housing Finance reports. A recent report by the National Low-Income Housing Coalition and the Public and Affordable Housing Research Corp. found nearly 500,000 LIHTC units in 8,400 buildings, or roughly 25% of existing LIHTC product, that could potentially be converted to market-rate housing once the three-decade period expires — further shrinking the U.S.’ affordable housing stock at a time when the country is experiencing a massive housing shortage and workforce housing crisis. “The quickly approaching Year 30 deadline creates urgency for solutions,” NLIHC President and CEO Diane Yentel told Affordable Housing Finance. “We must move beyond the status quo of needlessly scarce resources and commit to a longer-term and bolder vision for a comprehensive national housing policy that ensures affordable homes for our nation’s more than 11 million extremely low-income renter households.”Race ImpactsMarket-rate rent disproportionately hurts people of colorTali Wee, financial analyst, March 30, 2017, “Rental Affordability Is Worst in Minority Communities,” Zillow Porchlight, (accessed 2/6/19)New data shows that, on average, residents of predominantly white neighborhoods spend 30.7 percent of their income on rent, in line with the generally accepted standard of 30 percent. Renters living in predominately black neighborhoods spend 43.7 percent of their income on rent, and renters in largely Hispanic communities spend 48.1 percent. For renters in minority communities, devoting such a large share of income to rent limits their ability to save for a down payment, which would allow them to transition their costly rent to more affordable mortgage payments. And when rents are unaffordable, renters begin making sacrifices like forgoing necessary medical or dental care and contributions to retirement accounts.High rent locks people of color out of home ownershipTali Wee, financial analyst, March 30, 2017, “Rental Affordability Is Worst in Minority Communities,” Zillow Porchlight, (accessed 2/6/19)“This research sheds light on another example of inequality in the housing market,” said Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Svenja Gudell. “Renters in African-American or Hispanic neighborhoods find themselves in a catch-22 situation: While owning a home is a great way to build wealth, you need to save up some cash to be able to buy. If you’re spending close to half of your income on rent, saving for that down payment is going to be incredibly difficult.” These differences shift for homeowners, with mortgage payments requiring the greatest share of income from owners in Hispanic neighborhoods, at 22.8 percent. Homeowners in white communities allocate more of their incomes to their mortgage payments (15.2 percent) than owners in primarily black communities (13.6 percent). Still, transitioning from renting to owning remains a challenge for minorities, not only because they have less income left over to save for a down payment, but also because race impacts minorities’ ability to get approved for a mortgage. Home values in predominantly black communities also tend to be much lower than home values in predominantly white communities, contributing to this difference.Non-profits solveNon-profits have filled in for the gap the federal government left behindPatrick Sission, senior reporter, January 24, 2019, “Can corporate money and altruism fix affordable housing?” Curbed, (accessed 2/8/19)Some housing advocates see these pledges not just as important sources of capital, but precedent-setting investments that will encourage more corporate action. “That New York Times story about the Microsoft investment says that we can’t let government walk away from affordable housing,” says Randy Shaw, director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, and author of Generation Priced Out. “But the reality is, government has walked away for the last 40 years. Talk to anyone in the nonprofit housing world, and they’ll say having the kind of capital Microsoft is putting up is extraordinarily important.” Currently, federal government support for housing assistance is a third of what is was in the 1970’s, adjusted for inflation, as cited in the New York Times, and the 2017 tax bill diminished the value of the Low-Income Tax Credit, a key funding source for new affordable housing construction. Combine cuts in support with rising costs for construction and land, and it’s become harder and harder to build affordable units. Nonprofits are crucial to solving the housing crisisNancy Rase and Paul Weech, news analysts, July 17, 2013, “Growing a Stronger Nonprofit Housing Sector,” Shelter Force, (accessed 2/8/19)The affordable housing environment is extremely daunting and growing more challenging. Our nation has long confronted a structural affordability crisis with only limited public resources available to meet the housing needs of low-income people. Add to these unrelenting unmet needs the additional pressures of an aging affordable housing inventory, the continuous expiration of subsidy contracts and use restrictions, and the disproportionate impact of single-family foreclosures on low-income communities. Policy makers face stark questions around how to recapitalize aging properties and extend their affordability, how to stabilize neighborhoods hard hit by foreclosures, and how to create better social and economic outcomes for low-income families. Over the last several decades, nonprofits have played a particularly important role in the provision of affordable housing, a role that has been growing in importance as other players in the system look to work with capable partners to address increasingly complex development, preservation, and neighborhood stabilization problems.Local governments solveLocal governments will solve the housing crisis, federal involvement is unnecessaryPatrick Sisson, senior reporter, July 25, 2017, “Solving affordable housing: Creative solutions around the U.S.,” Curbed, (accessed 2/8/19)But when city leadership, government leaders, and nonprofits get creative and get serious about solving the issues, solutions can take shape. Curbed spoke with experts from numerous housing organizations—Urban Institute, Housing Partnership Network, National Housing Conference, Coalition for the Homeless, and Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies—as well as authors and scholars such as Joel Kotkin, to identify some of the innovative solutions that cities, states, and nonprofits have turned to to help solve the affordability shortage, including inclusionary zoning, removing parking minimums, changing building codes to make it easier to rehab older buildings, and new funding models. Some are small-scale, and none offers an all-in-one solution to this enormous problem (“There is no silver bullet,” says Siglin). But in a time of tight budgets and expanding need, they showcase creative ways to solve one of today’s trickiest urban issues. Local governments are efficient policymakersJoel Kotkin and Richard Florida, policy analysts, April 11, 2017, “To Reunite America, Liberate Cities to Govern Themselves,” The Daily Beast, (accessed 2/8/19)It is time for American mayors and community leaders—from small towns, suburbs and midsized ‘burgs to great metropolitan capitals like New York City, LA, and Chicago to press for a similar devolution of power. Such a strategy recognizes both the advantages that come from local innovation and problem solving and the substantial variations in local capabilities and needs. This need for devolution and local empowerment does not just apply to the federal government; it applies to the relationship between the states and municipalities as well. A greater recognition of local differences may be particularly helpful for suburbs, which often have little voice in regional decision-making compared to either big city mayors or the rural and small town interests that dominate many statehouses. In the America that emerged after the Second World War, unity of purpose was the watchword. In the more geographically-varied world of today, it makes sense to allow for a greater variation of policy approaches. Rather than pursuing a single vision of “national greatness,” it’s time for us to embrace and empower the country’s wondrous local diversity of cities, suburbs and communities of all kinds.State government serves as an adequate check on local governmentsTeresa Wiltz, journalist, October 16, 2018, “Once Seen as a Local Issue, Affordable Housing Is Becoming a State Focus,” Governing, (accessed 2/8/19)Local control of housing is important — to an extent, said Carol Galante, a former Housing and Urban Development official who is now a professor of affordable housing and urban policy at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California at Berkeley. But community zoning often bans anything other than single family homes. In such cases, Galante said, it’s important for states to step in and set the ground rules, because local zoning laws can be used improperly to keep out people based on race or income. “We’ve got an emergency on our hands in lots of states,” Galante said. “Sometimes you have to go to a higher authority. We had to do that in the civil rights movement.”Federal government badFederal government already supports housing the middle class and abandoning the poorPatrick Sisson, senior reporter, May 19, 2016, “Why the rent is too damn high: The affordable housing crisis,” Curbed, (accessed 2/8/19)"Budget cuts beginning in the 1980s, when we were funding the creation of 500,000 units a year, have resulted in a situation where federal programs produce perhaps 25 percent of that amount in new units in a good year," says Stockton Williams, executive director of the Terwilliger Center for Housing at the Urban Land Institute. "Only one in four households that is income-eligible for federal housing assistance receives any. The annual cost to taxpayers of the federal income tax deductions for home mortgage interest and property taxes, which mainly benefit relatively affluent households, is double what the government spends on all lower-income housing programs combined." While there’s been an 18 percent increase in the number of low-income households from 2007 to 2013, funding for the largest HUD program remains below 2008 levels.Federal government is an inefficient policymaker - polarizationJoel Kotkin and Richard Florida, policy analysts, April 11, 2017, “To Reunite America, Liberate Cities to Govern Themselves,” The Daily Beast, (accessed 2/8/19)Donald Trump did not, of course, cause America’s long-standing divisions of class, culture, education, income, race, and politics, which have been baked into our geography and demography for a long time. But he has certainly brought them into stark relief. As the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt remarked, “We have to recognize that we’re in a crisis, and that the left-right divide is probably unbridgeable. … Polarization is here to stay for many decades, and it’s probably going to get worse, and so the question is: How do we adapt our democracy for life under intense polarization?” The answer lies not in enforcing uniformity from left or right but in embracing and empowering our diversity of communities. The best way to do that is by shifting power away from our increasingly dysfunctional federal government and down to the local level, where partisan differences are more muted and less visible, and where programs and policies can actually get things done.Department of Housing and Urban Development is uniquely bad at housing reformDanielle McLean, journalist, February 20, 2018, “HUD is failing to manage key public housing program, government watchdog finds,” ThinkProgess, (accessed 2/8/19)Over the past 20 years, dozens of housing authorities across the country have been allowed to skirt federal regulations and were given extra discretion in how they spend millions in federal funds through an experimental low-income housing program. Under the watchful eye of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 39 housing authorities created policies that limited the time low-income tenants could live in a public housing complex, established work requirements, or set higher rents through a program called Moving to Work Demonstration (MTW). However, HUD hasn’t been properly monitoring the policies and regulations, and those 39 agencies have failed to distribute over $800 million in federal housing vouchers to their tenants and served fewer families than required, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Federal government is bad at housing policy, caused the current housing crisisJohn O. Norquist, mayor of Milwaukee, 2018, “How the Government Killed Affordable Housing,” Small Property Owners Association, (Accessed 2/8/19)After a succession of fiascos associated with attempts to eradicate slums, build housing for the poor, and pursue other seemingly noble goals, it should be obvious that government efforts often make urban conditions worse rather than better. Not every government effort is destined to fail. In Milwaukee, where I serve as mayor, we have achieved success with some housing endeavors. But the efforts that have brought genuine benefits have usually been local initiated and have tried simply to help the private market work better, rather than assuming that a bureaucracy can competently build or operate places that people call home. The sorry consequences of federal involvement in housing can be seen in the decline of low-cost housing. Up to the 1950s, American cities offered people without much money a variety of choices in shelter. Not all of the housing was pretty or spacious. But the options were numerous, and included walk-ups, apartments over stores, triplexes, duplexes, single-family houses, apartments over garages, flats in back, boardinghouses, tenements, low-rent hotels, and row houses. ................
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