The COVID-19 Housing Crisis and the Housing Affordability Crisis Have the Same Solutions

"There’s never been a more urgent moment for big, bold, public action on housing," writes Dan Bertolet, who includes ideas on exactly how the federal government could achieve that kind of big, bold action to help alleviate the pre-existing housing affordability and homelessness crisis with the COVID-19-induced crisis of paying rent and mortgages while most of the nation is staying home and millions are suddenly out of work.

Bertolet's first recommendation is for the federal government to "put public funds toward direct financial support for those who are most vulnerable to losing their homes right when they need those homes the most: renters." 

The second recommendation is for the federal government to stop funding cities that "impose zoning laws that reserve close-in neighborhoods near jobs and transit only for the most expensive homes, pushing lower income workers out to the margins."

Bertolet provides a lot more detail on each of these recommendations, echoing previous calls for crisis level funding for the federal housing voucher program as well as examining the recent and current legislative efforts to achieve the land use reforms of the second recommendation. 

According to Bertolet, these two approaches represent a "one-two punch" for the housing crises of the past, present, and future.