Federal Policies for Creating Permanent Affordable Housing

In a piece for the Urban Institute, Samantha Atherton and Samantha Fu highlight the importance of housing costs to most voters — and the lack of effective messaging around housing policy coming from political candidates seeking office this November.

According to the authors, “Permanently affordable housing, or housing that is insulated from the private, speculative market, is one solution to the housing crisis that both Democrats and Republicans favor.” Even a majority (60 percent) of Republicans reported they would support a candidate who has a plan for permanently affordable housing.

Expanding the nation’s stock of permanently affordable housing is one way to decommodify housing, or decouple access to housing from the ability to pay for it.

The authors outline three strategies that the federal government could undertake to create a supply of permanently affordable housing and alleviate the housing crisis growing across the nation.

The three policy proposals include creating a federal Green Social Housing Development Authority responsible for building and maintaining affordable housing units. “The authority would serve as a vehicle for the federal government to acquire distressed real estate, public land, investor-owned vacant properties, expiring low-income housing tax credit properties, and properties with track records of landlord exploitation and repair and retrofit them.” The properties could then be transferred to nonprofits, housing authorities, resident cooperatives, or local governments for long-term management.

Other suggestions include providing federal funding for state and local housing entities and building capacity for democratic community control of housing to further decommodify housing and empower residents to have decision-making power in their community. “The federal government could help build residents’ and communities’ capacities to engage in these models by providing technical assistance and funding initiatives to drive community engagement and organizing.”