Clinton Says Creating Affordable Housing Should Be A ‘National Commitment’

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Wednesday said the country needs a “national commitment” to creating more affordable housing in America, in an op-ed published in The New York Times.

The Sept. 21 piece focused on Clinton’s “plan for helping America’s poor,” broadly outlining her approach toward eradicating poverty through job creation, investment in low-income communities, access to child care and more affordable housing. “This issue doesn’t get much election-year coverage, but it’s a big deal to the 11.4 million American households that spend more than half their incomes on rent,” she wrote of affordable housing.

She’s right about that.

Seventy-one percent of Americans think that affordable housing should be a main focus of the political parties’ platforms during the 2016 presidential campaign, and 74 percent said they are more likely to support the candidate who elevates the issue, according to a July poll conducted by strategic research firm Ipsos Public Affairs on behalf of Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit real estate services firm that helps build affordable housing. Democrats surveyed in that poll were much more likely to emphasize the importance of housing affordability than self-identified Republicans – 71 percent versus 44 percent, respectively. The issue resonated as critical particularly with younger respondents in the 18-to-34 age group (73 percent), the less affluent (65 percent), and respondents with children living at home (67 percent). The poll defined “less affluent” as earning less than $50,000 per year.

In the op-ed, Clinton did not go into much detail about developing more affordable housing beyond the current conventional approach: expanding low-income housing tax credits in more affluent areas. “So if you are a family living in an expensive city, you would be able to find an affordable place to call home and have access to the transportation you need to get to good jobs and quality schools,” she wrote. That’s a lot easier said than done. And while the low-income housing tax credit program is now among the most important ways affordable housing is developed in the United States, advocates would like to see the candidates offer bolder ideas for solving the problem.

“Yes, expanding the low-income housing tax credit would help,” said Angela Boyd, managing director of Make Room, a nationwide campaign giving voice to renters, during an August interview with Government Executive. Make Room recently launched an online and mobile digital platform to connect organizations and citizens directly with lawmakers, encouraging people to tell their stories and demanding action from Congress on affordable housing. “It is one step toward solving a problem,” Boyd said of the LIHTC. “Making sure that everyone is not being discriminated against in their housing is another step. Those things are really important, but neither of those on their own, or even together, are going to solve it. So what we need to see are some much bigger ideas. What is a national housing policy? What is the public-private partnership that is going to get this done?”

Clinton has offered a much more detailed plan for creating more affordable housing and battling poverty on her campaign website, including a $125 billion economic revitalization initiative “to create good-paying jobs, rebuild crumbling infrastructure, and connect housing to opportunity in communities that are being left out and left behind.” That would include up to $10,000 in assistance on a down payment for certain home-buyers. In August, Clinton’s running mate Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, wrote an editorial published on CNN.com that addressed the need for affordable and fair housing as well as the campaign’s strategy to address the issue. “We'll increase rental assistance for low-income families, and help families who receive support choose from a wide range of neighborhoods to live in,” wrote Kaine, who fought housing discrimination as a young lawyer. “We'll provide more resources to public housing authorities, and pair these investments with broader economic development efforts.”

The Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump hasn’t discussed the need for affordable housing or laid out an anti-poverty plan, though he has offered ideas on boosting infrastructure, creating more jobs, reducing taxes for everyone and improving access to more affordable child care – all issues that relate to housing and poverty.

In their respective 2016 party platforms, Republicans and Democrats unsurprisingly took different approaches toward the issue of housing and homeownership. Republicans mentioned the spike in rental costs since the recession but focused on increasing homeownership and reducing the government’s role in housing. “Our goal is to advance responsible homeownership while guarding against the abuses that led to the housing collapse,” said the 2016 GOP platform. “We must scale back the federal role in the housing market, promote responsibility on the part of borrowers and lenders, and avoid future taxpayer bailouts.”

Republicans also called for a “comprehensive review of federal regulations, especially those dealing with the environment, that make it harder and more costly for Americans to rent, buy or sell homes.”

The Democratic platform said the party would increase the supply of affordable housing “by expanding incentives and easing local barriers to building new affordable rental housing developments in areas of economic opportunity.” The party said it would “substantially” boost funding for the National Housing Trust Fund to build, preserve and rehab “millions” of affordable housing units. “Democrats also believe that we should provide more federal resources to the people struggling most with unaffordable housing: low-income families, people with disabilities, veterans, and the elderly,” stated the document.

Right now, however, there’s more discussion in Congress about poverty and housing than on the presidential campaign trail. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., published an Aug. 30 op-ed in USA Today, arguing that the federal government needs to stop competing with local organizations and entrepreneurs who are coming up with customized solutions to alleviating poverty in their communities. “What the federal government should do is direct resources to communities, let them try different ideas, then hold people accountable for results,” said the op-ed. “This more organic approach will empower people, giving them dignity rather than dependence.” The two said the government needs “to ditch the top-down solutions and take a bottom-up approach.”

Ryan this spring unveiled his “A Better Way” initiative, a broad vision for dealing with various issues, including how to fight poverty and provide better economic opportunities for all Americans.

On the Senate side, a group of Republican senators, including former GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio, on Wednesday announced the creation of the Senate Opportunity Coalition, a new initiative aimed at reducing poverty. The group released a document called "Pave the Path to a Brighter Future," the first in a series of documents that blends policy, statistics and personal stories on poverty and related issues from the coalition. 

In addition, Washington Democrat Maria Cantwell and Utah Republican Orrin Hatch are sponsoring the 2016 Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act, which would expand the LIHTC program to help create and preserve affordable housing -- particularly for homeless, rural, and Native American communities -- over the next decade.