by Randy Shaw on September 9, 2024 (BeyondChron.org)
Making Housing Affordability a Top Priority
Kamala Harris would be the first president who has served as a local elected official in a major city. Although the Democratic Party’s base lies in major cities, its presidents have not previously served as local officials in these areas.
Barack Obama was never part of Chicago city government. FDR was never a local New York City official. Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter forged their political careers outside major urban centers.
Harris’s urban background clearly matters. Particularly on housing.
Promoting Affordable Housing
For far too long affordable housing has been wrongly treated as solely a local issue.
I was awarded Project Censored‘s 9th Most Censored Story of 2000-2001 for an article I wrote on how all of the major presidential campaigns in 2000 ignored the nation’s housing crisis.
I could have written the same story with the candidates in every presidential election until 2024. Housing was highlighted during the foreclosure crisis of 2008 but the nation’s affordable rental housing crisis remained off the radar.
Housing affordability persists as a “local” issue despite the 1949 Federal Housing Act. It mandates the federal government provide affordable housing for all Americans.
Harris’s political career was shaped around affordable housing. One cannot serve as District Attorney of San Francisco, Attorney General of California, and U.S. Senator from California without regularly confronting the affordable housing crisis.
Harris has a campaign ad describing her family’s experience as her mother struggled to buy a house. She says “I know what homeownership means, and sadly right now it is out of reach for far too many Americans.”
What does Harris talk most about in recounting her experience as Attorney General? Her renegotiation of the foreclosure settlement. Housing activists pushed for Harris’s tougher stance toward the banks and she got it done.
During her political career Harris lived in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Housing affordability and homelessness are top issues in both areas.
National Housing Policies
Democratic Presidents have a disappointing record on addressing housing affordability.
Bill Clinton was the first Democratic President after Ronald Reagan slashed the federal housing budget in 1981. Clinton responded to Reagan driving rising homelessness and underfunding public housing with a Hope VI program that eliminated 100,000 public housing units. San Francisco was one of the few if not the only city that implemented Hope VI—which modernized the nation’s public housing stock at the cost of demolishing housing—without reducing public housing units.
Barack Obama increased housing funding but not enough to make a noticeable difference.
Clinton and Obama only controlled Congress for two years before anti-housing Republican majorities took control. But neither president spent political capital on increasing housing funding.
Joe Biden did spend the capital. Taking office without talking much about housing during the 2020 campaign, Biden backed the most significant increase in federal affordable housing funding in modern United States history. President Biden’s original Build Back Better strategy would have added $213 billion in new affordable housing funding (See “Can Biden End Homelessness?,” April 6. 2021). It failed to get any Republican support and was then killed by Senator Manchin.
That bill should be the starting point for a Harris Administration
Harris’s Urban Agenda
Harris’s plan for the feds to help build 3 million new homes is the type of measure the Democratic Party should have prioritized years ago. And one reason this didn’t happen beyond the lack of urbanist priorities from Democratic Presidents is the criticism that followed Harris’s proposal.
Many are committed to stopping new housing and preventing new federally-backed housing subsidies. They reject Harris’s recognition that housing construction is an economic issue, driving jobs and local economies.
Should she win in November housing and tenant advocates will have to mobilize to ensure Harris gets her housing program through. Many are already calling Harris a YIMBY. Her housing platform offers a great opportunity for YIMBY’s and low-income tenant advocates to work together.
Has any major party presidential candidate before Harris pledged to “take on corporate landlords and cap unfair rent increases.”? I don’t recall it. Prior presidential candidates acted like tenant affordability was not part of their campaign. I see Harris’s commitment as directly related to Harris’s living in high-rent urban areas.
Some people in these high housing cost areas were not excited by Harris’s other major platform: $25,000 downpayment assistance. People argued that it won’t help much in high housing cost cities.
But $25,000 means a lot for families in the more affordable housing markets across the nation. The plan will increase neighborhood economic and racial diversity, and remind families how federal housing policies can positively impact their lives.
The Boston Globe ran a powerful story on the housing affordability crisis in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It’s among many cities where $25,000 downpayment assistance would make a big difference.
Donald Trump’s housing plan is centered on reducing demand by deporting ten million immigrants. He also pledges to cut construction regulations and to reduce mortgage interest rates to 3% (interest rates are set by the Federal Reserve, not the President). As President, Trump did not promote increasing federal rental housing subsidies.
We will soon find out which housing strategy prevails.
Randy Shaw
Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco
