December 12, 2018

Curbed: Elizabeth Warren doubles down on affordable housing legislation

Today, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) doubled down on her strategy to fix America’s housing crisis. Along with Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) and Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI), she introduced the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act to the House, a companion to a Senate bill Warren introduced in September.

“America is facing a housing crisis—a crisis that has been decades in the making,” Sen. Warren said at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center. “This is a crisis that hits middle-class families, working families, the working poor, the poor poor. Costs are up and over time housing stock is deteriorating. The American Housing and Economic Mobility Act confronts the shameful history of government-backed housing discrimination and is designed to benefit those families that have been denied opportunities to build wealth because of the color of their skin.”

The American Housing and Economic Mobility Act takes a comprehensive approach to the housing crisis, tackling affordable housing supply through a $450 billion investment over a decade into the Housing Trust Fund to build or preserve rental units; strengthens the Fair Housing Act to ban discrimination on sexual orientation, marital status, gender identity, and income source; incentivizes rezoning; funds housing construction on rural and tribal land; and closes the racial wealth gap by providing down payments to first-time homebuyers in formerly redlined neighborhoods or segregated areas. A tax increase on the wealthiest Americans will pay for the bill.