Housing

Future Caucus legislators create bipartisan coalitions to secure access to affordable and quality housing. They commit to sustained engagement across the partisan divide to deliver results.

Innovation Agenda

Access to affordable, accessible, available, and quality housing is an issue that challenges many communities across the country. Over 40% (19 million) of renters spent more than 30% of their income on housing costs during 2017-2021, above the threshold considered a housing cost burden per the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s definition of affordable housing. About half of Americans say housing costs are a major problem where they live and 70% of Americans said young adults today have a harder time buying a home than their parents’ generation did. Lawmakers are looking at strategies to preserve and build affordable homes to strengthen and support families and advance our country’s economic recovery. Housing policy also provides opportunities to advance racial equity and opportunity through housing by addressing disproportionately high housing costs, entrenched segregation and concentrated poverty, and disparities in homeownership and family wealth.

Bipartisan opportunities for 2024

Housing options and supply

Young lawmakers are seeking to: increase authority and flexibility for local governments to allow diverse types of housing and approve more affordable housing; develop housing policies that promote a mix of housing options for communities including missing middle housing, and; increase data-driven decisions including encouraging housing production in places with strong demand and increasing the supply of affordable rental units in opportunity-rich communities
To ensure constituents can access an affordable place to live, there must be an adequate supply of appropriate housing options. To increase the supply, lawmakers are turning to a variety of bipartisan solutions, such as: increasing the authority and flexibility for local governments to allow diverse types of housing and approve more affordable housing; developing housing policies that promote a mix of housing options for communities including missing middle housing; and increasing data-driven decisions including encouraging housing production in places with strong demand and increasing the supply of affordable rental units in opportunity-rich communities.

Renter and buyer protections and support

Eviction from one’s home is often the catalyst for further economic instability. To protect gains made in providing access to quality, affordable housing to people, lawmakers are expanding renter protections so that those who have housing do not lose it. . Solutions include providing financial support to low-income households through household-based rental assistance, subsidies to help low-income homeowners and prospective homeowners, and savings and down-payment assistance for first-time homeowners.

Tax policy

Adequate housing is an essential component of community economic growth and citizen well-being. Consequently, many lawmakers are leveraging tax policy to spark more equitable housing outcomes for their constituents. These solutions include approving tools such as inclusionary zoning and special taxing districts for affordable housing; allocating a percentage of the state income tax rate to go toward grants and programs to increase affordable housing; providing rental assistance; and advancing voter-approved bonds to finance affordable housing projects, among other policies.

EFFECTIVE POLICYMAKING IN ACTION

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