Speaking It Into Existence: The Homes Act

Photo from Office of Sen. Tina Smith

For our clients we see in eviction court, there are three steps to end the struggle they and millions of others of our sisters and brothers endure every day.

Step One is to protect tenants who are forced to find shelter in the for-profit rental market. Three of every four households eligible for housing subsidies are blocked from receiving them due to underfunding—even as we lavish billions of tax expenditures on the wealthiest corporate landlords and homeowners.  That means that the people we see in court are almost always at the mercy of for-profit landlords—usually corporate landlords--that are laser-focused on extracting as much profit as possible from renters.  

Combining a profit motive with an essential human need is a recipe for abuse, and our state and most others do little to protect against exploitation. So Step One should center around a Tenants’ Bill of Rights in state and local laws and in rules tied to every landlord who receives federal financing or tax breaks. That Bill of Rights must include rent control, enforceable guarantees of good housing conditions, and a good-cause requirement before a landlord can force out a renter by refusing to renew their lease. Together, these protections would provide renters with some of the place-and-price stability that lucky homeowners like me have long enjoyed.

Step Two is ending the cruel musical chairs game where three of every four subsidy-eligible households lose out on desperately-needed housing assistance. We should make housing vouchers universal, bringing them into the same “entitlement” category as SNAP/Food Stamps and Medicaid. Simply put, every household that qualifies for housing assistance should receive it. Most nations like ours already do this with housing, and President Biden supported universal vouchers in his 2020 campaign platform. Since vouchers rely on the private housing market, this system must include anti-discrimination laws that prohibit landlords from refusing to rent to voucher holders.

But the problems with our current voucher system show that even universal vouchers are subject to the inefficiencies and abuses baked into a system where voucher holders must scramble to find a for-profit landlord to accept them. So Step Three is the end game:  We need much better public housing, and much more of it.

As we have read, U.S. public housing has long been starved of the resources it needs to maintain current units and blocked from funding to create desperately needed new ones. This must change. And it can. There are many examples internationally and in the U.S. proving that public housing can be attractive, affordable, abundant, and the foundation of thriving communities.

So it is exciting to see this week that Senator Tina Smith (MN) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) introduced the Homes Act, legislation to create a federal development authority to finance and build homes where rent is capped at 25 percent of a household’s income. The Homes Act program would create 1.25 million new social housing units from an investment of $30 billion per year, the equivalent of the annual cost of the mortgage interest deduction provided to the wealthiest homeowners.

That funding is not enough, but its match with the mortgage interest deduction number helps drive home the message that we already invest tens of billions in federal housing dollars each year for the benefit of wealthy corporate landlords and homeowners. The Homes Act would also repeal the odious Faircloth Amendment, which has for a quarter century has blocked the much-needed expansion of public housing.

You can read more about the Homes Act in Senator Smith’s and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s New York Times op ed (which shouts out the social housing success of Vienna, which we wrote about last year) and in scholars’ legislative impact analysis. The good actors in housing support this bill, including the Tenant Union Federation and the National Housing Law Project.

And I liked the supporting statement from Sen. Jeff Merkley from Oregon: “Everyone in America should have a safe, affordable roof overhead. Relying on the private market won’t solve our housing crisis—especially as hedge funds gobble up entire blocks in our neighborhoods, increasing the price to buy and rent a home. We need bold solutions to this complex issue, and the Homes Act is one important piece of that puzzle.”

The Homes Act joins other appropriately ambitious proposals I wrote about a few weeks ago, like Representative Ilhan Omar’s Homes for All Act, the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, and the National Low-Income Housing Coalition’s “HoUSed” campaign to expand rental assistance to every eligible household and create a national housing stabilization fund.

None of this legislation appears poised to pass anytime soon. But social movement history shows us that progress can happen at unexpected times. In the meantime, proposals like the Homes Act can help speak it into existence.