In January, President Joe Biden declared equity in housing as a top priority for his administration, and for good reason. Ten million people started off the new year behind on their rent payments — more than the number of people who lost their homes during the 2008 housing crisis
In addition to extending and expanding the Centers for Disease Control’s eviction moratorium and providing relief to close the $70 billion backlog in missed rent payments, we need to tackle the underlying housing crisis that left more than 1 million Americans without a permanent home even before the pandemic.
So many families are in a precarious situation, made worse by the pandemic, because lawmakers have failed to adequately invest in affordable housing. To truly address this crisis and prevent widespread housing insecurity and homelessness, we need to pair investments with policies such as a renter’s tax credit, universal housing vouchers, direct relief checks and full enforcement of the Fair Housing Act.
No one policy will be a catch-all for the fundamental dysfunction of our exclusionary and discriminatory housing system. That’s why our New Deal for Housing Justice offers 118 recommendations for bold changes to housing access and justice that the Biden-Harris administration and the new Congress could get rolling within the first 200 days.
For starters, they should make housing vouchers universal. Millions of low-income families who qualify for the Housing Voucher program don’t receive benefits because of limited federal funding. The new administration can guarantee all low-income families can find housing by building more affordable housing units and passing legislation to make housing choice vouchers an entitlement, scaling up the program over the next five years.
Address biases in the system
But even for those families who do have vouchers, finding a landlord to accept them can be a nightmare, especially for Black, women and immigrant renters who are routinely discriminated against while looking for a home. That’s why any new policy, including universal vouchers, must also be paired with policies that address the biases baked into our system.
