🏡💚 Bring those rents down!
April 5, 2024
Last week I wrote about some of the failures and inherent challenges of for-profit affordable housing (drawing heavily from a new report by Urban Habitat and the East Bay Community Law Center). If you recall, there’s a loophole in housing policy that makes it so publicly-subsidized affordable housing units are actually exempt from the state’s rent cap law. This has led to massive rent increases for residents of affordable housing, especially when the surrounding area has gentrified and become more affluent. The very first recommendation in the report is to close loopholes on renter protections by “[extending] these protections to include tenants in affordable housing.”
Less than 2 hours after I sent off that newsletter, I received a notification that the Biden Administration was set to announce a 10% rent increase cap for all units that receive funding from the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), the nation’s largest affordable housing program. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released the official new rules on Monday, April 1st.
Now, I’m not going to take credit for manifesting this rule change into reality with my newsletter, but that’s a pretty big coincidence, isn't it??
Well… not really. It turns out, the organizing and advocacy that got this topic on my radar is the same movement that has pushed the administration to make the change. Funny how organizing works that way…
That’s not the only federal news on housing that has come out in the past month. In his State of the Union address, President Biden pledged to combat egregious rent increases and other unfair practices that are driving up rents and to stop landlords from charging junk fees. He called on Congress to “bring those rents down!” by passing legislation to build and renovate more than 2 million homes.
In the President’s proposed budget, he includes an expansion of LIHTC, funding for rural affordable housing, funding for public housing rehabilitation, and $20 billion in grants to incentivize State and local jurisdictions and tribes to expand supply through “housing innovation.” And while these all still fall well below the scale of need (for example, the proposed increase to public housing rehab is $7.5 billion, compared to the $23.4 billion every year for 10 years called for in the GND for Public Housing bill), they are an urgently needed step in the right direction.
I also couldn’t help but notice that the grants to expand supply through housing innovation includes funding to “launch or expand innovative housing models that increase the stock of permanently affordable rental and for-sale housing, including community land trusts, mixed-income public development, and accessory dwelling units.” That sure sounds a lot like federal money for social housing!
Since this is just the President’s proposed budget, this funding is not set in stone and is ultimately subject to the budget developed by Congress (which doesn’t bode well for increased spending proposals, considering the Republican-controlled House). Still, this is a positive sign for a renewed focus on federal action to address the housing affordability crisis, and represents years of work by housing and tenant organizers.
And while the budget is still TBD, the rent cap for LIHTC buildings is now fully in effect. Tara Raghuveer—incredible organizer, co-founder of KC Tenants, and director of the Homes Guarantee campaign at People’s Action—provided a really insightful look at what this all means. “The rent is still too damn high, but this cap will provide stability to more than a million tenants,” she said. At the same time, her focus wasn’t on the specific 10 percent cap, but instead on the larger takeaway that the administration is sending a broader signal that federal funding and tenant protections can go hand-in-hand.
The same day that the LIHTC rent caps went into effect, Tara and some of her colleagues began to transition out of People’s Action and into a newly formed Tenant Union Federation (TUF). While more information about TUF formation will be emerging in the coming weeks, there’s a fantastic grounding analysis on the case for the tenant union that was published last year.
These federal actions should be wind in our sails in California. We have a strong and developing community land trust movement, emerging tenant unions across the state, proposed legislation to further protect tenants, and a growing movement for green social housing. We also know the strength of the opposition to these solutions, and the need to build a strong united front across sectors and geographies in order to contest for power. These victories, born from years of organizing and narrative work, help show us how it can be done, and the work there still is left to do.
President Biden at the State of the Union. Source: NPR
WHAT WE’RE READING
Social Housing in California: Reinvigorating Housing Investment for the Social Good (Othering & Belonging Institute) — hot off the presses! This OBI report and two cases studies below outline some of the key components to social housing, and examine various tools, campaigns, and proposals in California that can help get us there. I’ll probably write about some of this next week!
United to House LA: A case study of progressive revenue for comprehensive housing solutions (Othering & Belonging Institute)
Los Angeles Land Banking (Othering & Belonging Institute)
The Case for the Tenant Union (Poverty & Race Research Action Council)
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