More Policy Watch
If the past few U.S. election cycles have taught us anything, it’s that to expect the unexpected is, well, expected. Alas, there was a singular moment in the Harris/Trump presidential debate, held on September 10 in Philadelphia, that did surprise me. Only a few sentences into her opening remarks, in the early minutes of the debate, Kamala Harris said, “We know that we have a shortage of homes and housing, and the cost of housing is too expensive for far too many people. We know that young families need support to raise their children. And I intend on extending a tax cut for those families of $6,000, which is the largest child tax credit that we have given in a long time.”
What surprised me was not the content of this remark, but how early in the debate the issue of housing and affordability was raised. It was refreshing. In hindsight, it also gave me false hope that a more substantive discussion—or at least diatribe—would follow. But this is national politics, after all, so I’ll chock that up to wishful thinking on my part. (Apart from a passing reference from Harris on “the housing shortage” a few minutes later, which she assured “I have a plan for,” the issue didn’t come up again that evening.)
What is Harris’s plan?
Like a lot of policy platforms outlined on Kamala Harris’s campaign page and this TV ad, her proposal to make rent more affordable and home ownership more attainable is laudable but light on detail. She says the “rent is too high” (anyone remember Jimmy McMillan?!) and corporate landlords can be greedy.
She further proposes subsidizing first-time homebuyers with up to $25,000 for help with down payments, and possibly more for first-generation buyers, while cracking down on corporations and institutional investors that buy up homes by the hundreds and rent them at bloated rates. (The impacts of that are debatable, since investor-owned rental housing can in some instances also result in more competitive rates.)
“This will help more Americans experience the pride of homeownership and the financial security that it represents and brings,” Harris claims, “offering more Americans a path to the middle class and economic opportunity.”
In so many words, Harris’s plan for the housing crisis is to build more of it. One stated goal is to build three million affordable rental units and homes “to end the national housing supply crisis in her first term.” While the country’s housing deficit currently sits “somewhere between 4 and 7 million,” according to Pew Charitable Trusts, Harris’s goal of 3 million new homes by 2028 is respectable, but solve the crisis it will not.
Still, it is worth noting the Harris campaign’s stipulation of “affordable” homes rather than making a generalization about more homes, which might imply increasing market-rate housing stock first and foremost. As I discussed last year, in an attempt to debunk a claim made by data journalist John Burn-Murdoch that “any new housing” will “improve housing availability and affordability for all,” simply building more homes without consideration for type, location, and demographics is not the answer.
“We’re short on all homes. Full stop. There just aren’t enough of them,” Alex Horowitz, director of Pew’s Housing Policy Initiative told NPR earlier this year. “And that means that existing homes are getting bid up because we see high-income households competing with low-income households for the same residences since just not enough are getting built.”
As a matter of semantics, Horowitz’s observation could be leveraged to make the case for trickle-down housing (i.e., just build more and markets will adjust, thus freeing up more housing for low- and middle-income buyers). Pragmatically, however, the solution to America’s affordable housing crisis is to build more affordable housing.
The “Opportunity Economy”
Harris has spoken widely of establishing an opportunity economy, “where everyone has a chance to compete and a chance to succeed.” Again, sounds good, but light on detail. Some concerns have been raised that Harris’s plan “prioritizes the needs of homebuyers over renters,” according to Eric Levitz at Vox, and may be encouraging low-income Americans to make an unwise investment.
This last point hinges on the idea that if housing became more attainable, then it might plunge the housing market itself, bringing values down and any hope of return-on-investment with it. There is some logic to this, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.
“Even a small amount of equity will at least transfer to help with the down payment on the next property, where there will be the opportunity to build more equity,” says Jennifer Castenson, vice president for ambassador and partner programs at Buildxact, a construction management software company. “Plus, with homeownership there is a sense of pride that promotes improved wellbeing. My sense is that is exactly what the American public needs right now.”
As for the proposed child tax credit extension and the assistance with down payments, Castenson views them a sound investment on the part of the federal government, and as a means for “building community, improving health outcomes, and stabilizing the economy. These are far-reaching, long-term outcomes,” she continues, and subsidized rebates, grants, or other financial mechanisms “may not be able to do all of that, but those are certainly positive outcomes achieved specifically by home ownership.”
Updating our idea of housing
Quite recently, on a warm Saturday in late summer, I was walking around Portland (Maine) with my family. My six-year-old son, tired and blissed out on ice cream, turned to me and said, “I haven’t seen any houses in Portland. Why are there no houses?”
“What do you mean, bud? There are houses.”
“No there aren’t,” he clapped back.
I then realized, possibly a few seconds late, that apart from his first 10 months spent living in a third-floor walkup in Brooklyn, his reference point for the concept of home is a house. More specifically, single-family houses, set back from the street and with at least some surrounding or adjacent land. I pointed to a series of tall mixed-use buildings overlooking Commercial Street in the city’s Old Port section and told him that people lived in those. He accepted that information and moved on. (There was still ice cream to eat.)
Most Americans’ concept of housing aligns with that of my six-year-old. That’s not a dig; the numbers support it. Single-family detached homes represent the majority among housing types in the U.S. market—nearly 82 million out of 129 million occupied units, according to 2021 figures. Individually, single-family attached homes, townhouses, low- and medium-density housing (aka “the missing middle”), and large multi-family buildings, with up to 50 or more dwelling units, don’t come close to matching suburbia’s numbers. And out of a population of 326 million, approximately 80 million people live in multi-unit housing.
If you want to solve America’s housing crisis, this paradigm must shift in a major way.
A fear of density
“Everyone sort of thinks they have to have the single-family freestanding house that can be looked at; it can be pointed to as property,” says Antje Steinmuller, chair of architecture at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. “There are alternatives to this way of thinking, which is to think of housing as a human right.”
It is evident that Kamala Harris is pressing this line of thinking, however subtly. She also seems to know that any language she employs, particularly at this stage in the game, must continually sing the praises of single-family home ownership. After all, the detached suburban home is where ordinary folks can pass the threshold and become kings and queens of their own private castle.
The problem is these castles have grown out of reach for more and more Americans. “Not only do buyers need to be able to afford their purchase, they need to be able to afford ongoing payments,” Castenson says. “They need to understand their role in maintaining their property so that they have the opportunity to build equity … There are many things that can knock this out of balance. High energy bills, a catastrophic storm, or high home insurance can disturb the delicate balance some homeowners have with their monthly cashflow.”
The case could easily be made that the U.S. housing market is off kilter as well, and consequently has placed greater strain on even upper middle-class homeowners to manage cashflow, not to mention pricing out lower- and middle-income families altogether. “The commodification of housing has caused a big part of the crisis,” Steinmuller says. “As a European, another thing I see in many U.S. cities is a fear of density.”
To Steinmuller’s point, multi-unit housing isn’t something people can point to in the same manner they could with a detached suburban home and proclaim, with patriotic glee, ‘that’s mine!’ But if we can slowly steer this boat back to sane waters, and once again consider housing for what it truly is—a safe haven and means of personal and emotional security—then we may just solve the housing crisis yet.
“If we as a country position housing that way, we will shift our focus on all aspects of the housing ecosystem,” Castenson says. “Reducing regulatory burdens, changing the financing aspects, supporting builders and developers in new ways, and therefore opening up the floodgates for the right amount of housing supply.”
As a child of Oakland, CA, Kamala Harris is no stranger to middle-class, multi-family housing. And when considering the spirit, if not the substance, of her campaign’s take on the housing crisis, there is hope that she and the people she surrounds herself with have a keen sense that more detached houses is not the answer, but rather greater density and diversity of housing types, supported by buy local initiatives and efficiency and energy standards.
“There are huge opportunities available for us to get this right,” Castenson says, “and there are many developers and architects out there that are doing it on a micro level, but it needs to be scaled up.”
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Justin R. Wolf is a Maine-based writer who covers green building trends and energy policy. His first book, Healing Ground, Living Values: Stanley Center for Peace and Security, was just published by Ecotone.
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17 Comments
A major factor, at least in some cases the largest factor, in housing costs is land. Emptying out the countryside and bringing more and more people into the cities vastly inflates the value of urban land, while making small town and rural land worthless. Cramming more and more people into cities, in smaller and smaller apartments, will only exacerbate land price problems.
The "housing crisis" cannot be understood or solved without addressing the larger context - where are the jobs?
I'm convinced the solution is NOT to be found in ever-increasing density. It's in revitalizing small town and rural communities, finding ways to help them develop local economies that can support their populations, and finding creative ways to use 21st century technology to enable people in those communities to interact with the major urban centers.
This means encouraging employers in appropriate types of businesses to use work-from-home models, and providing the necessary high-speed internet to those rural and small towns so that this can actually work.
More importantly, this also means finding ways to develop truly local economies, finding ways to develop sustainable exploitation natural resources around those communities, forestry, mining, etc., so that some of the employment base is founded on the still-necessary extraction process. Instead of intensely exploiting only a few, localized natural resources (such as the forests of Oregon), decentralize the exploitation of resources (cultivate a wider variety of timber species in more locations), and use those resources more locally. Reduce transportation distances and use these resources closer to their source.
Build the digital work-from-home infrastructure. Develop local natural resources. The rest of the local economy will fall into place, with people starting service and retail businesses to serve those populations.
And yes, in cities we do need better models for housing. But in the end that is only a small part of the solution.
Sorry for the 2nd comment but it's on a completely different point.
“Everyone sort of thinks they have to have the single-family freestanding house that can be looked at; it can be pointed to as property,” says Antje Steinmuller, ... There are alternatives to this way of thinking, which is to think of housing as a human right.”
"Housing as a human right" has a nice ring to it. But what does it mean?
I live in a detached single family home on its own piece of land, all of which I own outright. No bank loans, no liens, and most importantly, no HOA or similar fees. I have only 1 financial obligation. Once a year I pay a property tax to my local government, a 'rental' fee, so to speak, that covers the cost of the community resources that I use.
If I owned an apartment in the big city, 1 in perhaps 100 in a large building, I would also be on the hook for an HOA fee, in addition to my property tax. This is an important consideration to some people such as myself. It can't be overlooked as if it doesn't exist.
Especially as we age and find ourselves living on fixed incomes, these additional costs add up, increasing our cost of living and reducing our quality of life.
I don't look at and point to my house with "pride of ownership". It's not about pride and ego. I look at it and see the highest level of financial security I can hope to expect as I face an old age where I won't be able to scrabble for a living. I have a roof over my head, guaranteed, for the rest of my life. To me that's housing as a human right.
I go to this site every day and try to learn. In the past, when politics have come up, some strong people stepped in and wisely stated that they have no place here. I'm extremely disappointed to see this article with a slant towards political opinion under the guise of housing. This was one of the last places that wasn't f'd up by politics. I realize that I am in the minority hear, but anyone who thinks the feds should be giving people $25k for a down payment should first take off their white guilt glasses, take an economic class and read the 10th amendment. So dissapointed.......
A few questions, if you don't mind. This is not meant to be confrontational, just a bit challenging.
Is affordable housing a topic you feel is in general inappropriate for this website?
More specifically, do you feel affordable housing is appropriate here but a discussion of possible policy approaches moves the discussion into the political domain and is therefore inappropriate?
Considering completely different topics, for example the relative merits of different types of insulation with respect to their environmental impact, would it be inappropriate to discuss or advocate certain government policy approaches to address that issue?
Lastly (and thank you for your patience), if discussing and/or advocating for government policy approaches in general (on this website) is simply off the table, isn't that just a way to impose something of a Libertarian discussion framework on the website, not allowing people who view government involvement as acceptable, a place to contribute their views?
We aren't going to solve the housing shortage without governmental involvement. Justin didn't have to lead with Harris' proposal, but it grabbed attention and is one of many ways to frame the issue.
There is next to no political discussion here, which is good in many ways, and like many others I prefer discussions on building science and other nuts-and-bolts topics. But politics and housing are inextricably linked, so to ignore politics' role is putting one's head in the sand.
I suspect you are trying to be confrontational, but ill elaborate.
"We have descended the rabbit hole, and nothing can shock us anymore, and that includes conspiracy theories about immigrants in Ohio eating dogs and cats. (Weird yes, but surprising? Not coming from that carnival barker.)"
This kind of political talk has no place here. Your comments about the issues with the cost of land, house sizes, density are all reasonable and important to a productive discussion about housing. But interjecting political bias hides the message and takes people to the corner where they yell rather than discuss. Unfortunately I also did this when I mentioned economics, white guilt and the 10th amendment.
1. Political opinions are inappropriate here.
2. Affordable housing is perfectly appropriate and the merits of the policies.
3. Government policies are reasonable to discuss, but the pros and cons of a policy are what should be discussed, not the blue or red nature of them.
4. I never said government policy wasn't acceptable. You are reaching with that, I said politics isn't.
Your response to the article was all good, it was free of politics and made some good points. Some I agree with and some I don't, but that's a good thing that we all here each other's ideas. When we start off by talking about a recent political debate, the substance of the article gets lost.
Sharing political opinions here is in no way addressed by Active Interest Media, as far as I can tell. I agree that an author sharing their bias can distract from their message, but we all have bias that usually comes out in our writing, so what's wrong with being overt with it.
GBA is always looking for well-written articles on relevant topics. Perhaps you would share your own views instead of gate-keeping or attempting to "cancel" what others choose to write about. If you don't like how an article starts, you are completely free to ignore it.
Thank you for the thoughtful response.
"Politics" unfortunately is a word that can have 2 different meanings, the kind of polarized screaming that people at either extreme do over the heads of the political "center" ... and politics can also mean policy.
In your response you did an excellent job identifying those 2 and coming down clearly in favor of supporting discussions of policy while avoiding the "politics" of the former type.
I agree with you that statements like the one you quoted weaken the discussion about helpful policies and the article would have been better without them.
I'd like to think that my little "challenge" to you gave you the chance to respond with an even better comment than your original. I certainly found it more convincing.
conwaynh85,
I have no dog in this fight, but I don't think it is fair to say JGSG intended in any way to be confrontational. His response read to me like he was bending over backwards to avoid offense.
Malcolm, I may have misinterpreted his response as confrontational in the sense that it sounded condescending. He may have very well been sincere in his statements and I would be wrong if he was.
I have a ton of respect for you, Michael and many others here who share there knowledge and discuss so many topics. My respect and admiration is why I was so disappointed that this article was political. If it was msnbc or fox news, I wouldn't give it any weight. Housing policy is a fine topic, but referring to politicians as "carnival barkers" will sour the whole discussion.
I'm sure Michael was right about the terms of service. But just because someone could legally say something horrible to someone on the street, doesn't mean that they should. This place has too much value to people all over the political spectrum to fall into the same trap.
conwaynh85,
Much like you, I find the main utility of GBA to be it's great technical resources, and don't care one way or another whether it publishes opinion pieces, or advocates for certain policies. But as Michael says, I don't find that content affects me, as it doesn't get published at the expense of something else. We should probably both stick to the Q&A and remain happy!
I suspect that many of our desires and preferences are subtly but
very strongly influenced by our genetic heritage. As noted above
most people seem to prefer individual detached property, if they
have a choice - even dictators are noted for building isolated oversized
quarters (usually ridiculous ostentatious monuments to their egos).
Could this tendency be associated with hundreds of thousands of years
of trying to up our chances of survival by acquiring a defensible place
to live that appeals to potential mates and others who might join the
tribe or look to us as the leader?
There may, of course, be many reasons for our preferences, but there
is no question about the emotional strength of them. At present it looks
like the advance of technology will continue to lower the necessity and
advantage of living in large city environments. It also looks like it will
continue to lower the birth rate - hopefully allowing lower population
densities worldwide with an ever-increasing standard of living.
But back to the present, the majority of us seem to prefer to be master
of our own castle. Let's try to leverage the technology to provide what
people desire rather than leverage power to provide convivence for
governments, corporations and other groups.
Of course, Harris’s plan lacks detail, she is a politician trying to get elected.
Detail can only be constructed after election - at least she is aware of the
need. Let's hope for the best!
The author did take a slap at the right in the intro but also touched on the lefts promises and chatter that haven't panned out yet either. The article leans left a bit and that's fine as long as it's supported by the viewing audience as other media outlets do similar to support their own agenda. In this case, it aligns fairly well with GBA's left of center bias.
I find it unnecessary to write in that fashion, and would prefer a scientifically written article or one that touches on policy that could help shrink the housing gap, not on politicians and their eccentricities.
Kamala Harris isn't going to solve the housing crisis with her $25K any more than Obama did when offering $10K to first time buyers. She won't succeed getting that passed but her plan to offer concession to her voter base, the $6000 per family will likely proceed in some form and get people off welfare for a couple months long enough for them to forget what she promised in the first place. They will still be poor, dumb and hopeless, the type of voter the left prefers.
In other news, Canada's Justin Trudeau, may be a bellwether of things to come here in the states. Firmly seated but fading fast. I foretell the left losing as voters grow tired of loosy-goosy fiscal policy and laughable equity agenda. I'll salute a Canadian goose any day.
"They will still be poor, dumb and hopeless exactly the type of voter the left prefers."
Do I detect a note of political bias poking through?
;o)
The article would have been if Justin removed the snarky comments at the beginning. I was hoping to see an actual discussion of policy differences, rather than the writer’s bias. No discussion of the inflationary effects on the policy — which only make housing costs go up.
That comment was removed early yesterday morning.
capecodhaus: Is this the kind of science you rely on? "They will still be poor, dumb, and hopeless, the type of voter the left prefers." It seems you equate poverty with ignorance, and you present that as fact. It’s not. If you’re genuinely interested in "evidence-based" solutions to affordability, take a look at Soviet-era housing. They built millions of units and never faced a homelessness crisis. The same is true in places like Ecuador, Turkey, Mexico, and other countries I’ve visited. Even Putin's Russia has reduced its small homeless population by about 85% in the last ten years. The reasons are varied, but they include strong government building policies, the freedom to self-build, and the ability to create small businesses without excessive bureaucracy.
While Obama’s $10,000 incentive may not have “solved” the housing crisis, it helped many of my buyers secure homes. The evidence lies in results, not personal opinions. And when it comes to affordable housing, the data leans left. That said, I’m not a leftist—just a realist with a lot of experiance helping poor people buy homes.
When every piece of land becomes private property, someone has to subsidize it. Government support, higher density to distribute land costs across more units, and cheaper building strategies all contribute to the solution. Density isn’t limited to cities, jollygreenshortguy. It can also come from revitalizing rural economies. Remember the old downtowns in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, with shops below and apartments above? That was the original live-work arrangement. Density isn’t a synonym for city; it’s a synonym for urbanism that can help revitalize rural communities.
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