This article is the first of a three-part series that walks readers back through President-elect Biden’s campaign platform to explore the incoming administration’s stance on Housing, Taxation, and Infrastructure, with the goal of exploring how these pre-election promises might translate into tangible federal policy.
On Thursday, December 12th, President-elect Biden announced Rep. Maric Fudge ( D-Ohio) as his selection to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Sources close to the President-elect, call Fudge a longtime champion of working families with a dedicated focus on affordable housing, urban revitalization, and infrastructure investment. (The Hill.)
Fudge’s selection is a critical first step to achieve the comprehensive housing strategy President-elect Biden’s team laid out during the campaign – forecasting $640 billion in federal programs spread across a 10 year plan. Biden’s campaign site outlines four key goals for this funding:
- End redlining and other discriminatory and unfair practices in the housing market.
- Provide financial assistance to help hard-working Americans buy or rent safe, quality housing, including down payment assistance through a refundable and advanceable tax credit and fully funding federal rental assistance.
- Increase the supply, lowering the cost, and improving the quality of housing, including through investments in resilience, energy efficiency, and accessibility of homes.
- Pursue a comprehensive approach to ending homelessness.
What does this mean for you?
The incoming administration’s extensive plan offers a variety of targetted solutions to both expand affordable housing and better combat systemic discrimination.
Affordable Housing
President-elect Biden proposed a new “Affordable Housing Fund,” the bulk of which ($65 billion) would provide incentives to develop and rehabilitate low-cost housing. This includes:
- Expanding the housing choice voucher program –
- To date only about 1 in 4 households that are eligible for Section 8 housing receive assistance. Biden has pledged a new funding strategy that would provide additional assistance to at least 17-million low-income families through a $5 billion federally funded tax credit
- Expand the Good Neighbor Next Door program
- Grow the current program which provides down-payment assistance and low-interest loans to first-responders, public school educators, and other public and national service workers who live in persistently impoverished communities or work in neighborhoods with low affordable housing stock.
- Incentivize affordable housing inclusion in new construction
- Biden proposes to expand both the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and the New Markets Tax Credit. He also vows to promote policies that prioritize inclusionary zoning- which require a portion of new construction be set aside for affordable housing.
- Implement a new advanced tax credit for first-time homebuyers
- Biden’s new First Down Payment Tax Credit would help to alleviate the cost of purchasing a home by allowing homebuyers to receive their tax credit when they make their purchase instead of waiting to receive the assistance when they file taxes the following year.
Fair Housing
The Biden camp acknowledges that communities of color have been disproportionately impacted by the failures in today’s housing market, with homeownership of Black and Latino individuals falling far below the rates of their White counterpart. And that these disparities contribute to the larger, overall gap in racial wealth.
- Reinstate the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule
- Recently terminated by the Trump Administration, this Obama-era policy requires municipalities receiving HUD funding to outline and implement dedicated strategies to eliminate housing discrimination in their communities
- Create a public credit reporting agency
- Making the critical step of obtaining a credit report more accessible to potential homeowners by offering this service outside of the private companies who are often accused of hiding behind invisible scoring factors
- Promote eviction diversion programs
- Equip tenants facing eviction with legal assistance and/or eviction diversion programs including mediation, payment plans, and financial literacy education
- Hold financial institutions and banks accountable
- Ensure that these institutions are closely monitored and held accountable when discrimnation is found. This includes expanding the Community Reinvestment Act to apply to mortgage and insurance companies and requiring financial service institutions to provide a statement outlining their commitment to fair policies.
Biden’s ability to execute his agenda will hang largely in his capicity to rally a divided Congress. However, his recognition that housing affordability and equality success exceeds direct policy to include smart taxation and infrastructure improvement previews an inclusive approach that will marry legislation and federal programs across departments for maximum impact.