If a person is battling hunger, the logical solution is to provide food. Newly re-elected Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, applies the same logic to housing: the solution to homelessness is to provide accessible, affordable housing.
Wyden is among a growing coalition of lawmakers and homeless advocates defining housing as a right in the wake of deepening homelessness and housing crises.
“Housing is a human right,” Wyden said in an August 2021 statement to the Senate Finance Committee. “Yet, millions of Americans pay more than half of their monthly take-home pay to keep a roof over their head. And more than half a million Americans don't have housing at all.”
But codifying this right, as Wyden wants to do, is something else.
Wyden introduced the “Decent, Affordable, Safe Housing for All,” or DASH, Act that day, a bill piping funds to low-income health care and housing vouchers and seeking to jump-start U.S. housing supply development, mostly through tax incentives.
It was August 2021, the close of the first vaccinated summer, when communities nationwide were trying to recover from pandemic fallout. Housing affordability, Wyden explained, was a problem even before the pandemic. After that first pandemic year, the affordable housing shortage swelled to approximately 8 million, and some 15 million U.S. households were spending more than half their take-home pay on rent. The number of homeless people surpassed 550,000.
“My bill will take big, bold action to treat this crisis like the pressing business it is by making safe, stable and affordable housing available to every single American,” Wyden tweeted on Aug. 18, 2021. “I believe housing is a human right, and my legislation will make that a reality.”
Since then, the problems have only worsened. While Wyden’s bill has languished — it remains in the Senate Finance Committee to this day — it stands out as one of the more comprehensive and ambitious bills targeting housing and homelessness. Currently, the bill has zero co-sponsors.
Some elements of the bill, Wyden notes, carried to other bills and passed, including $5 billion in funding for emergency housing vouchers for individuals and families experiencing homelessness rolled into the American Rescue Plan.
Still, the recently re-elected senator, eyeing a new term, plans to revive the bill. If passed in its current form, it will secure $153.25 billion over 10 years to get — and keep — Americans housed.
The bill includes five main approaches to homelessness and housing:
- The aim of “housing everyone experiencing homelessness within five years” through the expansion of Housing Choice Vouchers;
- Expanding complementary programs that provide health and child care, financial aid and nutrition services;
- Spurring affordable housing production by expanding the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, and establishing a Renter’s Tax Credit and a Middle-Income Housing Tax Credit;
- Encouraging homeownership in low-income communities with down payment assistance and tax credits;
- Updating land use policies to facilitate development.
Broadly, homelessness and housing advocates favor the sheer scale of the bill, which would allocate billions for rural rental assistance while beefing up the existing housing voucher program.
Tom Murphy, director of communications at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said the organization supports many elements of the DASH Act and believes the problems at hand warrant its scope.
"Ending homelessness in the United States requires big and ambitious legislative efforts,” Murphy said. “The circumstances are far too urgent for half measures.”
The bill proposes the broad expansion of housing vouchers, essentially aiming to make them available to anyone homeless or at risk of homelessness who has an income under 50% of the area’s median income. As written, the plan would allocate an additional 250,000 vouchers the first year and 400,000 each following year until all eligible recipients have vouchers.
Tony Bernal, senior director of public policy and funding at Transition Projects, supports expanding housing vouchers and notes they are a critical component of battling homelessness.
“I think we've definitely liked the comprehensiveness of the reliance on vouchers, which we certainly know work,” Bernal said.
Ariel Nelson, a lobbyist for the League of Oregon Cities, said the bill makes a sizable investment in programs addressing homelessness and affordable housing needs.
“Nothing about solving homelessness seems feasible right now,” Nelson said. “But the increased funding and program updates would make a notable difference and are closer to the scale of investment that is sorely needed.”
While advocates support direct funding to low-income people, the tax incentives comprising a substantial part of the bill garner a more mixed response. The Congressional Budget Office has not assessed the bill, so estimates on the value of tax cuts were not available at the time of publication.
Some housing advocates point out tax incentives are popular among Republicans, and their inclusion may be an effort to make the bill more palatable to Senate Republicans and increase its likelihood of getting passed.
Housing advocates also often resist tax credits, saying they siphon funds away from those who need them most — homeless and poor people — and give them to the middle and upper class.
The National Low-Income Housing Coalition issued a memo to its members criticizing the Middle-Income Housing Tax Credit contained in the bill for this exact reason.
“While some provisions in the DASH Act provide critically needed resources to help struggling households, other measures — such as a proposal to create a Middle-Income Housing Tax Credit (MIHTC) — are misguided and wasteful,” the memo said.
Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the coalition, opposes the tax credits.
“There is no sound rationale for investing billions of dollars of scarce federal resources targeted toward the development of market-rate housing when changes to local zoning laws would have largely the same impact,” Yentel wrote in a Twitter thread Aug. 18, 2021, after the bill was announced. “Less than 1% of all households that pay more than half their income on rent have middle incomes; 92.5% of these households have very low- or extremely low incomes and would not be served by this new tax cut for developers.”
Resistance to tax credits, and the political incentive to include them, are common refrains in the push and pull of legislation.
“We have been mindful of the criticism of (the National Low-Income Housing Coalition), which is critical of the middle-income housing tax credit part,” Bernal said. “And while we're not opposed to (benefits for) middle-income folks when there's a desperate need for resources for low-income folks, we need to be really thoughtful about where we do acquire our precious resources.”
Wyden said tax credits efficiently incentivize development, a key point during a nationwide housing shortage.
Hank Stern, Wyden’s press secretary, told Street Roots there needs to be more supply between low-income housing and million-dollar homes. The introduction of a MIHTC is intended to replicate the success of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program.
“When Senator Wyden talks to neighbors and officials in Portland, one of the big challenges is ‘missing middle’ housing to accommodate young people and people who want to work in communities like Portland or Bend,” Stern said in an email.
The Middle Income Housing Tax Credit, Stern said, would cater to those making between 60% and 100% of the area median income and fill that gap.
While elements of the bill are debated, the bill is among the most comprehensive and housing and homelessness advocates support much of the bill. “There’s a lot to like in the larger bill — expanded rental assistance, a new project-based renters tax credit and more,” Yentel said in her 2021 Twitter thread.
Nelson, of the League of Oregon Cities, said the updates to the Low Income Housing Tax Credit contained within the program “are critical for Oregon” and would create more development capacity for low-income housing. The League of Oregon Cities hasn’t taken a formal position on the DASH Act.
Wyden remains optimistic about the bill's future, noting housing insecurity and homelessness are pervasive enough for broad support to address them.
“We’ve seen a real burst of interest, in Oregon and nationally, on housing,” Wyden said. “Support for housing is everywhere. The DASH Act is really the cornerstone, in my view, of where Oregon and the country need to go to address housing and homelessness.”
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