Tag Archives: Tina Smith

Social Housing, Federal Style

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U.S. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) and Representative Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) recently introduced the Homes Act which would establish a Housing Development Authority. The HDA is based on the Social Housing Development Authority bill introduced in New York earlier this year.

I was on a panel that discussed the pros and cons of the New York bill. The recording of the panel can be found here.

More specifically the federal bill would

  • Establish a national Housing Development Authority to acquire and develop real estate to create and maintain a stock of permanent, sustainable, affordable housing, including single- and multi-family housing, with robust tenant protections.
  • Empower local communities to address their specific housing needs by financing real estate acquisition or conveying property to public housing authorities, mission-driven nonprofits, tenant- or resident-owned cooperatives, state or local governments, and community land trusts.
  • Require the housing development authority to maintain portfolio-wide affordability by setting aside 40% of units for extremely-low income households and 30% of units for low-income households.
  • Cap rents for units financed under the Act at 25% of a household’s adjusted gross income and cannot increase more than 3% per year.
  • Support homeownership by allowing residents to purchase homes under shared equity models and providing relief to mortgage borrowers at risk of foreclosure due to market instability or economic distress.
  • Provide workers with strong labor protections building this new housing.
  • ​​Provide tenants with opportunities to come together to purchase their buildings prior to large, for-profit developers buying them.
  • Provide funding to rehabilitate and address the backlog of necessary improvements for public housing and repeal the Faircloth Amendment to allow new public housing.
  • Authorize $30 billion in annual appropriations, combined with a revolving loan fund to recoup and reinvest funds back into housing. Annual appropriations include a 5% minimum set aside for Tribal communities and a 10% minimum set aside for rural communities.

(This is from AOC’s press release, linked to above.)