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The Housing Bill We Needed… Sort Of · We Can Do Better

• Fran Quigley: Hello and welcome to We Can Do Better, a podcast about ending poverty in our time. My name is Freyan Quigley. I'm a law professor. I go with my students every week to eviction court. When we're in court, we represent some of the millions of people in this country who are facing the loss of their homes. These same people are oftentimes not filling prescriptions. They're oftentimes even going hungry, despite the fact that we and they are living in the richest nation in the world. We can do better. So this week we're going to talk about a new piece of legislation. It's called the 21st Century Road to Housing Act. The Road to Housing Act passed Congress and went into law earlier this month in July. And we're going to talk about what that law does and what it maybe it doesn't do and whether it moves a needle for the housing crisis that we're seeing in our eviction court and that all of us see in our communities with people who are living on the streets, people are doubled up, people who are having to live in cars. So for this conversation, we welcome in our show's producer to in front of the camera instead of behind the camera. Jack Quigley is a journalist and he's now the chief marketing officer for 14 regional construction trade magazines. And Jack and I are going to talk about the new law today. So Jack, thank you for doing this and welcome back to being on air and not just behind the scenes. jack: Thank you for having me. Fran Quigley: Well, I will hand over questioning about the twenty first century Road to Housing Act to you. Now I'll be your guest. jack: Alright, well could you explain a little bit about what the law actually changes and I guess what kind of led up to this passing Fran Quigley: So the the New York Times had a description of this law called a hodgepodge. And I think that's a fair description. And partly because of what you said, it's been a minute since we've had any housing legislation. So there's been a lot of kind of pent up issues. And so I'll I'll I'll give a quick rundown of those topics that are covered in the legislation. But the spoiler alert is that. There is a lot that doesn't cover and a lot that really is critically important to the housing crisis that we're seeing in our communities that that is not touched by this by this legislation. But overall, the theme of it is that it it focuses on increasing the supply of market rate housing, which is not necess not a bad thing. but as we'll see, it doesn't necessarily touch the the challenges that we're seeing in eviction court and we all see in our communities. But To answer your question of what led up to this, the the idea of having more market rate housing, of building more housing, is a fairly bipartisan idea. And of course, we're living in a in a world right now or a country right now with a Republican controlled Congress and a Republican controlled presidential administration. So nothing would ever have passed without it being a bipartisan idea that it's good to build more housing, market rate housing. So that that's the One of the things that the legislation does is address something, and I do think this has value, is the United States is almost uniquely dominated by a model of single family housing, separate single family housing. And this legislation, especially if it's accompanied by more state and local laws that impact zoning, which is really going to be critical, is it would set the stage for gradually making the single family home neighborhoods a little bit more dense, a little bit taller, a little more multi-generational, all of which would create more market rate housing, and that's a good thing. the legislation also allows cities to use this form of federal funds called the community development block grant funds to use more of it for housing construction. Again, building more housing, that's a good thing. It would make it a little bit or it sets the stage really for making it easier for more manufactured housing, factory made housing. Sometimes those of us particularly from my generation will call this immobile homes, right? It's a trailer home park. But but in reality, much of that type of housing is not built to be moved at all. And essentially it is factory made housing, which can be quite a bit cheaper and therefore more accessible, especially to home ownership for people with l relatively low incomes and and oftentimes renting in many communities, that is a really important source of low-income housing. So making it easier for there to be mass-produced factory-made housing and and loosening some of the regulations that are outdated, that's also a a good thing. There's some part of the legislation talks about getting disaster recovery funds to make it a little bit easier to help people who need housing help. That's a good thing. And I think the most impactful maybe for the low-income people that we see who are facing eviction, people who are homeless, is going to be some changes to there are potential changes to the housing choice voucher program. The voucher program is when folks get subsidized housing and instead of a unit in a public housing facility, they will actually get a voucher and they can use that voucher and go out and find a private landlord to accept it. And therefore the subsidy will go from the federal government, usually through a state government or local government, to the to the private landlord themselves. It's been hard for private landlords to get approved for this program to have their housing inspected. So there's some there's some tweaks to that process. So it should make it a little bit easier for private landlords to do that. So those are all positive things. There's a little bit of concern there because there it seems to set the stage. This this legislation seems to set the stage for more of a HUD focus on work requirements for folks who are getting subsidized housing. And and we'll talk about that in a subsequent episode. We've talked about work requirements for SNAP benefits and the and the danger they can cause a little bit already. So but overall, not bad. and overall can can help a little bit, definitely in the overall picture of Folks who are moderate income and struggling to find a place to to live. jack: So can I ask a simple question that may seem obvious? so obviously if if there's a housing shortage, increasing supply seems to be like that would be a a a an easy fix. I don't know about easy but a fix. What about the wages for people? that are actually affording these places. I mean i is is building a hundred thousand new units at the same price gonna make a difference if people can't afford that? Fran Quigley: Yeah, I it will make a difference to a point. And and and and you're right to say that building all this housing. So what it will do is make it it will have the effect of more supply in the in the market, should lower the cost a little bit for market rate housing that is provided by for profit landlords, if we're talking about renting. And that's good. But the reality is it can only go so far and that You know, the the for instance, the average rental price in our hometown of Indianapolis, which is relatively cheap compared to other metropolitan areas, is about twelve hundred bucks a month for a one bedroom. And maybe a for-profit landlord, if there's a lot of supply out there and they've got to compete a little bit more, they could lower that price to, you know, maybe they lower it a couple hundred bucks a month. But they can't lower it all the way down to the the level that's affordable for the very poor people because then they can't pay their own expenses. So market rate housing is good for a substantial percentage of the population. But for the folks we see in eviction court, folks we see who are on the streets, people who are sleeping in their cars, et cetera, they are in need of subsidized housing. And so we have some fixes that we should make to that that we can talk about. But but the there's a a a a One of the real deans of housing policy in the United States is a guy named Alan Malik and he wrote a piece, an article back in twenty nineteen, and I think his title said it exactly right. Rents will only go so low no matter how much we build, because for profit landlords are not going to be able to provide housing at, you know, just a few hundred dollars a month. And when we have folks, which we have, we talked about it in last week's episode with Stephen Nunez of the Roosevelt Institute, there's millions of people in this country who are living with disabilities, and their entire monthly income is $1,000 a month. For them, the recommended amount that we all should be paying for housing is like 30% of our income. So the recommended amount they should be paying is $300. There's no for-profit landlord in the country who is going to rent out a home or a unit for $300. They can't afford to do that. So For prop for-profit landlords can't be the the real answer for these very poor people. And it's not just people on SSI, it's people seniors living with fixed incomes. It's a lot of folks we see who are single parents with kids and they're making low wages. To your point, if they're if they're making $13 an hour and they're struggling to get 35 hours a week at scattered times, that is just not enough to afford market rate housing consistently. And when Something happens and then a crisis happens in their family. And that's who we see in eviction court because they've been paying way more than they should be paying on housing because they're paying market rate housing. So we could talk a little bit about the the answers, what what what real housing legislation that would fix that would look like. And the 21st Century Road to Housing Act doesn't do that. And if I could say one thing about it, is I don't want to be critical. I'm just Great appreciation for the people who push for this legislation. The National Low Income Housing Coalition, I think we'll put a a link to their explainer about the legislation in in much more detail than I gave in the show notes. And they have worked really hard. It's a tough environment to to lobby at any time for poor people because poor people don't have the power in these legislative bodies, definitely in a Republican controlled Congress. So great, great shout out to them. Legislation is the art of the possible, but it's it seems worthwhile to point out this is not going to fix everything by any means. And it's really not touching the the real crisis that we see. which leads me to a question for you. Can I ask you a question? Even though jack: Yes. Fran Quigley: you're supposed to be the one now. So this is a question from your boomer father to my Gen Z son. You're you are Gen Z, right? Okay. jack: I am, yeah. Sorry, my my cat food thing just went off. Maybe that's a Gen Z thing. Fran Quigley: Okay, I don't know. shout out to Skeeter for making his appearance on the podcast. so I want to say, and this is maybe it's gonna this behind the curtain of how we're going to title the podcast so people can can see how the the inner workings of this award winning podcast. I don't want to say it's a nothing burger led piece of legislation. It's not a nothing burger piece of legislation. I was thinking jack: Yeah. Fran Quigley: like it's kind of weak sauce. I actually said to somebody that maybe it should be like a golf clap and they didn't know what I was talking about. So that's probably not the white rele is it meh, is it mid? I don't know what you say when something is just like not great, but not much. jack: Yeah. I I I think I think mid is probably the way to go. Definitely not wheat sauce. I don't think that's ever ever been a Fran Quigley: Okay. Have you even heard the term weak sauce before? Okay. Mid. So that's that's we're gonna go with jack: I don't know if I have heard. That's what I'm referring. Mid is yeah. Fran Quigley: the the twenty first century Road to Housing Act is mid. Okay. jack: Yes, yes. I think that's Fran Quigley: Okay. We may not make our friends at the National Low Income Housing Coalition happy, but I I think that actually the National Housing Law Project, which is a companion organization that does good work. If I can, I want to read their statement about the act because I think they said it very nicely. jack: I was gonna yeah, I was gonna ask you too the the silver full work. Fran Quigley: yeah, okay. Well jack: Yeah. Fran Quigley: they what they said is, quote, this is progress, but it is no silver bullet. We call on Congress to go further in addressing the housing crisis for poor and working people by making significant financial investments to build new housing, including new public housing, and to pass legislation that will protect and empower tenants. So that's a nicer way of saying progress, but no silver bullet. T that again, these are folks who have to to operate in a in a really challenging environment. But but from what we see in eviction court, it's not going make any difference at all, as far as I can tell. And what we see people who are unhoused on the street, people who are sleeping in their car. I just I just don't think it's going to make any difference at all. If you are low to middle income, maybe, and you know you're you're may maybe the overall average rent price will go down a little bit, but and and maybe if you're you're trying to get access to purchasing a home, Which aggrate more power to you. this might help a little bit, but it's not fixing the the crisis for those who are unhoused or on the path to being unhoused. jack: So is is there like a logical next step for this? Fran Quigley: Yeah, I I th there is, and it's been proposed and there th these have been proposed and discussed and and as we always mention that the folks we see in eviction court, the folks we see on the streets, they are losers in this cruel musical chairs game because we they are eligible for federally subsidized housing, which would be that game changer we talked about, that they would be paying thirty percent of their income for rent and the federal government would be subsidizing the rest. So if someone's living on a disability income of a thousand dollars a month, they only will pay three hundred. Now their rent's probably gonna be eleven hundred, but the federal government and the subsidy will pay the rest. The problem is those subsidized programs, whether they're vouchers or public housing or or or what have you, are not entitlements. So we talk about this cruel musical chairs game because every four households, for every four households who are eligible for this subsidy, only one of them get it and three of them lose. So it's just incredibly you know, you that would that would be a really crappy Children's game, right? If you have a musical chairs game where three out of every four lose, but that's what we do with housing. And almost every single person we've ever represented over the years in eviction court is eligible for subsidized housing. Every single person you see on the street or sleeping in a car, et cetera, they are eligible for subsidized housing. They just don't get it. And maybe on a wait list, the wait list itself may be closed, et cetera, because the need is so much higher. So we don't treat it as an entitlement. We treat Medicaid, we treat food stamps as an entitlement. If you're eligible for it, you receive it. And so if we did that with housing, frankly, the eviction courts would empty out, our shelters would empty out. We wouldn't see folks who don't have housing. And that's not such a crazy thing to propose. It's been proposed in legislation before. Sometimes it's proposed in terms of universal housing vouchers, because that's the easiest way, because there is private. rental housing out there just giving folks the vouchers to be able to go out and and secure it. There's logistical challenges to that, which we can address at another episode probably. But but we that's being that's done in other nations that aren't even as wealthy as ours, where we just they just treat housing as an entitlement. If you're eligible for it, you're poor, you can't afford market rate housing, you get this subsidy, you get this benefit. So universal housing vouchers will be the short term we could do that almost right away because there is the private rental market. out there that that can be subsidized to to house poor people. The the longer term, bigger picture answer in, in my view and a lot of folks' view, is just more and better public housing. And that's a little bit ironic for folks talking from the perspective of our law school clinic, because we have sued our public housing agency multiple times. Our public housing agency is is has done a a very poor job of providing safe and secure housing. One of the worst in the nation, but it's not the only one. And other fo other ho public housing agencies have struggled be but they've struggled mostly because we've underfunded them and we haven't provided enough money for maintenance, enough money for security, et cetera. And if we if we provide that support for the existing public housing, and one of the ways to do it is a let piece of legislation called the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act. And Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Casio Cortez, and others have proposed this for several years now, which would essentially put the kind of money that we need to put into fixing and maintaining our current public housing stock. But it would also, and other pieces of legislation would do that as well, start to the start again building high quality, attractive, well located, safe public housing. And again, we used to do that in the United States and other nations still do it all the time. So if we had universal housing vouchers, if we had more and better public housing, if we had rental assistance programs, all of those would make a real dent in the crisis that we see. And the twenty first century Road to Housing Act doesn't touch any of that. And again, I do think that circles back to the political realities that just that kind of legislation was not getting through this particular Congress. So This is the best you could hope for in this particular Congress. And but I I think it's and I'm glad we're talking about it because I think there's value in not letting the PR suggest that the problem's really being addressed because it's not. jack: Yeah, definitely. I have a question that's a maybe a little Well it's it's on topic, but you you mentioned that we used to build affordable housing in this country a lot and honestly it feels like every affordable housing building you see is from like the seventies or earlier. Why did we stop doing that? Is it is it a money Like it 'cause it it feels to me like there's there's more people on the streets and there's less people trying to fix that. I don't know. Maybe that's just a sad thing. Fran Quigley: No, that's that's the reality. And it just this week in our hometown of Indianapolis the data came back of the that our homeless numbers actually increased despite many efforts to to change that and and not a surprise, our eviction numbers are crazy high. five hundred evictions filed each week just in our community alone and Indianapolis and you know, so tens of thousands a year. So the reason that we don't see much of a a truly affordable housing is is a is partly because the truly affordable housing being built would be public housing. And there is something called the Faircloth Amendment that dates back to the late 1990s, which makes it illegal to build more public housing. that you can build some public housing to replace housing that's been demolished, but essentially the Faircloth Amendment really limits new public housing developments. And so you don't see, as you say, you don't see new high-quality public housing being built in the United States. So why was that passed? It was passed partly because public housing has such a a well-deserved bad reputation. But that well-deserved bad reputation is because it's been starved of resources for decade after decade after decade and then became they're poorly designed, poorly maintained. But why did that happen? Why were they starved of resources? Well, you have to recognize that public housing to some extent competes with the real estate industry, competes with for profit housing. And then from the very beginning of public housing in the in the early mid twentieth century, the real estate industry, which is very powerful politically, very powerful lobbyists, very powerful campaign contributors, have made sure that public housing is is not an attractive option and that people don't want to be there because they want people to want to leave public housing, which they do. and run out and pay for for profit market rate housing rents, which they do. And we see that with our clients in public housing all the time. They cannot wait for the most part to get out of there. And sometimes they're gonna be happy to get out of there and pay eighty percent of their income just to be in better quality housing. So that's part of the answer. Another the the real quote unquote affordable housing construction that's been done the last few decades is is through the LITEC program, the low-income housing tax credit program, which is probably worth an episode in itself. But the low-income housing tax credit program in I would suggest is very poorly named because it is not very conducive to low-income people living there unless they have vouchers on top of the the low-income housing tax credit subsidy. So the low-income housing tax credit just essentially lowers the rent just a a bit, but it is still very close to and sometimes almost at market rate, even though it's supposedly quote unquote affordable housing. So that's not anywhere near the kind of deep subsidy, the deeply affordable housing that public housing or housing choice voucher would provide. So the again that's why it would be fastest to just have universal vouchers available so people could go out the private market. But that has a challenge and you have to have landlords that will accept it and It then further enriching for profit landlords. So the big picture long term answer is more and better public housing. So the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act and some other legislation has been proposed. Obviously, Senator Sanders and Representative Ocasio-Cortez and others like them are not passing legislation through this particular Congress and not getting it approved by this particular presidential administration. So it will have to wait for another Congress and another administration, which we hopefully will have. Prayers up, yes. jack: Well yeah, I feel like walking around lately there's been more people on the streets. I don't I mean obviously there's no scientific way for me to say that. I don't know, it just feels like not a whole lot is improving, but it's good to hear that at least something has has started the path to improvement. I don't know that we're we're we're calling it mid, but it's still it's still a step in the right direction, I guess, right? Fran Quigley: It yeah, yeah. And I think that's I think maybe that's exactly what the National Housing Law Project does, or something like that. So that I I sometimes get a little discouraged and would say it's not much of a step because it's not really addressing but it the the the the needs of the lowest income people who we do see unhoused or we do see being evict evicted, but it shows that there's widespread concern, right? And there's nothing that's a good thing. It shows that the the the community and lawmakers and the media and the general public do think there's a problem. And hopefully after a year or two and maybe some some different dynamics in the Congress, et cetera, once we see that this legislation has not fixed it and isn't going to be the fix, then we can have the real discussion about how we make sure there's much more and better subsidized housing. Because that is the answer. jack: Well, is there anything I haven't asked you? y you Fran Quigley: I don't think so. Is there anything that now that we know the title of this has is going to have the word mid in it, that's that's that's my biggest concern. jack: They're like a mid mid twenty first century. Fran Quigley: Ooh, yeah. It's like at the the mid jack: There's something there. Fran Quigley: twenty first cent yeah, there is something there. So again, shout out to the people who worked hard to get this legislation passed. Good on Can't hurt anything, but we need a lot more. Okay, well thank you for hosting this week and look forward to you doing that again sometime soon with your with me or another a much more qualified guest. so wanna tell people who are are loyal listeners that we have episodes coming up on universal child care. We're gonna talk with folks from New Mexico that actually has universal child care throughout the state about how they how they won that, how po incredibly popular and effective that has been. We're going to talk to a tax law professor, which doesn't sound like it's super exciting, but it is exciting because she has written a book about how to make sure that the tax code actually causes rich people to pay their taxes, which they do not now, as she as she's going to outline. And that if we're going to tax the rich, here's how we do it. And then if we do tax the rich, guess what? We're gonna have enough money for subsidized housing for everybody, we're gonna have money for health care, we're gonna have enough money for child care for all. So that's super super critical. So looking forward to those conversations in the future. And until that time, thank you for listening. And remember, we can do better.