In Sunday's
Washington Post, reporter Michael Grunwald uncovered some news housing advocates around the country have been grappling with for some time.
Seventy years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that the Depression had left one-third of the American people "ill-housed, ill-clothed and ill-nourished," Americans are well-clothed and increasingly overnourished. But the scarcity of affordable housing is a deepening national crisis, and not just for inner-city families on welfare. The problem has climbed the income ladder and moved to the suburbs, where service workers cram their families into overcrowded apartments, college graduates have to crash with their parents, and firefighters, police officers and teachers can't afford to live in the communities they serve.
Grunwald's story is chilling. And he lays out an issue that seems tailor made for progressive political policies and candidates. Why? Because it effects everyone.
Grunwald might have gotten his lead from one of bonddad's cutting-edge diaries on the U.S. housing crisis,
here, or
here.
Whatever his source, the issue is one Democrats should tackle hard and fast.
Some quick facts, (courtesy Grunwald's article):
* One-third of Americans now spend at least 30 percent of their income on housing (the maximum 'affordable')
* half the working poor spend at least 50 percent of their income on rent
* affordable housing is now a serious problem for more low- and moderate-income Americans than taxes, Social Security or gas prices
* for every one of the 4.5 million low-income families that receive federal housing assistance, there are three eligible families without it
Those statistics address the neediest families. What makes our national housing crisis different today is that it effects far more people - far bigger chunks of the population.
One study in Palm Beach County, Florida, concluded that 90 percent of the county's workforce can't afford to buy a home there. Similar studies - with similar conclusions - are popping up all over the country.
That's also what makes it a critical issue for Democrats. In fact, the housing crisis is most severe in blue urban centers. Yet if Democratic candidates have largely ignored the issue, Republicans have shunned it althogether, demonizing housing programs and gutting their budgets.
Not that there aren't more pressing issues. But housing, like health care, crosses almost all demographic and ideological lines. And working families forced to cough up half their earnings for rent - with nothing to show for it at the end of the year - present a picture of America that is unconscionable, intollerable, and demanding of change.
P.S.: bonddad posted two later and more comprehensive diaries, Didn't Think Housing Could Get Worse? You Were Wrong, and How a Housing Slowdown Will Cause a Recession: UPDATE that are well worth reading (about 700 dKos commenters already did).