This presidential election is going to be one of the most policy-rich and substantive in recent memory. At least on the Democratic side—the Republicans are just going to scream Wall and Socialism and call it good. But the Democrats are putting out a lot of thoughtful, nuanced, and extremely progressive ideas, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren largely leading the pack on that substance. Case in point: housing affordability, with racial justice a huge part of the discussion.
Already Warren's CNN town hall last week from Mississippi was "the most we've ever had affordable housing talked about on the presidential campaign trail," Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said. Her coalition has endorsed Warren's legislation. "In the same way that we think about health care as a basic human right, having a decent and safe place to live should be a human―a basic human right," Warren said in that town hall. "It's the poor, it's the working poor, it's the working class, it's the middle class, it even moves up into the upper middle class that people feel squeezed on housing because we just don't have enough affordable housing across this country."
Warren's legislation would dramatically increase the budget of the National Housing Trust Fund, from $200 million annually to $45 billion for funding to states to provide grants for construction and maintenance of private housing for low-income families. It also includes additional assistance for first-time homebuyers and community-based grants for more multifamily housing. She also addresses past discriminatory housing practice by the federal government—redlining, refusing to make affordable loans to African-Americans in certain neighborhoods. "This bill tackles that head-on," Warren said at her town hall, "and it says for people who are living in formerly redlined areas, there's going to be special assistance for first-time homebuyers and people that got cheated in the run-up to the housing crash and lost their homes."
Sens. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, also presidential hopefuls, have their own somewhat less ambitious proposals to reduce poverty and make rents more affordable with a tax credit for renters. Booker would also give local governments incentives to prioritize new construction of multifamily homes. Their proposals would help but not change the housing market to the extent Warren's would.
It's been decades since there's been concerted focus on housing affordability at the presidential level, since it rose to the top along with other economic and racial justice issues. That's very much thanks to Warren's advocacy and leadership, much in the way Bernie Sanders’ 2016 run brought Medicare for all to the fore as an issue.