The high cost of housing could be a winning issue in November

[LongTomH]

From The Nation Magazine: The Rent Is Too Damn High, and Progressives Need to Do Something. Yeah, there's a crisis in affordable housing, and that crosses regional and urban/suburban/rural divides. You wanna get people out to vote in an off-year election? Address the issue.

Nine years later, there are persistent racial wealth gaps, driven in large parts by gaps in homeownership rates. More households are renting than ever before in modern history—particularly the key members of the progressive coalition. Fifty-eight percent of black households and 54 percent of Latino households rent their homes. Two-thirds of Americans under age 30 rent. Unmarried women are twice as likely to rent than own.

Recent analysis has suggested that elections in the modern era often hinge on progressive-base turnout, and that balance-tipping base is comprised mostly of renters. Yet elected leaders have paid little attention to housing, and even less to renters. That’s been horrendous policy—and also terrible politics.

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Given the housing-cost horror stories we often hear about in expensive coastal cities like New York and San Francisco, one might assume rent burdens are potent only in already deeply progressive territory. The data tells a much different story. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s most recent Out of Reach report, a full-time minimum-wage worker cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment in 99.6 percent of American counties. Suburbs–the central battlefield of competitive American elections in 2018–are seeing rents rise faster than urban areas. Even people who do not struggle with housing costs themselves recognize this as a problem. Roughly three in five Americans recognize finding affordable housing as a challenge in their community, and 80 percent see it as a problem for the country as a whole.

Based on data from the US census housing-vacancies and homeownership report and the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, every single Senate swing state sees a larger share of the population suffering from rent burdens than other common economic ills like unemployment/underemployment or lack of health insurance. From the high end of Nevada and Florida (where cost-burdened renters comprise 22 percent and 19 percent of the population, respectively), to the lower end of West Virginia (11 percent), Wisconsin (12 percent) and Montana (12 percent), every single state’s population of cost-burdened renters exceeds other economic strains.

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This data suggests housing is an issue Democrats could use to overcome their geographic disadvantage, in which Democratic voters are clustered in urban areas. Colin McAuliffe, co-founder of Data for Progress, said Democrats could campaign on housing policy across the country because “in urban zip codes support for expanding rental assistance is 73 percent, compared with 71 percent in rural zip codes. In urban zip codes, 57 percent of respondents say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who cut rental assistance, compared with 52 percent in rural zip codes.”

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As the Democratic Party thinks about how to win back people who voted for Obama but then sat out the 2016 election, housing could be an important issue: 64 percent of Obama-to-Clinton voters own their own home, compared with only 45 percent of Obama-to-nonvoters. So there are a lot of renters who are open to the Democratic Party but don’t feel compelled to show up for every election.

[greymattermom]

1. So many cities had abandoned housing

I'd really support a big program to renovate anything that's in good condition, tear down the rest, and put in parks and small townhouses that are subsidized. Everyone should have their own front door. They could set up farmers markets in the parks on a rotating basis, at least once a month.

[titaniumsalute]

2. Gas being between $3 and $3.50 will also be an issue

Gas will be $1 to $1.40 more by November and people WILL take note. They tend to blame the people in office.

[LisaM]

3. Nobody will do anything. They'll let developers pretend that they're going to create market-rate

housing in five years, then let them swap out the intentions like carbon credits.

In the meantime, how many people a day are evicted from long-term housing and basically put out on the street? You can't move anywhere without hundreds or thousands of dollars up front, and the process is rigorous and demeaning, including background checks the renters need to pay for themselves.

Or a new trend is what I'm calling sharecropper housing - penning poor people up in tiny little houses while the rich continue to own multiple properties and McMansions. Sorry, this is ridiculous.