Lawmakers Introduce ‘Homes Act’ to Overcome Housing Shortfall

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The bill would build and preserve 1.3 million homes across the country. LeadingAge's affordable housing policy team participated in a September 19 policy summit highlighting the new legislation.

On September 18, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Chair of the Senate Housing, Transportation and Community Development Subcommittee, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) introduced a bill to overcome the housing supply shortfall throughout America.

The bill, titled the "Homes Act," would build and preserve 1.3 million homes across the country. Smith and Ocasio-Cortez are joined on the legislation by Senators Peter Welch (D-VT) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and 34 members in the House of Representatives.

According to a press release by Representative Ocasio-Cortez, the 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.

LeadingAge's affordable housing policy team participated in a policy summit that featured the new legislation, hosted by the Center for American Program on September 19. Senator Smith and Representative Ocasio-Cortez spoke at the event, as did senior officials from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) officials and many housing experts.