Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign promise to “end America’s housing shortage” has instilled in Atlanta leaders and housing experts a sense of cautious optimism.
Harris made that pledge during her Democratic National Convention address Thursday, about a week after her team unveiled a plan to build three million new housing units, create a down-payment assistance program targeting first-time homebuyers, and create a $40 billion “innovation fund” to spur housing construction.
“Yay to having an aggressive goal,” said Westside Future Fund chief executive John Ahmann. “But obviously, the execution of that is extremely complicated politically — and the devil is in the details.”
The Harris camp insists that its goal of erecting three million new housing units over four years — both affordable and market-rate — will drive mortgage prices down by boosting the supply to meet rising demand, and enable low- to moderate-income households to purchase homes in the often prohibitively expensive housing market.
To achieve that lofty goal, a Harris administration would try to create a novel tax incentive for homebuilders constructing starter homes for first-time buyers, expand existing tax credits for developers of affordable rental housing, and launch a $40 billion fund for innovative approaches to producing affordable housing — “with one condition: they must show they will deliver results.”
To complement the efforts to increase housing supply, a Harris administration would “provide working families who have paid their rent on time for two years and are buying their first home up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance, with more generous support for first-generation homeowners.”
The Harris campaign also said it would cut bureaucratic red tape that inhibits housing construction, such as “streamlining permitting processes and reviews, including for transit-oriented and conversion development, so builders can get homes on the market sooner and bring down costs.”
One local affordable housing expert, Terri Montague, a former U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) lawyer and Atlanta Beltline CEO, called the Harris housing plan “a promising opening salvo that serves as an important catalyst for new housing investment and homeownership opportunity.”
“It sends a hopeful, pragmatic signal, especially to working families, that her administration takes seriously the growing challenges confronting homeowners and renters alike, and that her administration is prepared to work with public and private partners to bring large, bold, rational solutions to solve them,” she added.
Still, Montague noted: “Ending America’s housing shortage will take time; ending America’s housing crisis takes political will.”
What about Congress?
Some of the proposed regulatory reforms would simply require administrative action — i.e. appointing progressive leaders to federal agencies like HUD, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and the Treasury and Justice Departments.
But sharply increasing federal housing funding, creating new tax breaks for builders, or reining in corporate landlords who are buying residential property en masse and hiking rent prices would be easier said than done. Those goals could require Congressional budget approval or new legislation.
Like most housing pros Atlanta Civic Circle has spoken to, Ahmann of the Westside Future Fund, an affordable housing developer, believes housing affordability should be a bipartisan goal — although in today’s Congress, bipartisanship is in short supply.
“The housing challenges being faced by communities across America are transcending partisanship,” he said, adding that he’s heartened to see both Democratic and Republican politicians at least acknowledging the issue and discussing solutions.
Even former President Donald Trump’s campaign — which is diametrically opposed to just about everything Democrats do — has proposed similar policies to increase access to homeownership, vowing to “reduce mortgage rates by slashing inflation, open limited portions of federal lands to allow for new home construction, promote homeownership through tax incentives and support for first-time buyers, and cut unnecessary regulations that raise housing costs.”
However, relaxing land-use restrictions would require cooperation from state and local governments, Ahmann said. These restrictions were “intended as well-meaning regulations across a variety of safeguards,” he explained, but are instead slowing development progress.
City of Atlanta’s role
City of Atlanta officials say they’re glad to lend a helping hand.
The city’s planning department is currently rewriting its 40-year-old zoning code in a bid to modernize an urban-planning roadmap that prioritizes single-family homes over more dense residential construction.
“What I foresee is that we are certainly open to housing of all typologies, but we can do that in a way that preserves the character of our historic neighborhoods and get additional housing out of the ground with speed,” Mayor Andre Dickens’ top policy advisor, Courtney English, said in an interview.
“You will see us moving in the coming days, weeks, and months on an aggressive policy package that we believe will accelerate our ability to get housing out of the ground,” he added. “All types.”
While the Harris campaign would need to navigate federal, state, and local politics to achieve its housing goals, Montague, the former HUD lawyer, finds the vice president poised to confront the housing crisis more effectively than President Joe Biden’s administration.
“Unlike the Biden-Harris administration that inherited the necessity of tackling a once-in-a-generation public health emergency and ensuing economic recovery, a Harris-Walz administration would be better positioned to make housing affordability and attainability a central — and sustained — focus,” she said.
For the past 20 years the “Housing Experts have championed for Density(Multi Family Housing) to solve the housing problems. No all of the sudden they want to give $25,000 in down payment assistance for single family homes. This is nothing more than a socialists program. All this will do is raise taxes, remember someone has to pay. oh if they pay there rent on time for 2 years they will be eligible. So now we have to track rent payments in a database. This is a back door to rental registries and price controls.
A car is just as essential as housing if you want to be competitive in the workforce. So lets control the price of cars and make it hard to repo as evict.
Lets be real the only people who are crying about not affording a home or “the rent to high” are not very competitive in the workforce. If you have been pouring coffee or working low skill jobs all your life you cant afford a house unless you save up.
In the great state of Georgia you can go virtual free to any State Tech school and get training to advance yourself. High school dropout, low reading ability it does not matter, they will build you up with as many remedial classes as it takes with solid academic support along the way. You just have to want it. The new trend is to legislate/compel others to take care of your housing, food and basic income.
The reason rent is so high is the rent freeze and no evictions for almost 3 years. Owners still had to pay property taxes, maintenance and notes. A lot of owners had to take out high interest bridge loans to make ends meet. Now the bill is due and they passed the pain on. There is a null argument from tenant activist(Broke Person who owns nothing) that if a property owner cant afford the mortgage with out collecting rent they should go out of business. That is the dumbest logic ever. Renting is a business and no income = distress.
I had to save and work almost 15 years as a renter before i could buy my house and bought the house next door to me also a few years later(cash flow rental) disclosure for my views . So if you don’t own anything don’t try and tell me what to do with my property.
I got off track and went on a tangent but it all ties together this housing issue.
If you want a private residence get out there and work for it.