Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has unveiled a series of sweeping legislative proposals that could, among other things, reshape access to housing in America.
The so-called A Just Society: Uplift Our Workers Act plan is made up of six separate legislative proposals that each addresses a different facet of ameliorating poverty in the United States.
Among them, The Place to Prosper Act would, for example, institute nationwide rent control, regulate corporate landlords, and provide federally-mandated tenant protections. The bill would cap rent increases at three-percent per year while also mandating that landlords keep rental units in good repair, and includes $10 billion over a decade to remove building-borne toxins like lead contamination.
The bill would also hold back highway funding from areas that do not actively support equitable development strategies. Along this vein, the bill takes aim at the imposition of parking and lot size minimum requirements by municipalities, among other initiatives.
In an interview with The New York Times, Ocasio-Cortez says, that housing in America “is a crisis, and it’s not one that we are discussing enough at the level that we need to be discussing it.”
The plan is the latest in a series of housing-focused proposals that seek to bring nationwide rent control and "housing-for-all" policies into the national political discourse. Vermont Senator and presidential contender Bernie Sanders recently unveiled a Housing-for-all-focused housing package, while rivals Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker have unveiled their own housing plans, as well.
Ocasio-Cortez said it herself, that she makes bold proposals to bring issues to our attention and get them on the agenda, many of which she doesn't expect to pass. If not this proposal, maybe something else will come of it.
Affordable housing, like public health, should not only be made available to all as one of the terms of our republic, it is a matter of the common good. We inoculate everyone to control disease, etc. Healthy people in healthy homes better contribute to the overall nation.
We need a modern Jacob Riis to document the effects of homelessness and substandard housing now. Not only do those people suffer, we all suffer from the deterioration of the spirit and body and environment those conditions bring. And that deterioration is spreading everywhere now, like a disease.
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Hell yes! Universal rent control now!
supply will go down...demand will go up...completely asinine way to address a housing shortage.
You left out the third consequence in your logic. The need for new construction will go up.
I think this is the correct take--rent control policies work best when coupled by robust new construction of both market-rate and below market-rate units. (This is but one reason why architects should care about and support rent control initiatives)
People are acting as if Rent Control is the only thing being proposed to address the crisis of housing affordability. It's not.
We need to invest in existing public housing while also expanding it. We need to reform public housing agencies across the country to be more efficient, more accountable, and better funded.
We should be building more mixed income public, non-profit, or co-operative housing.
We should be providing grants to working class homeowners to maintain owner-occupied properties.
We should be capping property tax increases on home owning low income seniors.
We need to expand public transportation to make it easier/affordable to commute to a central business district from a further neighborhood or town.
We need to heavily tax vacant luxury real estate being used by foreign investors to launder money.
All luxury real estate, not just foreign owned, rising progressively multiplied by the number of properties owned. Here in paradise people don't have second homes, they have fifth, sixth and seventh homes.
Ocasio-Cortez said it herself, that she makes bold proposals to bring issues to our attention and get them on the agenda, many of which she doesn't expect to pass. If not this proposal, maybe something else will come of it.
Affordable housing, like public health, should not only be made available to all as one of the terms of our republic, it is a matter of the common good. We inoculate everyone to control disease, etc. Healthy people in healthy homes better contribute to the overall nation.
We need a modern Jacob Riis to document the effects of homelessness and substandard housing now. Not only do those people suffer, we all suffer from the deterioration of the spirit and body and environment those conditions bring. And that deterioration is spreading everywhere now, like a disease.
40 years of Reaganism hasn't worked. Time to try something new--though I don't think you are going to either rent control or yimby your way out of the problem. The only feasible solution in national high speed rail (not everyone can fit in NY/LA) combined with a new holistic urban design that builds 'missing middle' housing in empty spaces, not tearing down skyscrapers to build slightly taller skyscrapers. Incentivize corporations and government to move to smaller cities in US.
It worked really really well for the 1%.
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