Americans to continue to struggle for housing in 2024 vacancy rates had increased And fare cools down somewhatThe nation still faces a shortage of homes – a shortage that npr estimates Circulates between four and seven million. Since the beginning of his presidency, Biden has sought solutions by providing incentives to cities that want to streamline construction and expand the types of housing built — both market rate and subsidized. This year, the President also faced our ongoing housing crisis, compounding immigration and climate disasters, and a supreme court decision This would eliminate informal homeless camps, all of which demand relief.
Some of the Biden administration’s strategies included pushing cities to study how to regulate land use and zoning while proposing more rules for corporate landlords. Still, demands for Congress to pass the legislation needed to make more sweeping changes like mortgage relief and down payment assistance have not been met.
At the very least, this year’s federal housing efforts highlighted the complexity of creating and preserving housing; Building new homes is important, but it is also important to keep residents safe and stable in the homes they can buy. Here’s how the Democratic administration tried to reshape the housing landscape this year.
Ongoing Housing Supply Action Plan
Biden launched his Housing Supply Action Plan in 2023, and over the past year his administration has launched policy recommendations and initiatives to address the nation’s housing shortage. Measures to remove obstacles to housing scheme (PRO Housing) provided grants to cities to study ways to overcome barriers to new housing construction, including expediting permits, zoning reform, and land use expansion. This year we saw A second round of those grants was issuedEssentially “cutting red tape” to make it easier to build cities – as part of a broader plan to reduce financial and administrative burdens. This year’s accomplishments include expediting historic preservation reviews, guidance for new transit-oriented development, and more.
Biden-Harris housing plan It was launched as part of the administration’s proposed 2025 budget, which included $258 billion for housing investments. The plan called for Congress to pass legislation that the administration claimed would have created two million new homes. Working in conjunction with the Housing Supply Action Plan, it included a call on Congress to provide down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers and tax credits for selling homeowners; This large amount also included an expansion of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, as well as an $8 billion dollar grant program for homelessness relief and prevention. Sadly, this budget was never made.
Cracking down on corporate landlords with bad practices
This year, the issue of corporate landlords took center stage as several investigations revealed investors involved in Buying a Single-Family Home In cities across the country. A congress bill An effort to curb this practice was introduced this year. Still, even amid a national rise in vacancy rates, questions about rising costs have prompted the Biden administration to address challenges for renters.
Rent increases may not always be a matter of individual landlord assessment. in this summer, Justice Department files suit against RealPage—a wealth management software—for alleged antitrust violations. their complaint alleged that the company “contracts with competing landlords who agree to share with RealPage…their apartment rental rates and other lease terms to train and run RealPage’s algorithmic pricing software.” ” Those algorithms are then used to “price” rents at properties that use their software. While DOJ Abandoned your investigation In December, the Biden-Harris plan opted to deal with the issue by including it a nationwide fare cap Federal tax credits for those buildings constructed.
A mandate for lead pipe replacement
Despite causing health problems such as brain and nerve damage, lead pipes have long been a mainstay in many American cities. National Bureau of Economic Research Notes that 70 percent of all cities with populations over 30,000 were using lead water sources by 1900. Today, NRDC It is reported that 20 percent of public water systems use lead pipes, while an additional 43 percent have pipes of unknown composition. Although current federal lead and copper regulations require cities to replace pipes if lead is found at 15 parts per billion, many cities exceed that legal maximum limit. For example, in Syracuse, New York, water in some homes tested at 70 parts per billion, according to stateline,
This year, Biden keep cities on watch To change these lines. His administration now needs to prepare a replacement plan by 2027, after which they must replace lead service lines within the next decade. This is an ambitious plan, as stateline That could be a bigger surge than some cities are prepared to handle, the story reports. “In New Jersey, water utilities have replaced more than 25,000 service lines since the state lead law was passed in 2021… but there are still more than 120,000 lead service lines in the state,” it said. “It would cost at least $1.8 billion to replace it.” Reads. in Chicago, where A study of 2024 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimates that 68 percent of children under six live in homes where tap water has trace amounts of lead, with pipe replacement estimated to cost $14 billion Is according to a nbc associatedTo support these massive projects, the Environmental Protection Agency has announced $2.6 billion in funding for newly available drinking water infrastructure (of which disadvantaged communities require approximately half), and an additional $35 million in competitive grant funding.
