The Albert Lepage Center hosted an event uncovering the costs of housing in America. The webinar featured voices with expertise in history, urban studies and sociology. The key speakers were Nancy Kwak, Carl Gerhenson and Rae Baker.
Among the three speakers, a common theme of housing as a necessity came up. This theme was that housing should be a commodity rather than a tool for investment.
“Certainly one of the big issues is the way that housing has been transformed from a housing need into housing as investment, and that’s a really powerful transformation that I think shapes our current housing crisis,” Kwak said.
Rae Baker echoed this sentiment.
“Often when we are in housing justice spaces amongst activists, people talk about the right to housing, which is something we’re still actively fighting for,” Baker said.
The initial point raised by the panel was that there is a housing crisis, not only in the sense of affordability, but in the context of a necessity to achieve justice and freedom.
Furthermore, Carl Gershenson provides data to support claims of an ongoing housing crisis.
First, Gershenson explained that there is a lot of wealth in real estate in the United States and there is a little number of foreclosures. Initially, this makes it seem that housing is not a problem for many Americans.
Nonetheless, housing is only not a crisis for already homeowners.
“A majority of households are locked out of buying a home,” Gershenson said.
He further reveals that the median income needed to buy a home is $120,000, while the median income is $60,000.
This data reveals why Americans are choosing to stay renters for longer. However, Gershenson provides data that shows renter incomes have increased by about 5%, while rent has increased by 23%.
“That is obviously going to be a painful situation for all sorts of renters,” Gershenson said.
Hence, renters are also struggling financially, further hindering their ability to become homeowners.
Nancy Kwak further expands on this data to say that the housing crisis today is a process of decisions to create profit from housing.
“The homeownership success story is a white story in this country,” Kwak said.
Intragenerational wealth impacts the rate of homeownership, which minority communities struggle to obtain.
“The ones that were addressed were the ones that ended up really supporting and building the white middle classes,” Kwak said in regards to historic policies that addressed housing crises.
After analyzing the crisis of housing, the panel moved to discuss possibly housing policy going forward.
A common consensus was that housing reforms have to be taken at the federal level where larger amounts of money can be dispersed into subsidized housing production.
Kwak described possible government strategies to address the problems such as rental assistance, increasing housing supply through low-cost debt for builders, down payment assistance and providing more safety nets.
Nevertheless, it is important to organize in local governments to become active citizens and recognize problems in our own communities.
The webinar ultimately reveals that housing is a crisis that America has been facing for decades and it consists of underlying problems of wealth division and race. Active participation within local governments can propel government officials to act and result in policy to reach minorities who have been overlooked in the past.
Largely, the webinar revealed that housing is a crisis in this country and increasing costs of living are only hindering opportunities to become homeowners for many young Americans.
