Why U.S. Exact Property Is So Mistaken | CNBC Marathon

Housing should be a rightand not a privilege. Every American deserves asafe and stable place to call home. Rent growth isaccelerated coast to coast in big cities, ruralareas, east, west, south, north—it's across theentire economy. A lot of jobs that requirea bachelor's degree are going to go away. Our mortgage system is oneof the main factors that decides who has a stablefinancial life and it.

Needs to serve all ofAmerica. And it's not doing that. Mortgage rates are on therise and they're not showing any signs ofslowing down. Mortgage rates have nowrisen up above 5% for the first time in a longtime. And home prices have also been rising. If you look at predictionsof where mortgage rates may be, say, two or threeyears from now, most.

People are looking atinterest rates to 7% to 7 .5%. A mortgage typicallyrefers to a loan used to buy a piece of realestate for which that property serves ascollateral. Today, 63% of homeownersin America are paying off their mortgages,according to Zillow. Every percentage increasein a mortgage rate significantly increasesthe monthly payment,.

Especially for low andmoderate income families. So there are good reasonsin the broader economy for raising rates. But thisisn't good news for those trying to purchase ahome. But experts say that highrates aren't the only issue with mortgages thatcould hinder Americans from achieving homeownership. Our economy has totallytransformed in the last 50 years, and mortgages havenot.

If we update our systemto better serve everyone in America, it willprofoundly advance us in having a more equitablecountry. How do mortgages make itmore difficult to own a home in the UnitedStates? And can anything be done to solve it? The price of a home oftenexceeds the amount of money that most Americanssave. Mortgages exist to allowthese individuals and.

Families to purchase ahome with a small down payment, receiving a loanfor the remaining balance. But cost still remains abig issue. We have an affordabilitycrisis in the United States, and I would sayCOVID actually revealed an exacerbated an existingcrisis, but it's only gotten worse. So what we fundamentallyhave is a supply problem, and that correlates withan affordability.

Challenge. Americans today are forcedto take larger loans to finance a home. The Federal Reserve Bankof Atlanta found that a median income householdwould need to spend 34.9% of its yearly income on amedian priced home. For reference, householdsthat pay more than 30% of their monthly income forhousing are considered cost burden, according tothe Department of Housing.

And Urban Development. The cost factor is alsowhy there is currently a large percentage ofrenters wondering if they'll even ever be ableto move from renting to owning. And even condosand townhouses are raising in costs across citiesfor half a million dollars and up, significantlyraising the down payment amount and mortgage loandebt. Saving for a down paymentis one of the biggest.

Barriers tohomeownership. The Center for Responsible Lendingcalculated that a typical worker needs eight yearsto save for a 3% down payment for a medianpriced home and 30 years for 20%. While certain programslike FHA loans allow homes to be purchased withsmaller down payment, being able to afford ahigh down payment comes with its own set ofbenefits.

If you come in with a lotof money down, it's easier to qualify for amortgage. It's also less expensive to get amortgage. Something like 40% offamilies in America have no financial margin. Theycouldn't even afford a $400 medical bill orchallenge. So the idea of being ableto save a 20% down payment is almost unimaginable. And again, it goes backto the fact.

Worse than ever right nowis that food costs are going up, energy costsare going up, rents are skyrocketing so muchfaster than incomes right now. All of those get inthe way of families being able to save for a downpayment. A number of state andlocal institutions also offer what's known asdown payment assistance programs to combat thisissue. There is not nearly,though, enough money for.

Those down paymentprograms. The other problem hasbeen that the programs are not standardized and itmakes it harder for lenders to use them andmore reluctant to use them. And it also makesit harder for people to know about them and howthey qualify for them. Congress was considering abig package of downpayment assistance for firstgeneration homebuyers as part of the debate overbuild back better last.

Year. But the Senatefailed to enact the bill. So we're still hopingthat might be revived. Another prominent issue isthe lack of small dollar mortgages or loans issuedfor less than $100,000. Having smaller mortgages is important because by definition those aregoing to be affordable for a family on a moremodest income. For first timehomeowners, a lot of these small dollar mortgagesare available for.

Affordable, low costproperties in urban, suburban or ruralcommunities. Prior to the pandemic,more than a quarter of home sales nationwidewere priced below $100,000. Yet just 23.2%were purchased using a mortgage, compared to73.5% of homes priced at or above $100,000,according to the Urban Institute. It is particularly hardfor people who are buying.

Smaller houses withsmaller mortgages to find a lender and to get thatmortgage. And they alsosurprisingly are more expensive. And the issue has beengetting worse. The total value ofmortgage loans between $10,000 and $70,000 andbetween $70,000 and $150,000 dropped by over53% and over 21%, respectively, from 2011to 2021.

Meanwhile, values forloans exceeding $150,000 rose by a staggering 240%plus in the same period. Another study found thatdenial rates for small dollar loans were notablyhigher than denial rates for larger loans. And it's not becausethese loans are riskier. Accompanying researchfound that applicants for small dollar loans hadsimilar credit profiles to applicants for largerloans.

The real reason isprofit. It costs about the sameamount of money to take an application and run itthrough your system and fund a mortgage and haveit appraised and do all those things regardlessof how big the mortgage is. So if it cost me thesame amount of money to do a $700,000 mortgage as itdoes to do a $70,000 mortgage, but I get allmy fees and my interest based on the loan amount,so I'm going to get a lot.

Less revenue on a $70,000mortgage than I am on a $700,000 mortgage. The lack of small dollarmortgages then drives these affordable homesinto the hands of retail investors looking forprofit. Small dollar homes thatcould represent the first step on the path tohomeownership for a family of modest income are notbeing sold with mortgages, which means they'reprobably being bought for.

Cash. That means somebodywith deep pockets is able to come in and offer topay cash. They often buy the homesthrough automated systems where they buy themwithout even seeing the house. They get anautomated appraisal, a remote inspection, andbuy houses in bulk. And that's pulling a lotof houses out of what's already an overly scarceaffordable housing market for these smaller, lesscostly houses.

So a lot of harm comingout of the difficulty of people being able toaccess small dollar mortgages. In response, home buyersmay resort to dubious methods to purchase aproperty. One example that issurprisingly prevalent is people end up intosomething they call contract for deeds, whereit's essentially you're renting. And if you makeevery payment on the loan.

On time, you eventuallywill own the house. But if you miss anypayment, you not only lose the house, you have noequity in it either. And there are millions ofthese transactions out there in the countrytoday. And it's because people don't have thealternative. They're being pushed intothose mortgages. On top of everything, it'sgenerally become more difficult to qualify fora mortgage.

The Housing CreditAvailability Index, which represents the lender'stolerance for risk, has remained almost at thesame level since the aftermath of the 2008financial crisis. In response to the greatforeclosure crisis, lenders and investors gotvery tight about their underwriting criteria andhave kept them at this sort of reactive levelsince then. The deck is particularlystacked against borrowers.

With low credit scores. As millions of homeownerswent into mortgage forbearance programs atthe start of the pandemic, banks raisedtheir borrowing standards for protection. During the fourth quarterof 2021, less than a quarter of new mortgagesoriginated to borrowers with credit scores under720. An important part of theunfairness and the impact.

Of that is credit scoresreflect to a great extent how much family andpersonal wealth you have. If you're a wealthyperson, it is not difficult to get amortgage. But if you have less wealth and a lowercredit score, it's really challenging right now. And despite the manyregulations designed to prevent lendingdiscrimination, racial bias is still prevalentin the mortgage industry.

According to the mostrecent data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act,denial rates for home purchase applicationswere 18.1% for black applicants and 12.5% forHispanic white applicants, compared to just 6.9% fornon-Hispanic white applicants and 9.7% forAsian applicants. Lenders can look upadditional debts of a potential homebuyer,including that of medical debt and student loandebt relative to the loans.

That are in default,which can limit opportunities for lessestablished potential homebuyers. Expectingcommunities that have not historically had theprivilege of financial liberties to befinancially secure when making one of thoseimportant purchases of their lifetime is likeexpecting an athlete with no training or coachingto win a national championship title.

It's just unrealistic andit's indeed a stretch and has certainly added tothe difficulty of home buying in the U.S.. The easiest way to solvetoday's mortgage market is resolving the supply ofhousing in America. If we don't increase thesupply of starter homes, first time homes andhomes that are accessible for working families withlow and moderate incomes, then it's going to bereally hard to solve it.

Just from a lendingperspective. We've got to have more housing. If you just provide morecredit, it drives up housing prices even morewithout expanding the supply. Another important aspectis having a mortgage market that supports theneeds of all Americans. If we have more supply, wealso should work on downpayment assistanceand we think we're going.

To need more subsidythere and financial counseling andpreparation to help families clean up theircredit and be well prepared to be able toobtain loans. Several measures can alsobe taken to overcome some of the systemic barriersthat prevent certain subgroups from achievinghome ownership. Our mortgage system justhas to work for today's economy and people whoare doing the right thing,.

Scrambling to puttogether a living, saving as much money as theycan. But those are justtougher in this new economy. And our mortgagesystem has to serve those people who are playing bythe rules and not getting a chance to get ahead. If we want to overcomesome of the systemic barriers to homeownershipfor households of color, we really want torecognize that and think.

Really hard aboutunpacking those systemic barriers and doingsomething to address them directly, like lookingfor alternative ways to assess credit, lookingfor ways to count income from gig economy jobs,and second and third jobs, and seasonal jobs, andfrom other household members who arecontributing, and looking for ways to help peoplewith down payment assistance to establishthat collateral.

Continuing to question andimprove the mortgage system in the UnitedStates is key to preserving the ideals ofthe American Dream. Our mortgage system is oneof the main factors that decides who has a stablefinancial life, who has a secure place to live, whobuilds financial wealth, and it needs to serve allof America. And it's not doing that. And so unless there arevery deliberate,.

Significant interventionsand changes in our system, we're going to look backin 20 years and find that we're even in a worseplace than we were in 2022. Rent in America is gettingmore expensive no matter where you live. Rent growth is acceleratedcoast to coast. In big cities, ruralareas, east, west, south, north. It's across theentire economy.

The areas where we areseeing the strongest rent growth are in places likeAustin, Texas. Yes, my name is Maria andI live in Austin, Texas. During the pandemic, alot of people began to leave and actually therent dropped that year by $100. I am due to renewmy rent and there was a spike of $400. Making matters worse, fewof the new homes in construction areaffordable.

Rental demand continues tobe extremely strong and the rental units that arebeing built are the more expensive ones. That isthe higher end ones. Meanwhile, workers payisn't increasing enough to match the new rent. We had wage suppressionfor 40 years and then we have the period now wherewages are growing, especially at the lowend. And so the question ishow long will that.

Continue? Experts say the rentincreases will have an impact on the economy. A lot of the monthlyexpense for the typical household is money that'sgoing toward the rent or to upkeep of the house. So it is a very importantpart of all of consumer expenditures. In the most competitivemarkets.

Rents are creeping towardrecord highs. Renters in smallermarkets are feeling the squeeze, too. Forexample, one bedroom rentals in Gilbert,Arizona, spiked over 116% in the past year. Meanwhile, rent for asingle family home is growing at its fastestpace since 2005, according to CoreLogic. So how didwe get here? One answer is the bounceback from the pandemic.

You saw tech companies,major firms moving to smaller cities. Citieslike Pittsburgh, Austin, San Antonio, Charlotte. These are cities thatreally started booming because workers had moreflexibility. And when the city startsbooming, of course, the rents go up because it'sa supply and demand issue. But the story goes backfurther than that, all the way back to the GreatRecession.

President Obama, are youlistening? This has been buildingreally since the end of the financial crisis backa little over a decade ago. A lot of communitieshave made it more difficult to build morehomes closer to the urban core. Building materials,particularly lumber, has been in short supply. That's been a problem. Labor. A lot of peopleleft the construction.

Trades in the housingbust back a decade ago, and because of changes inforeign immigration laws, we have a lot fewerforeign immigrants coming into the country. Many ofthose folks would work in the construction trades.Also, a lot of smaller builders, they rely onloans from banks. And since the financialcrisis, banks, particularly smallerbanks, mid-size banks have been unable, to becauseof regulatory changes and.

Other reasons, unable toprovide enough loans. So there's a mélange ofthings going on here. After the financial crashof 2008, house building stalled. By the end ofthe '10s, renters had fewer options, especiallyin real estate hotspots. Pre-COVID, we saw a hugerush to urban centers. Millennials love to livein cities longer. They were actually livingthere longer than the previous generationstheir age had because they.

Weren't able to get outand afford to buy homes because home prices wereso high. So you had so much demandin the cities. Then the pandemic hit. So if you look at some ofthe high rise apartment buildings in the reallydense central business districts, the bigcities, rents were actually declining in thefirst 12 months of the pandemic.

But smaller cities likePhoenix and Austin received more of thoseremote workers. That sent prices upwardfor people like Maria. Right now, I would say fora studio is probably $2,000. But this place, it's a one bedroom, was originally set at $1700when I first moved in. Maria is a teacher andneeds to commute to work every day. She and manyother Americans don't have the luxury to movefurther away from work to.

Save cash. That's creating widerissues in the economy. There's a lot of evidencethat the lack of housing closer to where thedemand is in urban cores is having a meaningfulnegative consequence on long term economicgrowth. So if we can figure out a way tochange zoning rules and laws and get the lumberand land and labor that we need and able to buildcloser to where the jobs.

Are, you know, oureconomy will be able to grow more quickly, morestrongly in the longer run. Renters in thetraditionally cheaper suburbs are feeling theburn, too. Economists say thatfinding any home to rent right now is uniquelydifficult. Because the vacancy ratesare really so low. It's the lowest we'veseen in a generation.

Coming out of thepandemic, it's likely for rents to keep rising. Fortunately, builders areramping up their building. They can make a lot ofmoney with rents this high and house prices thishigh. So they have a lot ofincentive to put up more homes. And that'shappening slowly but surely. We are seeingmore homes put up. So that's a good sign.

And we've seen anincrease in single family housing starts. That'sreally important because that's the preferredhousing structure during the pandemic. So havinginvestors come in, buying homes maybe puts a littleupward pressure on home prices, sure, maybe itdoes, But it does increase the stock of singlefamily rental homes available in the marketand should help to moderate rent growth.

And in the cities, somerealtors are weighing whether to convert theirless busy office districts into residentialneighborhoods. The idea is to say thatthere are some empty buildings, you know,brick and mortars already established, but maybeone can repurpose it into residential units. For the short term, renters are dealing with the market.

If I had signed the lease,it would be taking a lot of my savings. And so I decided to moveto a new building. I'm losing about 150square feet. These hikes are hittingU.S. citizens at an inopportune time. Over decades, wages formost workers have stagnated. The wages and benefits ofa typical worker were.

Suppressed in the periodfour decades after 1979. Growth was very slow. There was growinginequality that worked against the middle and against anybody in the bottom 90%. In 2019, Oregon became thefirst state to impose statewide rent control. They cap increases atabout 7%. Cities like New York, SanFrancisco and Washington,.

D.C. also limit rentincreases. These policies have somebenefits. One study found thatrenters were about 20% more likely to stay intheir homes with rent control. Other economiststhink that rent control does more harm than good. So what history has shownis that by putting a rent control, yes, it benefitstemporarily for people to pay lower rent, but thatdeters incentive to build.

More homes or providemoney for maintenance. So all the housing stocksteadily deteriorates over time. And one does notwant to see that. So we want to encouragemore production. The answer to rising rentsmay be in the job market. Both Congress and the Fedhave pumped stimulus into the economy. It shouldeventually help some workers earn higherwages. There's been a hugeincrease in the demand for.

Goods and services. So we're going to see aperiod of sustained low unemployment, I think. This has always led tofaster wage growth for those in the middle andthe bottom. The other relatedquestion is: will we see the structural changesthat will build this into the economy rather thanbe an episode, a period of low unemployment? And Ithink that will require.

Improving laborstandards, putting in the $15 minimum wage,rebuilding collective bargaining. I think itwill mean paying attention to maintaining lowunemployment. Which means that theanswer to rising rents might be getting yourselfa raise or finding roommates. They're not buildingenough affordable housing right now because forbuilders, the cost of.

Construction is so highdue to a high cost for land, labor, materials,shortage for materials, shortages of labor, thatthey can't build affordable housing. You know, it took us tenyears to get into this predicament. It's notgoing to be solved next year or the year after.It's going to be ten years before we solve thisproblem. The homeless crisis inAmerica is worsening.

Again. The COVID pandemiccaused a surge in housing costs and a rise inunemployment, leaving nearly 600,000 Americansunhoused in 2020. We have to shut down apiece of our own humanity to be able to walk pastanother human being that is in such a difficultsituation. Being homeless, your day is anywhere spent from where I'm going to lay myhead at tonight, where I'm getting my next bite offood from.

And what people don'ttypically realize when they walk past a personwho is homeless, is that this person is costingtaxpayers a lot of money. Cities across America arespending more than ever to combat the crisis. In 2019, New York spent arecord breaking $3 billion to support its homelesspopulation. California is alsoexpected to break its record, allocating $4.8billion of its budget to.

The same issue over thenext two years. And areas like that justdon't seem to be getting any better, despite thefact that every politician claims that this is a toppriority of theirs and the budgets keep going up. Overall, homelessness inAmerica has only improved 10% compared to 2007. It's even worse forcertain subgroups, such as individual homelessness,which dropped only a.

Percent in the sameperiod. On the contrary, 2020 saw a 30% increasein the unsheltered homeless, erasing overhalf a decade of work since its dramatic risein 2015. Right now, we are trendingin the wrong direction. So the state ofhomelessness right now is pretty tenuous and thereare some small increases that are taking placeacross the board. So how is the U.S.

Addressing the homelesscrisis and can it ever be solved? Homelessness isknown to prey on some of the most vulnerablepopulations in America. In 2020, 20% of those whowere unhoused suffered from severe mentaldisorders, while 16% suffered from chronicsubstance abuse. In response, the U.S. has long relied on ahousing ready approach to homelessness, where thosewho are unhoused had to.

Meet specificrequirements such as sobriety or completion oftreatment in order to qualify for a home. That was until this man,Dr. Sam Tsemberis, pioneeredthe Housing First initiative. At some point, myself andthe people we were working with realized that reallyinsisting that people changed, get sober, takemedication, get your life.

Together in order to earnor be awarded housing was not working. It was just, you know,people couldn't. People were on thestreet. They couldn't stay sober. They were notinterested in medication. They were interested inbeing somewhere safe and secure. The Housing Firstinitiative follows two tenets. First, the mosteffective solution to.

Homelessness is permanenthousing. And second, all housingfor the homeless should be provided immediatelywithout any preconditions. Putting people in housingfirst, which is what they were desperate to do, calms that survival thing. People are safe, secure,and then they're saying to us, I need more helphere. So then rather thanhaving us pushing or coercing people to get totreatment, people get.

Housing, and then theywant to treat. Under the George W. Bush administration, theHousing First initiative gained the spotlight asthe key to ending homelessness. Related programs soonreceived billions of dollars in support fromgovernment agencies such as the United StatesInteragency Council on Homelessness and theDepartment of Housing and.

Urban Development. Housing First's risereally begins in the nineties, especially thelate nineties, and I think it really gained tractionas the philosophy that should dominate thesededicated homeless services agencies andprograms. And so we're in asituation now where if you meet people who work atHUD on homelessness or in major agencies inCalifornia and New York,.

It's relatively rare tonot find them be committed to Housing First. If you really look at it,this year, the federal government will giveabout $2.7 billion to housing and serviceproviders and towns and cities across thecountry. For decades, the HousingFirst policy has successfully housedindividuals that need it the most. Shannon McGheeis one of them.

A nonprofit organization,Pathways to Housing, helped Shannon move intohis supportive housing in 2020 after stayingunhoused for four years. It started in 2008, losingmy mom to lung cancer and then not having a strongsupport system to support me throughout theprocess, I ended up losing the family house. Theysold the family house and didn't have anywhere togo. And that started the stint of being homeless.

From being housed to nowbeing unhoused, the shelter for me was veryhard. It was a cultural shock. It was very hard toadjust to the environment, the living standards. I finally got connectedto the Veteran Affairs and a social worker with themconnected me to Pathways. And since being connectedto Pathways, everything has turned around 360degrees.

I'm housed, I'm lookingfor gainful employment. I'm in school now. So without having Pathwaysthere to kind of be that support and that coach toguide me into housing, I wouldn't be where I'm atnow. A study in 2004 discoveredthat when individuals were provided with stable,affordable housing, with services under theircontrol, 79% remained stably housed at the endof six months.

Another study in 2000found it to be more effective thantraditional programs. 88% of the participantsin Housing First programs remain housed, comparedto just 47% in the city's residential treatmentprogram. And it's not just in theUnited States. A similar study conductedin Canada revealed similar results, showingparticipants of Housing First programs obtainingand retaining housing at a.

Much higher rate. The evidence has shownthat by getting people housed immediately andeliminating the chaos of homelessness created aspace where people would be more successful. I don't have to be in thatenvironment anymore where I'm subjected to usingdrugs or to doing things for money that I didn'twant to do. I can change my focus.

Because now I can say,Hey, you're housed. How can we get you toyour next level of finding gainful employment? What steps can we work onnow? Housing First not onlysupports those in need with housing, but theassistance they need to get back on their feetagain. It's Housing First, notHousing Only. Because there are veryrich services, like.

There's a team of people,really, whether they're social workers or socialworkers and nurses and psychiatrists, peoplewith lived experience. It's like a supportservices team. And then the team says toyou, How can I help you? They provide wraparoundsupport for me. So if I need assistancein getting things such as my ID or birthcertificate, they can help with that. They supportme through that process.

If I need to makeappointments at the VA hospital, they support methrough that process. With any and everythingthat I pretty much need done, I have supportthrough Pathways to Housing. Supporters of HousingFirst also argue that it's cost efficient. A comprehensive study in2015 concluded that shelter and emergencydepartment costs decreased.

With Housing Firstpolicies. What people don'ttypically realize when they walk past the personwho's homeless is that this person is costingtaxpayers a lot of money. People get very sick whenthey're homeless. They have to be taken tothe hospital. Sometimes they stealfood. They have no money. Theyget arrested. Court costs, police time,jail time.

When you tally up theannual costs of people who are homeless and veryvulnerable, it turns out we're actually spendingsometimes $50,000 a year or $100,000 a year insome cases, and the person is still homeless. But perhaps the biggestadvantage to Housing First is the improvement in thequality of life it provides. Being homeless and being aparent, I kind of didn't.

Want my child to see me in that situation, so it kind of put a wedge inour relationship for a little bit. But once Igot housed, now I could provide a space where wecan interact together and she wouldn't have to besubjected to that lifestyle. Being able tohave my housing first, I know that I'm in controlof my environment now. What happens here is allabout what I create. But Housing First alsocomes with its own set of.

Criticisms. Experts likeStephen Eide from the Manhattan Institutebelieve that Housing First hasn't shown any realresult. When the public is toldthat this particular policy is going to endhomelessness, what they're expecting is that they'regoing to see fewer homeless people around. That homelessness numberswill significantly drop as a result of theimplementation of this.

Policy. And I don't thinkthat we've seen that in the case of HousingFirst. Critics also point outthat Housing First might not be as cost effectiveas it looks. Research in 2015discovered that while permanent housingintervention was more successful in achievinghousing stability, it was also more expensive thantemporary housing. A 2018 survey by theNational Academy of.

Sciences, Engineering andMedicine also concluded that there is nopublished evidence to prove that permanentsupportive housing improves health outcomesor reduces health care costs. No government that I'maware of has saved money by investing in homelessservices through a Housing First approach. You can talk aboutpotential cost offsets.

That is, if you invest$1,000,000 in Housing First, that will trimsome of the budgets and some other servicesystems. You're not going to actually save money,reduce the cost of government, to the pointwhere you could be talking about, let's say, a taxreduction as a result of investing in housingfirst. So I think that there has been somemisleading of the public with respect to thatconcern.

There is also the questionof whether the need for housing actually triumphsover the need for treatment. If we want more frompeople, we have to be talking about far morethan just housing. But in the housing firstera, there's a way in which housing justcontinues to suck all the air out of the room. And all we keep comingback to is are we doing.

Enough to expand thestock of subsidized housing to help thehomeless? Meanwhile, Dr. Tsemberis argues that thecriticisms towards Housing First are designed toblame those who are unhoused rather than toassist them. They want to go back totreatment and sobriety first and then housing maybe. Because that changes theentire narrative back to.

Homelessness is the faultof the individual. You know, anybody whofails in a capitalist society like ours with notaxation and no government, it's onlybecause it's their fault. Housing First hit itsfirst bump under the Trump administration thatsought to replace it with programs focused more ontreatment and sobriety. They were talking abouthousing fourth as a policy, housing fourth, okay?.

And that was verydeliberate because it's Housing First and theywere like, no, housing fourth. You know,treatment, sobriety, employment and housingmaybe. You know, that was avery, very targeted attack. The Biden administration,however, showed a return to Housing First. The American Rescue PlanAct of 2021 included.

70,000 emergency housingvouchers and a staggering $350 billion in state andlocal fiscal recovery funds in an effort to aidhomelessness and housing instability. The Biden administrationabsolutely supports the Housing First approach. They feel that in asociety as ours that housing should be a rightand not a privilege, that every American deserves asafe and stable place to.

Call home. So they areproviding the resources and the support. Critics of Housing Firstbelieve that lawmakers need to be giving morealternative policies a chance and approach thehomeless crisis in a more structured manner. We need to have theminvest in a broad range of programs, residentialprograms, that can benefit the homeless populationin all its variety,.

Because the homelesspopulation is very diverse . Within that framework,Housing First-like programs would have aplace, low barrier programs would have aplace, but they would not rule the roost in the waythat they currently do. Those in support ofHousing First believe that more resources andsupport from the government are needed totruly end the crisis once and for all.

Well, if you don't havethe resources in the program to deliver aplace to live, then your listening and yourpromise to them is hollow. You need to have thelistening, let's call that the policy, which ishousing first, person first, but then you needthe resources behind the policy: apartments,subsidy, support services in order to actually makethe package viable. We're nowhere near wherewe need to be in.

Investment, either ofbuilding public housing or affordable housing,having the capacity to address the homelessproblem. We're nowhere near. What's important is thathomelessness is a crisis that can be solved aslong as there is enough attention, care andresources to support the cause. It's just very disgracefulthat in a country that's.

So blessed, so wealthy,that has done some things right in the past, if noteverything, that we can't do something to fix thisproblem or at least make it smaller, ameliorateit. So there's a lot of goodwork going on. So that's what gives mehope that we can actually turn the nighttime starsinto a daytime where we just turn up the lightsenough to really end it for all. Because theother thing gives me hope.

Is we know how to do it. We have the cure. We have good examples ofhow it's done. We need to take it toscale.

Sharing is caring!