Four Solutions for Housing Cost-Burdened Families

In February, Enterprise Community Partners unveiled an ambitious policy platform that is intended to improve the lives and outcomes of housing-insecure families.

From left to right: Andrew Jakabovics, senior director of policy development and research at Enterprise Community Partners; Pamela Hughes Patenaude, president of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation for Housing America’s Families; Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition; and Laura Kusisto, Wall Street Journal reporter, speaking at the ULI Housing Opportunity Conference in Boston.

From left to right: Andrew Jakabovics, senior director of policy development and research at Enterprise Community Partners; Pamela Hughes Patenaude, president of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation for Housing America’s Families; Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition; and Laura Kusisto, Wall Street Journal reporter, speaking at the ULI Housing Opportunity 2016 conference in Boston.

In February, Enterprise Community Partners—a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to expand opportunity for low- and moderate-income households across the United States—unveiled Investment in Opportunity, an ambitious policy platform that is intended to improve the lives and outcomes of housing-insecure families. These families face a set of “impossible choices,” said Laurel Blatchford, senior vice president for solutions at Enterprise, speaking at the recent ULI Housing Opportunity 2016 conference held in Boston. Between paying rent, putting food on the table, staying on top of medical and utility bills, child care expenses, and car payments, working families are faced with wrenching decisions each month that better-off households are not forced to make.

Blatchford and representatives from conference cosponsor Enterprise made the case for why bold policy solutions are needed to level the playing field for low- and moderate-income households, 11 million of whom are paying more than half of their monthly income on rent and struggling to provide better opportunities for their children. A presentation by Angela Boyd, vice president for advocacy at Enterprise, on Make Room, the organization’s campaign to raise awareness about America’s rental crisis through mini-documentaries of families struggling to make ends meet, teed up the solutions-focused discussion of Investment in Opportunity.

Blatchford delineated the platform’s broad policy areas, which recommend 23 specific interventions by which localities, states, and the federal government can alleviate the rental crisis. “Problems like housing insecurity and concentrated poverty are difficult, but not intractable,” she said. The platform’s four broad policy recommendations are as follows:


  • Ensure broad access to high-opportunity areas.

Citing research by Stanford University economist and professor Raj Chetty on the impact of neighborhoods on intergenerational mobility within poor families, Blatchford noted that “moving a poor family from a high-poverty neighborhood to a low-poverty neighborhood has profound impacts on their long-term life outcomes.” Specifically, the platform recommends expanding the Section 8 voucher and rental assistance programs to give poor families greater choice to move to neighborhoods with better schools, transit access, and job opportunities; reform zoning and local land use regulations and mandate inclusionary zoning to promote the production of affordable rental housing; and allocate low-income housing tax credits (LIHTCs) to both high-opportunity and distressed neighborhoods.


  • Promote comprehensive public and private investments in low-income neighborhoods.

“Not everyone who can wants to move to an affluent neighborhood,” Blatchford said. “So we need to encourage investments necessary to empower residents and transform areas of concentrated poverty which have suffered from years of disinvestment and neglect.” Enterprise recommends the following interventions: facilitate more private investment in community development finance institutions (CDFIs); use land banking as a tool to return vacant and underused properties to productive use; expand the New Markets Tax Credit program; and preserve existing affordable housing as part of mixed-income neighborhoods.


  • Recalibrate priorities to better target housing subsidies.

Says Blatchford, “More federal housing subsidies go to the richest 5 million households—those making over $200,000 per year—than go to the lowest 20 million households combined.” Much of that subsidy comes in the form of the mortgage interest and property tax deductions to homeowners, which Enterprise’s platform says needs to be reformed. Additional recommendations under this goal include the following: expanding rental assistance programs like Section 8, including assistance to renters under the National Housing Trust Fund; double the annual allocation of LIHTCs; and make permanent state and local affordable housing trust funds.


  • Improve the overall financial stability of low-income households.

But what about the fact that poor families get stuck on the lower rungs of the income ladder? “This is not just a housing problem. This is also an income problem, so it can’t just be about housing policy,” Blatchford said. “We need to take steps for families to build strong credit histories and save for long-term goals and unforeseen emergencies.” The platform urges policy makers to do the following: set state minimum wage thresholds to reflect a reasonable cost of living; work with the financial sector to develop innovative products to encourage low-income families to save; expand the earned income tax credit (EITC) and other income supports; and expand programs that help families build strong credit histories.

To learn more about Enterprise’s Investment in Opportunity housing policy platform, go to www.investmentinopportunity.org. To learn more about Enterprise’s Make Room campaign and tools to build public awareness of the rental crisis facing U.S. families, go to http://www.makeroomusa.org/.

Archana Pyati is a writer on ULI’s strategic communications team.

Archana Pyati was a Senior Manager and Impact Writer with ULI from 2014 to 2018.
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