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In the 1990's, a sustained period of strong national economic growth changed the physical landscape of America's metropolitan regions in complex ways. Nationally, housing trends revealed an expansion in homeownership, yet the housing stock of affordable units for low income and working poor families has decreased five percent since 1991; 1998 had the highest proportion of Americans paying more than one-half of their income toward housing.
In urban areas, according to several recent HUD studies, these trends were particularly acute. On the one hand, for the first time in history, the majority of households in the central city (50.3 percent) became homeowners. However, the economic boom and the return to central cities by middle and upper class households has pushed rents beyond the scope of millions of urbanites, thereby leading to a drastic reduction in available, affordable housing. In 1998 alone, a HUD survey of 30 large U.S. metropolitan areas showed that requests for shelter increased by 11 percent on average.
Apart from affordability, urban areas are faced with a wide range of housing-related issues, ranging from overcrowding and sustainable growth, to homelessness, to inadequate financing. These challenges face both central cities and suburbs and they increasingly have affected working- and middle-class constituencies, as well as the poor.
Presidential candidates have been largely silent on housing-related issues. None has issued any comprehensive programmatic statement that addresses urban housing or infrastructure. At the time of this writing, none has given any formal indication that housing will be a significant part of an overall agenda. Thus, identifying the effects of their platforms for housing, shelter, homeownership and urban growth requires extrapolation from statements and proposals made in other contexts, such as the environment and taxation.
Al Gore has offered the most specific programs that integrate housing and metropolitan physical infrastructure. His environmental proposals offer a broader vision. Specifically, Gore has addressed urban growth in the context of "suburbanization" and "sprawl" and has suggested a plan to leverage the federal government incentives for "smart growth" in metropolitan regions. The goals include managed development, adequate park and usable public space, sufficient commuting infrastructure and tax incentives for cities and families, such as enabling households living near mass transit to qualify for higher mortgages. In his capacity as Vice President, Gore has also created the "Council on Building Homes in America's Cities." The Council's agenda, in conjunction with the National Association of Homebuilders, HUD and the US Conference of Mayors, is to commit to building one million homes in the nation's central cities over a period of ten years.
George Bush has addressed housing in two ways. His specific proposals include prioritizing housing needs of America's armed forces by promising to renovate substandard military housing. In a proposal that would probably have greater impact in urban areas, Bush has outlined an approach to social welfare for the poor and needy that would make government more efficient by encapsulating housing subsidies within a broad set of vouchers that the poor would be given. The goal is to give the poor more flexibility by enabling them to use vouchers as needed to subsidize expenditures that could change, say, from housing to income maintenance.
The remainder of the candidate pool has not offered many specific suggestions on housing. Tax policy has been the primary, and in some cases the only, arena in which candidates have addressed housing-related issues. Specifically, proposals for a flat tax rate system, popularized by Steve Forbes, has generated tremendous debate because of the potential effects on the ability of homeowners to deduct interest payments on their mortgages. Forbes has offered to allow families to chose either the current tax system, in which case they could continue such deductions, or to switch to a flat-tax framework. Pat Buchanan also favors a flat tax system while retaining home mortgage interest deductions.
In addition to environment and tax policies, other areas may arise in the future as the campaign proceeds to reveal more clearly their respective stance on housing and cities. The field of welfare reform may be one important arena. The realignment of the federal government's public housing program, for example, has witnessed a shift away from construction and maintenance of housing stock to rent subsidization and vouchers. There are currently congressional proposals to reduce further the number of new rent subsidies issued in coming years (as well as associated domestic heating and energy subsidies). This could severely affect the housing status of many urban low-income and poor Americans. Currently, candidates have not offered specific commentary either on the future of public housing in America or (with the exception of Bush) the role that housing subsidies play in social welfare policy broadly.
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