The American Housing and Economic Mobility Act of 2018 addresses housing supply, discrimination, financing, zoning, and taxes The housing crisis is worsening and the rent?s too damn high. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has a solution: the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act of 2018.
The bill, which will be introduced to the senate floor on Wednesday, calls for a $450 billion investment over the next 10 years to build and preserve affordable rental homes; expands the Fair Housing Act to ban discrimination on sexual orientation, marital status, gender identity, and income source; incentivizes local jurisdictions to revisit zoning and regulations that impede new housing construction; provides $2 billion funding to create 200,000 homes on Native American tribal land; expands USDA Rural Housing programs to create 380,000 affordable rental homes and to help 17,000 families become homeowners; and attempts to close the racial wealth gap by providing down payments to first-time homebuyers in formerly redlined neighborhoods or segregated areas. To finance the bill, Sen. Warren is calling for estate tax rates to return to levels at the end of the Bush Administration and progressive taxes that will impact only the wealthiest 10,000 earners in the country.
Sen. Warren?s office commissioned an independent study of its bill from the nonpartisan consulting firm Moody?s, which concluded that ?the bill would build or rehabilitate more than 3 million units over the next decade...