Profit vs. Housing Affordability

The whole country is experiencing an alarming housing crisis. City sidewalks are now bedrooms, kitchens, and bathrooms. We walk by this disaster every day.

This dire situation is created by inaccessible homeownership and sky-high rents. It includes decades of deep-rooted discrimination, falling hardest on single women raising kids and marginalized families, particularly of color.

Solutions are desperately needed.

A bundle of reforms

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank affiliated with U.S. labor, deserves applause for recognizing the seriousness of the situation and suggesting fixes to help ease the crisis. But alone, they aren’t enough.

In a May 7, 2024, blog post, “The free market won’t solve our nationwide housing affordability problem,” EPI proposes an equity-focused policy that, if vigorously implemented, would alleviate some of the crushing housing costs faced by struggling poor and working-class people.

One of the strongest recommendations is to implement rent control. Rent increases should be tied to wage growth.

Since 2009, the cost of rent has increased 67%, with nearly half of that surge coming in the last five years. In May 2022, the median asking rent in the United States rose above $2,000 a month. Given that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sets the standard of affordability at 30% of household income, $2,000 would only be “affordable” for households earning at least $80,000 per year. But the median U.S. household income in 2022 was $74,580. These facts cry out for limiting the ability of profit-seeking landlords to raise rents.

To reduce the drive for profits behind persistent discrimination and lack of regulation, EPI advocates government intervention such as federal tax credits and subsidies to developers who build low-rent housing. However, this means the government helps pay developers to construct units the builders still own. Without rent control these apartments could easily become unaffordable.

The institute also recommends rezoning to allow increased density in defined areas, mandating equity in lending, and implementing impartial distribution of supplemental housing vouchers (Section 8). These policies need to begin with rigorous enforcement of fair housing legislation.

Interestingly, EPI mentions but does not promote a more radical strategy — social housing. Governments or non-profit entities build and maintain dwellings, not for profit but to house people at affordable rates connected to their income. This is the approach that many in the housing-for-all movement are pushing for.

Solutions urgently needed

According to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, people who experience homelessness have a life expectancy of 50, compared to the overall U.S. average of 77. Housing people is literally a life-and-death issue.

The solution to the housing crisis should rest on understanding the central contradiction between landlord and tenant, housing developers and home buyers. Publicly owned housing could provide immediate and permanent homes for the hundreds of thousands of people living on the streets.

Enacting one type, social housing, would be a serious step toward rectifying the affordability calamity. There are six criteria that generally define social housing: it is publicly owned, is permanently affordable, no one pays more than 30% of their income, apartments are kept out of the private market and therefore free from price fluctuations. Often it incorporates residents with mixed income levels, and residents comprise a majority of the governing board.

Government policy toward homelessness and housing affordability can and should change. A vast expansion of public housing and social housing would provide a long term move toward actually solving the crisis. Clearly, making sure everyone has adequate shelter is not compatible with today’s profit system. Marxists know that goal can only be met under socialism. But until then, no one should be left to sleep under a tattered blanket on the church steps.

Solve the housing crisis! No evictions, no foreclosures, no homeless sweeps. Make developers open their books. Institute rent control. For publicly owned, permanent, universally available public and social housing. For a socialist economy that provides shelter for everyone.

Homelessness on the rise

2013-17: 267,200
2018-2022: 325,700

Estimate of unhoused people in the United States. Sources: U.S. Census; American Community Survey.

>> The article above was written by Chris Smith, and is reprinted from Freedom Socialist newspaper.