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Advocates Unveil Policy Recommendations to Address U.S. Housing Crisis in Biden’s First 200 Days

The Housing Playbook Project: New Deal for Housing Justice was designed with grassroots leaders, those with lived experience, and policy stakeholders

(Washington, D.C., January 25, 2021) –.Today the Housing Playbook Project, released the New Deal for Housing Justice: A set of policy recommendations to help solve the U.S. housing crisis made worse by the pandemic. Designed  by those who’ve experienced housing insecurity or homelessness, grassroots housing leaders, and policy experts, the New Deal for Housing Justice lays out a set of critical actions in the first 200 days of the new administration and Congress.

Community Change, the Ford Foundation and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, served as co-chairs for the The Housing Playbook project, which aims to reassert the federal role in housing in ways that fundamentally reframe and reimagine that role to be centered on racial equity and opportunity. 

Grassroots leaders and advocates call on Congress and the Biden-Harris administration to:

• Deliver a COVID-19 relief package to remedy the housing insecurity of people of color;
• Create a refundable renter’s tax credit to provide relief to cost-burdened renters;
• Establish a Presidential Commission on Reparations to Black people for a legacy of anti-Black federal housing policy;
• Expand access to Housing Choice Vouchers so that millions of low-income families can access the benefit;
• Set a new vision for ending and preventing homelessness and develop partnerships to avoid it;
• Increase the supply of public and subsidized housing and eliminate the backlog of repairs in existing public and subsidized housing;
• Research and pilot a universal basic income program that allows people to afford quality housing.

“Adequate and affordable housing is an essential tenet of a caring economy that will lift up all families. Regardless of where we come from, what we do for work, how we identify or whether we’ve been caught up in our unjust criminal system, everyone deserves a roof over their head,” Community Change President Dorian Warren said. “The Biden-Harris administration has signaled that they would make racial justice and equity in COVID-19 relief and long term economic policy a priority. Safe and reliable housing is the cornerstone to economic security. This proposal is a blueprint for how to help move the country toward that vision.”

“As we combat COVID-19 and work to build back better in a new administration, we must begin at home,” said former HUD Secretary Julián Castro. “We face a housing affordability crisis, an evictions crisis, and a homelessness crisis like this nation has never seen. The Housing Playbook outlines a bold and ambitious blueprint to tackle these crises head-on, with housing justice and racial equity at the forefront.This is how we ensure housing is not just a commodity, but a basic need and a human right granted to every single American.”

“The Playbook dares to demand that the Biden-Harris administration and Congress create a system that will guarantee housing for all. Discriminatory housing policy has tricked us into thinking that housing is something that people should earn rather than have as a basic need,” Andreanecia Morris, an advisory committee member of the Housing Playbook Project and Executive Director of the community-led advocacy group HousingNOLA, said. “That blind spot has prevented us from seeing that safe and affordable housing is the foundation for addressing many social justice issues and it is imperative for any meaningful strategy to get us through COVID-19 and rebuild our devastated economy.”

Maria Torres-Springer, Vice President of U.S. Programs for the Ford Foundation said, “The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust our housing crisis to the forefront, with Black and Brown families bearing the brunt of our deeply unequal system. The Housing Playbook Project is working towards centering the experiences and leadership of those facing housing insecurity as the federal government determines a path forward.”

Along with the co-chairs, the Housing Playbook Project was developed with the leadership of Lynn M. Ross, the founder and principal of Spirit for Change Consulting and the former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Development at HUD during the Obama Administration. Ross is an expert in housing policy and urbanism and has helped amplify community voices in this project to ensure equity-centered policy making. 

“We wanted the Housing Playbook Project to model a transparent, inclusive approach to policy design,” Ross said. “That is why the recommendations in the New Deal for Housing Justice are rooted in the more than 400 ideas shared by grassroots leaders through an open call we issued at the start of the project as well as more than 100 interviews with advocates and policy experts.”

Dozens of the nation’s leading racial equity and housing experts contributed to the drafting of this playbook. For a full list of Contributing Authors and Advisory Committee Members please visit: https://communitychange.org/new-deal-housing-justice/.

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