BOSTON — Accompanied by 30 mayors, including Lynn Mayor Jared Nicholson, and housing officials, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced the reintroduction of the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act (AHEM) at the housing nonprofit Urban Edge on Monday.
“America is in the middle of a full-blown housing crisis. In almost every community — rural, suburban, urban — it is getting hard to rent a home, or to put together a down payment to buy one. No one knows that better than the mayors who are here today,” Warren said.
She said 40 years ago, the average home in the Boston area cost four and a half times the salary of a public-school teacher. Now, the same average home costs nearly 11 times the salary of a public-school teacher.
“Rent in Massachusetts is now more expensive than any other state in the country. The cause of this crisis is not a secret. We don’t have enough housing,” Warren said. “Across the country, we are over 7 million housing units short of what we need.”
Sheila Dillon, chief of housing for the City of Boston, provided statistics on housing specific to the city.
“In Boston, 42% of our households are rent-burdened. Twenty-four percent of our households are severely rent-burdened, meaning they’re paying more than 50% of their income on rent. 31,000 of them are disabled households, and 65% of those households are reporting that they can’t meet their housing costs,” Dillon said.
Warren decided to reintroduce the AHEM, she said, because local and state governments cannot handle the housing crisis by themselves. She said that more federal investment is required.
“For years and years and years, we’ve sat around saying, ‘Housing is a problem,’ while the federal government did less and less and less to help and the problem got worse and worse and worse. No more. My bill would invest over $500 billion over the next decade into building new housing for families across the country,” Warren said.
Warren cited an independent economic-investment analysis, saying that the $500 billion investment would create 3 million new housing units and lower rents by about 10% for working- and middle-class families.
She said that the bill would be fully paid for by making a “few changes” to the estate tax, “so that America’s wealthiest families give a tiny slice of their millions and billions to help this crisis.”
“By bringing back rates from the end of the George W. Bush administration, and setting slightly higher rates for the richest of the rich, we can fully pay for this investment in America’s housing,” Warren said.
Following the press conference, Nicholson spoke on what the proposed bill would mean for Lynn.
“Housing is one of the top issues facing the city and while we are making great progress, enhancing federal involvement in the way this bill proposes, with the flexibility local communities need, would be transformational,” Nicholson said. “I appreciate Sen. Warren’s leadership on the housing crisis and her ongoing engagement with local officials on how to work together to make historic investments that will create a path for strong economic futures.”
