{"id":17663,"date":"2021-12-06T09:00:11","date_gmt":"2021-12-06T14:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/?p=17663"},"modified":"2022-10-09T06:00:56","modified_gmt":"2022-10-09T10:00:56","slug":"the-role-affordable-housing-plays-in-national-infrastructure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/the-role-affordable-housing-plays-in-national-infrastructure\/","title":{"rendered":"The Role Affordable Housing Plays in National Infrastructure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">As advocates, when we look at the lack of affordable housing, we often gravitate toward the fact that it is the leading cause of homelessness. This is true. But there are other aspects of affordable housing that are also worth our attention. While building more affordable housing could significantly reduce our national homeless epidemic, it also has other benefits.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Today, we will review the upside of building more affordable homes and the possible consequences of failing to do so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">A study by\u00a0<\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nar.realtor\/sites\/default\/files\/documents\/Housing-is-Critical-Infrastructure-Social-and-Economic-Benefits-of-Building-More-Housing-6-15-2021.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Rosen Consulting Group<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u00a0makes an excellent case in support of constructing more affordable homes. The research examines decades of building practices to determine the myriad of consequences for underbuilding in regards to:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Economy<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Community<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Infrastructure<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Family life and much more<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Consequences for Underbuilding in the Affordable Housing Sector are Nothing Short of Devastating<\/h3>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Here are some key findings that illustrate the desperate need for constructing more affordable homes. As a result of underbuilding in the affordable housing sector, the following consequences have quietly but heavily impacted the US:<\/span><\/p>\n<h4>Housing supply not meeting demand<\/h4>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Underbuilding creates an atmosphere where the supply simply cannot meet the demand. This causes rents and mortgages to drastically increase, exacerbating the housing crisis and deepening the wealth inequality gap.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4>Slowing down the pace of household formation<\/h4>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">As a result of drastic declines in residential fixed investment, which equate to a $4.4 trillion shortfall, millions of millennials have been forced to remain in their parent\u2019s homes, unable to make ends meet on their own. Many of these individuals have college degrees and massive amounts of student loan debt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Not only is living doubled up with parents a form of homelessness, but it is also an underlying factor in declining marital and fertility rates amongst young people. When adults between the ages of 25 and 34 delay moving out and starting families of their own, homeownership rates drop, and rents get hiked, hurting everyone in the community. But that\u2019s only the beginning of the problems this can cause.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">All across the globe, entire towns are going \u201cextinct\u201d in the sense that they cannot repopulate because the young people delay reproduction due to fear of poverty. In extreme cases, aging populations dwindle, and\u00a0<\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2019-11-15\/in-japan-s-vanishing-rural-towns-newcomers-wanted\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">entire villages vanish from existence<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4>Quality of living plummets<\/h4>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Buyers are vying for a limited supply of available homes. Low and middle-income earners are almost entirely squeezed out of the housing market. Renters regularly face severe financial burdens. The result is everything in the community falls apart.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Think of the home as the foundation upon which other important social structures are built. Without the home, there is no school, no car, no benefits, or sustainability. As the quality of living plummets, so does working-class morale. Eventually, workers drop out of the labor force in droves, much like we are witnessing today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The looming Great Resignation isn\u2019t just a byproduct of stagnant wages. It is equally reflective of the modern worker\u2019s frustration with exorbitant costs of living, much of which is rooted in housing prices.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Benefits of Constructing Affordable Housing Units<\/h3>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">According to the Rosen Consulting Group, constructing affordable housing at a pace that meets market demands would generate approximately $53 billion in new tax revenue each year, not to mention creating millions of new jobs and countless community opportunities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Lower rental rates and evictions would mean higher education rates for school-aged children and the prospect of independence for the 25-34 age bracket.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">This action would also seriously undercut homelessness, freeing tax dollars currently spent on criminalizing poverty through anti-camping legislation. With the homeless crisis averted or significantly reduced, cities could save millions by simply not conducting costly encampment sweeps and building barbarous anti-homeless architecture into railings and subway benches.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Imagine a world where everyone spends less than 30% of their paycheck on rent or mortgage payments. Envision a city where nobody is sleeping on the streets. Picture a place where poverty isn\u2019t masked behind social media filters because popularity is a currency that never does pay the bills. Visualize a future full of families where young people are placed in high-paying positions in the fields they went to school for, rather than one where college degrees collect dust on grandma\u2019s windowsill while new graduates ring up Mocha Frappuccino\u2019s at the local hipster hangout, digging for dreams at the bottom of a tip jar.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">When you stripped away the wealth gap, this is what the world looks like when it\u2019s full of affordable homes. All we need to do now is build it. It starts with one phone call.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><em><a href=\"https:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/talk-to-your-legislators\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Contact your representatives today<\/a> and ask them how they plan to make up for our national shortage of 7.2 million affordable homes.<\/em><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As advocates, when we look at the lack of affordable housing, we often gravitate toward the fact that it is the leading cause of homelessness. This is true. But there are other aspects of affordable housing that are also worth &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/the-role-affordable-housing-plays-in-national-infrastructure\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":17664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[389],"tags":[769,9245,16737,253,832,515,16736,1196,16255,16256,508,899,16738],"coauthors":[8785],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17663"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17663"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17666,"href":"https:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17663\/revisions\/17666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17663"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=17663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}