Evizda

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on Thursday set a new bar for progressive proposals to establish accessible, affordable, safe, and sustainable housing as a human right in the United States with her introduction of the $1.2 trillion Homes for All Act.

“Across the nation, families are struggling with homelessness and housing insecurity. We need to treat the affordable housing shortage like the crisis that it is.”
—Rep. Ilhan Omar

“Every American deserves access to a safe and stable place to live, but unfortunately, our current free-market housing system is not meeting the needs of working families,” the Minnesota Democrat said in a statement.

Omar explained that “on a single night, over 10,000 people in Minnesota were homeless last year—the highest number ever recorded. 6,000 of them were youth—which means children are showing up at school without a place to go home to. And this does not include the thousands more who are behind on rent, or are looking for a permanent home after an eviction. And that’s just Minnesota.”

“Across the nation, families are struggling with homelessness and housing insecurity. We need to treat the affordable housing shortage like the crisis that it is,” she added. “Housing is a fundamental human right. It’s time we as a nation acted like it and end the housing crisis once and for all.”

Omar’s Homes for All Act (pdf) features three key investments:

• $800 billion over 10 years to build 9.5 million new public housing units;
• $200 billion to the Housing Trust Fund to help communities build 2.5 million private, permanent affordable housing projects for low-income families; and
• $200 billion to establish a Community Control and Anti-Displacement Fund at the Department of Housing and Urban Development “to protect families from gentrification, prevent displacement, and stabilize neighborhoods.”

“Not only does the legislation create 12 million units of affordable housing, it also makes sure that all future funding needs are fully met so that public units do not fall into disrepair,” noted Dianne Enriquez, a supporter of the bill and co-director of community dignity campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy. “This provision, plus wrap-around services for people experiencing homelessness, would help to end our housing crisis.”

Center for American Progress senior housing policy analyst Michela Zonta praised Omar for putting forward a bill that, if implemented, “will be life-changing for millions of families.”

Pointing to the continued failures of existing federal rental assistance programs to meet the needs of Americans, Zonta said that “by proposing a ‘just build it’ strategy, the Homes for All Act sets a bold marker for what it would take to ensure millions of Americans have a safe, affordable place to call home.”

Additionally, as HuffPost reported late Wednesday after obtaining a draft of Omar’s bill, the legislation “is arguably the most ambitious Green New Deal policy unveiled since the movement for a sweeping industrial plan to shrink climate-changing emissions and expand protections for the poor went mainstream a year ago.”

Varshini Prakash, executive director of the youth climate group Sunrise Movement, shared HuffPost‘s report on Twitter Thursday morning and wrote, “Affordable housing is key to stopping climate change.”