Prioritize affordable housing

Everyone deserves a home, but not everyone has stable housing, even in wealthy but segregated Connecticut. So I applaud the Jan. 26 editorial (“A needed fight for affordable housing”) reporting Gov. Ned Lamont’s call for zoning laws with teeth, and the CT Mirror’s ongoing investigation of how Connecticut suburban towns use zoning laws to keep out low-income families.

Let’s hope Connecticut can model solutions for the rest of the country. Despite a recovering economy, Americans who rent their homes are in the midst of a huge housing crisis. Since 1960, renters’ median earnings have gone up 5 percent while rents have risen by 61 percent (adjusted for inflation). Yet because of inadequate funding, only one in four eligible low-income renters can get federal renting housing assistance. Plus, three cities in Connecticut have the highest eviction rates in the country: people who have to choose between food and rent.

This cannot, and should not, be.

Stable housing should be a right of all of our citizens. Stable housing improves job performance, fosters better health, and helps kids do better in school. And having stable neighborhoods benefits us all.

We can start addressing this crisis by creating a “renters’ tax credit” for low- and moderate-income renters. The credit would cap the amount of out-of-pocket rent and utilities expenses a low-income household would pay (around 30 percent of household income). Renters would receive a refundable tax credit for excess rent above 30 percent, up to 100 percent of the local Fair Market Rent. Researchers at Columbia University estimate that a renters’ credit could lift more than 9 million Americans above the poverty line. By providing renters some relief from growing rental costs, more families could find safe, affordable places to live, even as we make more rental units available.

I call on Connecticut state legislators to make increasing affordable housing a priority in the upcoming session. And ask U.S. Senators Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Representatives Jim Himes, Jahana Hayes, Rosa DeLauro, Joe Courtney and John Larson to support smart housing policy, including a “Renters Tax Credit” for low- and moderateincome families. We must address the affordable housing crisis and end poverty. Children across the nation, quite literally our future, are depending on us.

Lucinda Winslow, a long-time resident of Stamford, is a volunteer advocate for RESULTS, a non-partisan, nonprofit movement of passionate, committed everyday people who together use their voices to influence political decisions that will bring an end to poverty in the United States and around the world.