State housing needs the Build Back Better framework

More than 50 percent of families in New Haven are cost-burdened. Our region needs 25,000 more units of affordable housing. For people paying attention to affordable housing in New Haven, these statistics have become rote. We know this data; we repeat it over and over. Rents have outgrown wages for decades, and this trend has accelerated during the pandemic. Our city and our region are in crisis.

The federal government has an opportunity to mitigate this crisis; President Biden’s Build Back Better framework included significant investments in affordable housing. These elements of Build Back Better didn’t get the headlines that the climate, pre-K, and child care elements did, but they remain just as vital. If the bill considered in December had passed, Connecticut would have received funding for more than 4,600 new Housing Choice

Vouchers, and Connecticut Public Housing Authorities could have gained more than $100 million in capital funds. Most importantly, the Connecticut Department of Housing would have received nearly $200 million to invest directly in new affordable housing, the largest investment in decades. That’s thousands of families in Connecticut who could afford their housing, feed their children and begin to build a path out of poverty.

Instead, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced that he would not vote for Build Back Better. Since his announcement, Manchin has indicated that he is willing to resuscitate some pieces of Build Back Better. But housing has taken a backseat in these negotiations. And we cannot afford to miss this opportunity.

Advocates for affordable housing repeat the same statistics frequently, but it’s important to remain focused on the concrete human costs of our policy failures. Families are going to sleep cold and hungry. Children are falling behind in their classes. Some of our unhoused community members will not make it through the winter. These costs result from policy choices and decades-old disinvestment efforts in affordable housing. The absence of housing from Build Back Better’s renegotiations is the latest in a long pattern of strangling public housing.

I’m immensely grateful to all of Connecticut’s representatives in the House for voting to pass Build Back Better and Sens. Murphy and Blumenthal for their advocacy in the Senate. But we cannot give up on fighting for affordable housing now. Recent polling from Morning Consult/Politico showed that the affordable housing provisions are the third most popular part of Build Back Better, behind only health care reforms. We need Connecticut’s elected representatives to fight to ensure that the affordable housing provisions are in the next version of the bill.

As president of Elm City Communities/Housing Authority of the City of New Haven (ECC/ HANH), I spend every day focused on supporting housing insecure families. ECC/HANH provides housing assistance to more than 6,000 families across New Haven and through creative financing and investment, we can now support 20 percent more families than we did 20 years ago. But efficient management cannot make up for the federal government’s refusal to support more than one in four of the people who are eligible for housing assistance.

The status quo is unacceptable. According to a recent report from Data Haven, housing insecurity in Connecticut has increased over the past five years, and politicians at all levels of government have talked over and over about the need to solve our affordable housing crisis.

But talk is cheap. Without real investments, thousands of families sleeping three and four to a room will be left behind. Without real investments, the children who can’t focus on schoolwork because they’re too hungry or couldn’t sleep without heat will be left behind. Without real investments in affordable housing, we are condemning more and more people in every town and city in our state to homelessness and generational cycles of poverty. But with the investments in Build Back Better, we can stabilize families all across our state, ensure that children are supported as they grow and learn and save the lives of our community members. To do so, we need our representatives in DC to commit to solving this crisis.