Fair Shot Agenda Pillar: Opportunity

Across the spectrum of Indiana communities – urban, suburban and rural – I often hear from Hoosiers of all income levels who have experienced difficulty finding affordable housing. When families pay too much of their income toward housing, it has a negative impact on other parts of their lives. That’s why I have proposed creating a housing affordability task force to better understand the second and third order effects of America’s housing affordability crisis. One driver of the affordability crisis is burdensome and discriminatory local zoning and land use policies that drive up housing costs in communities across America, including Indiana. These policies exacerbate the housing affordability crisis and stifle the ability of Americans to move to areas of opportunity. I have taken steps to fix these harmful regulations and ensure that all Hoosiers can find affordable housing in areas where they work, where their children can get a quality education, and where the entire family feels safe at home.

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 What I've Done:

• Evidence shows that Housing Choice Vouchers as currently implemented fail to meet their goals. To fix this I successfully introduced and secured passage of the Housing Choice Voucher Mobility Demonstration Act (S. 291) to enable the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and public housing authorities to develop new models for incentivizing greater choice and improved mobility in HUD’s Housing Choice Voucher Program. This mobility demonstration was signed into law in early 2019 and is on its way to full implementation.

• There are many factors that contribute to a lack of housing supply and skyrocketing costs. To seek out the root causes of this issue, I introduced the Task Force on the Impact of Affordable Housing Act (S. 1772) to better understand and respond to America’s housing affordability crisis by creating a bipartisan housing task force.

• I introduced the Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) Act (S. 1919) to require Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) recipients to go on the record with why they are not adopting specific pro-affordability and anti-discriminatory housing policies – shed light on discriminatory land use policies, encourage localities to cut burdensome regulations, and bring a new level of transparency to the community development process.

• Ensuring quality of life and safety are cornerstones of responsible home ownership and management. To ensure residents are afforded a safe and sanitary living environment, I co-led the Housing Accountability Act of 2019 (S. 1270) to hold property owners of low-income housing accountable for poor living conditions.

• The housing affordability crisis requires innovative solutions. I’ve fought for raising the visibility of manufactured housing by joining other Senators in introducing the HUD Manufactured Housing Modernization Act (S. 1718), to ensure HUD supports state and local governments that wish to include manufactured housing as an affordable housing solution when applying for federal funding.

• Our tax code shouldn’t be a barrier to accessing safe and affordable housing. I co-led the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act (S. 1703), to expand and strengthen the Low Income Housing Tax Credit) which will leverage the private sector to produce more units of affordable housing and better serve a number of at-risk and underserved communities.

• Congress intended for the Low Income Housing Tax Credit to incentivize the contribution of private resources to build and maintain affordable housing. I co-led the Saving Affordable Housing Act (S.1956), which would prevent the premature loss of affordable housing and ensure that Housing Credit properties remain affordable for at least 30 years, as Congress intended, thereby fulfilling the program’s commitment to serve low-income Americans.