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When all the polling is complete and the yard signs have gone away, when you stop receiving “time is running out!” text messages, the many campaigns of this election season will help to answer one big question: What will we do about the housing crisis?
In Virginia, voters will get dozens of chances to answer that question. All 11 of the commonwealth’s congressional seats are on the ballot, as is one Senate seat, the mayor’s office and all city council posts in Alexandria and Richmond, plus more council seats in Hampton, Harrisonburg, Norfolk, Roanoke, Virginia Beach, and beyond.
These elections involve a wide range of issues. But in a sense, they boil down to one – housing.
Why?
Unaffordable housing drives the greatest problems across Virginia and the nation. High housing prices — largely the result of a decades-old housing shortage and restrictive zoning laws — shape where you work, the length of your commute, and the carbon footprint of that journey. Housing costs affect the size of your home, and with it decisions over how many children to have or whether to have them at all. Record-breaking home prices and skyrocketing rents limit how much families can spend on healthy food and doctor’s visits. And with real estate making up the brunt of household wealth, rising home prices drive a widening wealth gap between homeowners and renters.
My organization recently helped to highlight how unaffordable housing helps to fuel two other enduring agonies — school segregation and racial inequality. In the Richmond region, as with so many areas across the United States, the obvious racial segregation of our communities is mirrored in our schools. And with that separation comes major differences in access to opportunity.
Few neighborhoods with affordable housing in the Richmond area have access to schools with top-tier scores for reading proficiency. And children living in high-poverty neighborhoods here tend to learn from teachers who lack expertise in their fields.
Think about that: high housing prices are segregating schools and limiting children’s futures.
That’s not all. Black and Latino individuals rent their homes more often than their white neighbors, so rent hikes have an outsized impact. At the same time, the homeownership gap between Black and white Americans — larger today than in 1900 — continues to grow, and that drives a shameful wealth gap. The average Black family in the United States owns just 15% of the wealth of the average white family. Unequal access to housing opportunities sits at the heart of this problem.
And it’s a problem holding everyone back. In the half-century between 1964 and 2009, a recent study found, U.S. GDP would have been 13.5% higher if Americans had greater access to affordable housing. Other research has shown that communities where people from diverse backgrounds regularly encounter each other tend to have higher levels of trust among residents and more confidence in civic institutions. In other words, high-priced housing not only segregates communities and trims our economic sails. It also makes us bad neighbors.
What does this have to do with November’s elections? The problems we face are rooted in failures of policy. And that means we can change them.
The presidential contest presents two starkly different visions of how to address the housing crisis. And Virginia’s Senators have co-sponsored housing legislation that would offer one way to level the playing field. Washington will have things to say about housing in America.
But most housing politics is local. The most effective ways to support affordable and fair access to housing start close to home, in our neighborhoods and city or county councils, where we can make our voices heard.
Remember the local races I mentioned earlier? Local candidates elected in November will decide whether their communities offer a “welcome” mat or a “do not enter” sign to the next generation of would-be residents. They will have thumbs on the scale in decisions over zoning, deciding what will be built and where. Those zoning decisions will affect construction costs, which get passed along to homeowners and renters, so local officials will shape household budgets as well. Local races may appear down the ballot, but they’re right at the top of daily concerns.
Fortunately, these days, housing isn’t red or blue. We live in a hyper-partisan time, but voters and candidates across the political spectrum have solutions to offer. Housing has proven to be the rare issue that attracts common sense, well-intentioned problem solvers from the left and right.
At my organization, we’ve found that when we show up for housing, we win: Earlier this year, HOME of VA passed through the General Assembly all ten of our priority bills. The governor signed into law three of these bills, expanding protections for those facing evictions and boosting state funding for fair housing outreach and education. While he vetoed the other seven, we’ve proven that fair housing legislation has champions on both sides of the aisle. After all, this isn’t about politics — it’s about what’s right.
Virginians keen to put down roots in communities across the commonwealth — or find a way to stay amid rising costs — deserve fairness, choice, and affordability. Up and down the ballot, those values need our votes. We can do better than segregated communities sprawling across unaffordable regions where inequality grows. We can vote for fair access to affordable housing. We owe it to ourselves, our families and our neighbors to get it right.
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