Slate, October 26, 2018: Elizabeth Warren’s new housing proposal is actually a brilliant plan to close the racial wealth gap
Last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a $450 billion housing plan called the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act. The proposal is a comprehensive and bold step toward providing affordable housing for the most vulnerable Americans. The bill is the first since the Fair Housing Act with the explicit intent of redressing the iterative effects of our nation’s sordid history of housing discrimination.
All in all, the legislation will help families buy affordable homes but also build asset security and community wealth by providing capital for down payments to those who have been historically excluded from homeownership. It has the potential to lift historically marginalized communities by reversing more than a century of capital exclusion and housing discrimination.
In a holistic way, Warren’s bill attempts to address our past and ongoing housing problem by including targeted investments in rural communities, Native American communities, and formerly redlined black communities, echoing President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty and King’s Poor People’s movement.
