LIVE from New Orleans: America’s housing crisis is an issue for everyone, everywhere

It’s already been a busy and inspir­ing day at Net­roots Nation in New Orleans!

The first pan­el I went to this morn­ing was titled Hous­ing Touch­es Every­thing Pro­gres­sives Care About, So Why Aren’t We Talk­ing About It?

Mod­er­at­ing the pan­el was Chantelle Wilkin­son, the Nation­al Cam­paign Coor­di­na­tor for Oppor­tu­ni­ty Starts at Home. The pan­elists were Mike Koprows­ki, the Nation­al Cam­paign Direc­tor of Oppor­tu­ni­ty Starts at Home, Andreane­cia Mor­ris, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Hous­ing NOLA, and Alli­son Bovell-Ammon, Deputy Direc­tor of Pol­i­cy Strat­e­gy at Chil­dren’s Healthwatch.

To set the stage for the con­ver­sa­tion, they first showed a video from Oppor­tu­ni­ty Starts at Home which dis­cussed how fed­er­al hous­ing assis­tance is under­fund­ed and that many sec­tors need to come togeth­er to push for poli­cies that pro­tect and expand afford­able hous­ing. Lead­ers from orga­ni­za­tions focused on issues such as health care, hunger, edu­ca­tion, and civ­il rights spoke about how afford­able hous­ing is key to ade­quate­ly address­ing the caus­es they are fight­ing for.

Wilkin­son then gave a short pre­sen­ta­tion on Oppor­tu­ni­ty Starts at Home.

Their long term goal is that “through more robust and equi­table fed­er­al poli­cies, we will end home­less­ness and ensure that the most vul­ner­a­ble low income house­holds can afford the rent.” Hous­ing touch­es every aspect of life.

Koprows­ki said ignor­ing hous­ing is not good pol­i­cy for progressives.

As he put it: “You can’t ful­ly accom­plish the oth­er things on the pro­gres­sive agen­da with the foun­da­tion of afford­able housing.”

Kopros­ki high­light­ed the two major issues when talk­ing about hous­ing: afford­abil­i­ty and seg­re­ga­tion. Seg­re­gat­ed neigh­bor­hoods mean seg­re­gat­ed schools and less access to oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple of col­or and peo­ple liv­ing on low incomes. “Hous­ing seg­re­ga­tion is the moth­er or all inequities,” Koprows­ki said, and not­ed how the issues of afford­abil­i­ty and seg­re­ga­tion are inex­tri­ca­bly linked.

Mor­ris agreed that issues of hous­ing afford­abil­i­ty are root­ed in racism, from things like the GI Bill and redlin­ing, which served to block peo­ple of col­or from being able to get loans and buy homes in most neigh­bor­hoods. She con­tin­ued by point­ing out the hous­ing is “held up as the ulti­mate prize, when it is in fact a basic need.”

Mor­ris talked specif­i­cal­ly about the sit­u­a­tion in New Orleans, a city that has far more renters than home­own­ers. New Orleans has an over­all vacan­cy rate of twen­ty per­cent, and in some neigh­bor­hoods it’s as high as 30%.

“Why the hell does New Orleans have an afford­abil­i­ty cri­sis? We have a bro­ken sys­tem that refus­es to address this,” he told attendees.

Low vot­er turnout and per­ceived vot­er apa­thy, Mor­ris said, are par­tial­ly because peo­ple are work­ing two and three jobs to be able to pay for their hous­ing, and also because can­di­dates and elect­ed offi­cials are not talk­ing about the things that peo­ple need, like hous­ing. “Peo­ple will show up and vote for pro­gres­sive can­di­dates, if pro­gres­sives start talk­ing about hous­ing. If no one is talk­ing about your needs, you don’t have a lot of options.”

Bovell-Ammon point­ed out that pro­gres­sives care a lot about health­care, as we should. But argued that we should real­ly care about health, not just access to health­care. We should focus on the things that make peo­ple healthy, which includes shel­ter. Every­one should have a place to call home.

Hous­ing is one of the items that is referred to as the social deter­mi­nants of health. The rea­son the Unit­ed States spends so much on health­care but has some of the worst health out­comes in the devel­oped world is because of our poor per­for­mance on social deter­mi­nants of health.

“If we real­ly care about health, then we should also care about hous­ing,” said Bovell-Ammon. She gave an exam­ple of a client with heart fail­ure who did not have sta­ble hous­ing, but was bounc­ing around stay­ing with dif­fer­ent friends and fam­i­ly. No mat­ter all the med­ical inter­ven­tions they pro­vid­ed, he was not get­ting bet­ter, but once they helped him to gain sta­ble hous­ing, his health improved enor­mous­ly. “Health sys­tems can’t do it alone,” she declared. “We can’t man­age chron­ic ill­ness­es if peo­ple don’t have a sta­ble place to live.”

Wilkin­son then posed the ques­tion as to why a cross-sec­tor aspect of the cam­paign is impor­tant. Kopros­ki said that we can’t work in silos because the real world does not work like that. He used to work in edu­ca­tion, and real­ized that the best thing that could be done to improve edu­ca­tion is to address neigh­bor­hoods of con­cen­trat­ed pover­ty. The silos that peo­ple have been work­ing in have not been cre­at­ed overnight, he said, and that it is going to take time to break them down.

But that break­down and inte­gra­tion is already start­ing to happen.

“Peo­ple from oth­er sec­tors are start­ing to real­ize that they can’t accom­plish their goals with­out peo­ple hav­ing safe, decent, afford­able hous­ing,” Koprows­ki said, not­ing that most orga­ni­za­tions in the Oppor­tu­ni­ty Starts at Home coali­tion are not hous­ing orga­ni­za­tions that work on end­ing homelessness.

Wilkin­son then sug­gest­ed that afford­able hous­ing is trig­ger phrase in some ways. “Why is that?” she asked. “Does some­one lose if we have more afford­able housing?”

Koprows­ki said that gen­er­al­ly our coun­try has con­nect­ed in their mind afford­able hous­ing with neg­a­tive stereo­typed root­ed in race and class priv­i­lege. We need to debunk the myths around afford­able hous­ing com­ing to a neigh­bor­hood bring­ing down prop­er­ty val­ues and increas­ing crime, he said.

“Pro­gres­sives are being hyp­o­crit­i­cal,” Koprows­ki con­tin­ued. Some of the most pro­gres­sive cities and neigh­bor­hoods are not only not fight­ing for afford­able hous­ing, but are active­ly pre­vent­ing the expan­sion of afford­able hous­ing, he point­ed out. As a res­i­dent of the greater Seat­tle area who works in the issues of hous­ing and home­less­ness, I was nod­ding vig­or­ous­ly in agreement.

When asked if pro­gres­sives are real­ly liv­ing their val­ues when it comes to hous­ing, Mor­ris replied with an emphat­ic “No.”

She ref­er­enced New Orleans as a prime exam­ple, a solid­ly blue city that is in the midst of a hous­ing afford­abil­i­ty cri­sis. The rea­son for the cri­sis comes down to pol­i­cy choic­es, she said. “Den­si­ty is a dirty word among cer­tain progressives.”

She said peo­ple use their priv­i­lege to fight increased den­si­ty or hav­ing afford­able hous­ing locat­ed in their neighborhoods.

“Afford­able hous­ing is the last fron­tier in dis­crim­i­na­tion,” she said.

An audi­ence mem­ber asked if hous­ing is some­thing where local and state poli­cies can make a big impact, or if it’s some­thing that real­ly needs to be addressed fed­er­al­ly. Mor­ris replied that it is both.

Fed­er­al changes are real­ly need­ed, but they are not going to hap­pen with this pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tion, so we have to make changes local­ly. Get­ting rid of biased zon­ing poli­cies, invest­ing in state hous­ing trust funds, and using fed­er­al resources effec­tive­ly are things that can all be done at the city and/or state level.

“It’s incred­i­bly impor­tant to get to fed­er­al change, but we have to start locally.”

Koprows­ki agreed that we need a response at all three lev­els, city, state, and fed­er­al. “The mag­ni­tude of the prob­lem is such that no one lev­el can solve this prob­lem alone.” How­ev­er, he not­ed that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment large­ly cre­at­ed the prob­lem of home­less­ness and lack of afford­able hous­ing, espe­cial­ly due to major dis­in­vest­ment under arch­con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can Ronald Reagan.

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has failed to address this grow­ing cri­sis in our coun­try, and that real­ly needs to change in order to ade­quate­ly address the prob­lem. This is an issue where pro­gres­sives can and should be leading.

You can learn more about the issue of afford­able hous­ing and home­less­ness on the Oppor­tu­ni­ty Starts at Home web­site.