Housing Platform

• This new state-level public authority can acquire distressed properties, rehabilitate existing homes, and build new permanently affordable housing for public and community ownership, using 100% union labor. With an estimated 25,000 vacant or distressed units in Philadelphia alone, this could create permanently affordable homes for 125,000 people in our city. With an initial capitalization, this public authority would over time become sustainably financed through a revolving loan fund and self-replenishing, operating outside the annual budgeting process. To ensure the benefits of this program reach the lowest income residents, the Social Housing Development Authority (SHDA) funds could be paired with Housing Choice Vouchers and other affordable housing subsidies. 
  • The SHDA would make housing that is permanently affordable, meaning renters would not have to pay more than 30% of their income on housing as long as they live in these units. Unlike other affordable housing programs — such as the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC)  — the 30% cap would be permanent. 
  • The SHDA would be governed by a board of tenants, labor unions, affordable housing practitioners, and climate experts across the state. The SHDA would transfer units into social ownership, meaning residents will have more control over their building’s management process. In this way, SHDA prioritizes community ownership and democratic control.
  • This policy will create good green construction jobs and usher in a new era of union-backed housing development and preservation. Similar proposals in New York State have been backed by the Building Construction Trades Council and the New York City District Council of Carpenters
  • The SHDA would safeguard residents in our changing climate. Permanent affordable social housing ensures that essential decarbonization investments do not lead to further displacement. Furthermore, it means that new migrants from other countries or other parts of the United States (often displaced by climate impacts) can move to welcoming communities with adequate housing supply. It will create a new and direct mechanism for the state to invest in green retrofits and decarbonization. Eliminating buildings’ carbon pollution is a monumental challenge, especially when these are privately owned. One of the major advantages of a large social housing stock is that it allows governments to directly manage or regulate a huge swath of the building sector, via both retrofits and new construction. 
    • The SHDA can also transform homes that they acquire and rehabilitate into comfortable and environmentally resilient places for people to live. These investments will create the healthy and affordable homes we all deserve, and also decarbonize our residential building sector to help curb our climate crisis.

In Pennsylvania as elsewhere, artificial constrictions on housing supply have reduced the ability of cities, townships, and boroughs to meet regional demand. Exclusionary zoning practices have long been employed to ensure racial and economic segregation; confronting these practices is essential to dismantling disparities in access and opportunity. Pennsylvania should look to recently adopted legislation in other states, such as California and Washington State, to enable housing options in high-demand areas. These include, but are not limited to: enabling high-density housing near transit; rezoning parcels designated exclusively for religious use in order to allow for housing construction; allowing for “single-stair” access in residential construction and reforming minimum lot sizes to incentivize housing that supplies cross-ventilation and other forms of natural cooling.