Sen. Ron Wyden's new bill wants to tackle the housing crisis and wipe out homelessness along the way

• Sen. Ron Wyden has introduced a bill that he says would eradicate homelessness in five years.
• It would provide housing choice vouchers to people currently, or on the verge of being, unhoused.
• The bill also includes provisions for low- and middle-income renters and first-time homebuyers.

Senator Ron Wyden wants to end homelessness in America and help out low-income renters - and he just introduced a bill to do so.

The "Decent, Affordable, Safe Housing For All Act" (DASH) targets affordable housing, income-burdened renters, and first-time homeowners. It aims to house everyone currently unhoused within five years, with a specific emphasis on kids and families.

The mechanism for ending homelessness would come from a "Housing Choice Voucher," which people who are currently unhoused or are on the verge of being unhoused would access through a variety of agencies and organizations. That voucher will cover rent for over 30% of their income. Wyden, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said it would house everyone unhoused in five years.

According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, around 580,000 people experienced homelessness in a single night in 2020. That marks yet another year that homelessness increased, going up 2% from 2019.

It also marked the first instance in the agency's data collection that the number of unhoused people in families with children went up, and it's the first time that "more individuals experiencing homelessness were unsheltered than were sheltered." The report also found that Black and indigenous Americans were overrepresented in the country's homeless population.

"Housing is a human right," Wyden said in a statement. "Yet, millions of Americans pay more than half of their monthly take-home pay to keep a roof over their head. And more than half a million Americans don't have housing at all."

The bill would also provide relief for renters, citing that 11 million low-income Americans are rent burdened (a 2017 paper from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University found that 11 million renters pay over half of their income in rent). Under Wyden's proposal, property owners who rent to lower-income Americans - those who make 30% or less of the median income in that area - will get a tax credit to cover the difference in market rent and tenants' incomes.

As Insider's Ben Winck reported, there's an affordability crisis for renters, with prices rising at their fastest pace in 16 years. It's a spillover from the incredibly hot housing market, where prices are surging and bidding wars are rampant.

The bill would also incentivize building more affordable homes, and help first-time homebuyers. Builders who build homes in areas with higher poverty and lower-income - and sell them to homeowners making less than 140% of that area's median income - would get a tax credit.

And, if you want to buy a home on a lower salary, there's money for you too: The bill includes a refundable $15,000 first-time buyer tax credit, which phases out for those earning $100,000 individually, or $200,000 jointly.