- Despite a cooling trend in real estate prices, housing remains unaffordable for many Americans.
- On Tuesday, millions of voters nationwide casted ballots in favor of affordable housing measures.
On Tuesday, Americans across the country showed up to cast ballots and vote on issues that most affect their daily lives. While social issues like healthcare, voters rights, and education were top of mind, housing affordability was another top concern.
Indeed, a report from economic research firm Moody's Analytics shows that many affordable housing proposals were approved with nearly 70% of the vote — making it one of the only issues that all voters, regardless of political ideology, largely agreed on.
"It's especially heartening to see many ballot measures that support affordable housing pass this year with a clear majority of votes." Rosalie Manansala, the CEO of affordable housing financier DOT Capital Advisors, said in the report. "It's solid proof that this issue is truly important for voters."
During 2020 and 2021, the average worker could rent or purchase a home without breaking the bank thanks to historically low mortgage rates and pandemic-era rental support. But in 2022, the story couldn't be any more different. While home price growth, as well as demand, is slowing — largely thanks to the Fed's intense battle against inflation — US home prices are still up 13.3% year over year, a November report from Realtor.com detailed. And although rents are moderating to some degree, data in a Harvard study from April indicates that more than 19 million renter households were "burdened," or spending more than 30% of their take-home pay on rent.
"The results of these ballot measures may indicate one area where both political parties may be finding common ground," Moody's researchers wrote in the report, adding that "for the foreseeable future, housing supply and insecurity will likely remain salient in the national discourse."
Red and blue cities say yes to affordable housing
In Austin, a popular pandemic zoomtown, a proposed $350 million housing bond was approved by voters on Tuesday. Austin's council members say they intend to use the funds for the "creation, rehabilitation, and retention" of affordable rental and ownership housing in the area.
"This is the third housing bond that this city has passed in the last eight years, 10 years," Adler told KXAN News. "It's the second one that we've passed in the last four years. And I think that's real significant because it demonstrates the priority that our city has."
Austinites aren't the only voters desperate for affordable housing.
Kansas City voters gave the green light to a $50 million affordable housing bond that will create 2,000 units in the city. And despite opposition from groups concerned with the tourism industry, residents in Steamboat Springs, Colorado approved a measure that would use funds generated from a 9% tax on short-term rentals to finance affordable workforce housing projects.
Andrew Beckler, a spokesperson for House Our Community, the nonprofit group that supported the measure, told The Steamboat Pilot & Today that voters made a step in the right direction.
"There's still a lot of work ahead that has to be done," he said. "This just ensures that we have a significant amount of funding to help this process begin and help turn our housing crisis around."
LA proposes "mansion tax" on the sale of pricey homes
Voters in California, where housing affordability has plummeted to a 15-year low, are also hoping several new efforts will lead to reform in the state's notoriously expensive real estate market.
This year, lawmakers brought forward proposed affordable housing bonds via Measure U in Oakland, Measure L in Berkeley and Measure ULA in Los Angeles. LA's Measure ULA, also known as the "mansion tax," is easily one of the state's most controversial housing proposals. It aims to fund affordable housing and tenant assistance programs by placing a tax on real estate sales that exceed $5 million.
Critics of the bill say the tax could harm residents and that it could also lead to less housing construction as well as higher rents.
"I'm against it," LA mayoral candidate and housing developer Rick Caruso told The Wrap. "The city has done a terrible job of managing and spending taxpayer dollars," adding that "to say we're going to create another tax without having accountability of where the money is currently going makes no sense to me."
However, regardless of opposition, real estate publication The Real Deal reports that the measure is on track to pass at the polls.
"The private market's inability to adequately supply cost-effective housing commensurate with the country's income distribution is a structural failure of our society," Moody's reasearchers wrote in their report. "It is this recognition that has prompted voters in both red and blue states to overwhelmingly support ballot measures meant to address housing insecurity in Tuesday's mid-term elections."