Opinion: The Conundrum Affordable Housing Poses for the Nation

However, policies to increase the supply of housing will take time to reap benefits. In the meantime, we need to ease the financial pressure on those hit hardest by the affordability crisis.

This means fully funding the nation’s primary federal housing voucher program, as currently, three in four families eligible for such rental vouchers can’t receive them. It would also make sense to increase the value of the vouchers to provide low-income families the chance to move to low-poverty, higher-opportunity neighborhoods. Doing so has been shown to boost lifetime earnings and open a window to escape poverty.

More than a decade after the housing market took down the economy, the nation finds itself in the throes of a different kind of housing crisis. Its effects are subtler, and perhaps for this reason it has gone largely ignored.

But the nation must address this housing crisis in earnest, lest an entire generation of families whose parents found in housing a critical path to building wealth, find it now blocking the way.

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