spydormunkay

Your position on dealing with homelessness is scant besides building more public housing. Which can be done, but is likely politically infeasible due to cost.

Furthermore, I'm alarmed by your following characterization of the housing issue.

This is an artificial scarcity, there are more empty homes in the US than individuals living in the streets. In fact, in Florida alone, there are nearly enough vacant homes for all the homeless in the nation. There isn’t a lack of homes, and there is, undeniably, not a lack of space. It’s a scarcity because of a lack of affordability.

What would be your position on a federal law that would incentivize states and municipalities via grants to reform their zoning laws to allow more higher density housing?

Restrictive zoning laws in high-demand areas that only allow for single-family homes and limited density have been shown to increase housing costs due to limited supply.

The federal government has no direct control over such laws, but can influence states and municipalities to reform their rules.

Similar proposals have been brought up by Elizabeth Warren during the 2020 campaign. What is your position on this?

I'm alarmed by your characterization because it implies you would oppose this kind of proposal.

I appreciate the honesty in your reply. I'm happy you seem open to the idea of zoning reform.

As for your other proposals, I fully support Housing First and I am "not against" Public Housing. I add the qualifier because while I would support more funding for public housing if given the chance, the issue I have with it is the political implausibility of appropriating enough money to fix the housing issue with public housing alone and, more importantly, the political implausibility of maintaining that funding over the long-term.

Housing can't just be built, it has to be maintained. Congress has failed to provide consistent Capital funding over time to fund basic maintenance and repairs for existing public housing, leading to disrepair in a lot of the country's public housing projects.

The issue lies in the basic structure of Section 9 Public Housing law, which gives Congress wide lateral to increase/decrease Capital funding. This leaves needed funding vulnerable to politics as funding can vary depending on who controls Congress.

That's why I'm also curious to what your position on alternate proposals to would be for:

• Permanent mandatory appropriations for fully funding Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers, eliminating waitlists, and eliminates the yearly political battle over housing funding.

• Utilizing Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) conversions in order to rehabilitate existing public housing, converts public housing to Section 8 PBV/PBRA contracts which have historically more consistent funding patterns.