Housing Guarantee

Housing and healthcare address the two deepest and most basic human needs for survival. It is nearly impossible for an individual to thrive if they don't have a roof over their head and the ability to have their healthcare needs addressed. Currently, we live in a state in which it is illegal to be homeless, a policy which fails to recognize its own role in making homelessness a permanent feature of society.

A guarantee to housing does the exact opposite. By ensuring that folks always have an option better than the street we can prevent many of the long-term health, safety, and economic issues caused by chronic housing instability. It also helps to address our state's legacy of redlining.

• Increase housing supply through new construction - increasing supply to meet demand can help address rising housing prices.

• Eliminate exclusive single-family zoning - ensuring exemptions don't perpetuate defacto segregated communities.

• Invest in alternative housing models including social housing, cooperative housing, and public housing.

• Enact a long-term vacancy tax to incentivize landlords to keep their properties competitively prices and occupied.

• Make homeownership practical for the working-class - while homeownership is not for everyone, nobody should feel forced into renting from a landlord due to financial barriers. Home ownership fosters stewardship of land, participation in community, and the starting of families. By ensuring that working folks have the ability to enter homeownership we can raise the standards for all renters who will no longer be "stuck" in their situation. Landlords may still operate rental properties, but will have to offer real value over ownership to maintain tenants.

Guaranteed housing costs less than homelessness

Homelessness is a problem that impacts everyone and costs taxpayers a significant amount of money. Our current system expensively manages the consequences of chronic homelessness via emergency room healthcare, encampment sweeps, prison, and emergency shelter.

A housing guarantee is simply the recognition that permanent housing not only keeps a person in shelter, it does so for significantly less money than the alternative of managing a person living on the street.

The links below compile a number of studies which analyze this issue from multiple angles, but the two most basic conclusions are as follows. High housing prices make more people homeless while lowering housing prices reduces homelessness, and it is significantly cheaper to give homeless people housing than to manage the costs of a permanent homeless population.

• According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a chronically homeless person costs the taxpayer an average of $35,578 per year. This study shows how costs on average are reduced by 49.5% when they are placed in supportive housing. Supportive housing costs on average $12,800, making the net savings roughly $4,800 per year. Download the policy brief.

• According to Pew Charitable Trusts, high housing prices is a primary driver of homelessness.

• The most cost-effective way to help the homeless is to give them homes

How public banking can help us achieve a guarantee to housing

Achieving both affordable and guaranteed housing requires a multifaceted approach that combines market-based and public-sector solutions. While some of the outcomes we can can be legislated, others need to be cultivated through investment and development.

A public bank gives Washington the means to make these investments which is in part why a public bank is another plank of this platform. Here are a few ways that a public bank could be utilized to address the housing crisis:

• Providing low-interest and non-predatory mortgages to homebuyers saving the best rates for first-time homebuyers.

• Providing competitive loans to buyers and developers looking to establish cooperative or social housing.

• Raise revenue through investment (including property investment) which can be allocated to funding public housing.