Mayors across the United States are struggling to keep up with the increasing demand for affordable housing and address the homelessness crisis.
Leaders from several states gathered at the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. They voiced their frustrations over investors, housing density, and racial disparities and how they will affect housing and community development.
“At the end of the day, as mayors, people aren’t looking to their senators to solve homelessness,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D) said. “They’re not looking to their state legislators to solve homelessness. They’re looking to their mayor.”
Albuquerque, New Mexico, Mayor Tim Keller (D) said his city did not face a housing shortage until a few years ago.
“All of a sudden, people want to move to Albuquerque,” he said. The situation created a 30,000-unit gap, according to Politico. Keller, who has been mayor since 2017, said cheap housing and dilapidated apartments and hotels from the 1960s and 1970s made the affordable housing situation worse.
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Right now, the city is determining whether to convert old buildings to be more renter-friendly, but the next four months will determine the city’s housing future, Keller added.
“We’ve got to understand the big picture but also the details. … The problem in our city is our zoning code,” Keller said. “We zoned our entire city for single-family dwellings, and it is destroying Albuquerque. It will hollow us out.”
Mayors are feeling the heavy burden of having to address the housing crisis directly despite members of Congress calling on states and federal organizations to provide more resources to tackle the issue.
Mayor Levar Stoney (D) of Richmond, Virginia, blames “parasite” capital investors extending below-value offers and house flippers for the struggling housing markets — particularly in low-income and historically black areas.
Stoney said mayors cannot address the problem alone. He called on mayors to create pilot programs and incentives and “work together with all levels of government, private corporations, landlords, tenants, and community organizations.”
“Housing is a vaccine for poverty, and home ownership is one of the fundamental ways for families to build generational wealth,” Stoney said.
Some legislatures are already on their way to tackling homelessness and affordable housing. In Washington state, a Senate bill aims to increase the amount of single-family detached housing options, and a bill in the House proposes to issue up to $4 million in general obligation bonds and give loans to organizations that work to develop low-income housing, per Politico.
In states like Virginia and Connecticut, proposed measures would strengthen tenant protections, such as rent increases and document translation, to prevent unfair evictions. Other chambers have adopted stronger regulations that would crack down on out-of-state property managers, license requirements, and short-term rentals.
However, getting the funds to complete these tasks is another issue. Mayor Frank Cownie (D) of Des Moines, Iowa, echoed the irritations of many mayors that cities must go through state coffers instead of appealing to local leaders themselves.
“A lot of us are frustrated. We need more funds to go directly to local government,” Cownie said.
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Keller said despite current federal funding available through the HOME American Rescue Plan, which provides a one-time bundle of affordable house and preservation money, funding at the local level should be prioritized.
“This is still low on every policymaker’s radar,” Keller said. “We are trying to push it at the state level, we are trying to let our federal delegation know about this, and we’re trying to let everyday citizens know we have to do something about housing, or we’re going to lose our city to the suburbs.”
