HousingWireHousingWire
Former HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge has strong opinions on affordable housing. As far as Fudge is concerned, whether political ally or adversary, if someone opposes expanding the construction of affordable housing, they are part of the problem driving persistently high home prices and increasing homelessness.
This was one of the ideas shared last week at the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health by the former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under President Joe Biden. In a discussion about the need for affordable housing to address the supply crisis, Fudge discussed what she saw as the biggest signs of progress and impediments to construction during her time as secretary from 2021 to 2024.
She first spoke about what she saw as the three key issues for addressing homelessness: affordable housing construction; a too-stringent local regulatory environment for builders and developers; and neglecting to keep up with construction of all housing.
Fudge also defended the work of HUD under her leadership, saying “as a consequence of the work we’ve been doing, there are more houses being built today than have ever been built at any point in time in the last, probably, 30 years,” Fudge said. But she conceded, “it’s still not enough.”
She aimed to sound the alarm about rising poverty and homelessness rates among older Americans, warning of potentially major consequences if the Social Security program endures harsher cuts in the months and years ahead. But Fudge also took aim at opponents of housing construction regardless of their political affiliation, with a particular observation about even her own political allies.
“Even our most liberal friends and those who want to help, they don’t want to help enough to have it next door to their house,” Fudge said. “What we find is that people come to planning meetings, and say, ‘No, we don’t want that. We don’t want you to change the zoning in our neighborhood. It needs to be only residential, which means that you can’t put even a small, four unit building that is rental.’”
She also said that the aims of people against the proliferation of housing construction are accomplished through a web of regulatory guidance, including dictating the kinds of materials that can be used in certain types of construction, and these have become “obstacles” to building more.
But she also took aim at the mentality of cities themselves, and their zoning rules.
“The biggest problem is most cities haven’t even looked at their zoning for years and years, they don’t know the impediments they are creating,” she said. “So we want them to take a look at it and make a serious effort to try to change it, because again, there is no place in this country where on minimum wage you can live in a two-bedroom unit. What does that say about our nation? It’s shameful, but it is the reality [of] how we know how to fix it. We still have the will to do it.”
