Draft GPUS Platform Amendment Housing Homelessness
Section title: Housing
Section subtitle: Providing affordable housing for all Americans
Our position: Housing is a human right.
In an era of deregulation, tenants have had few legal protections, and those that exist have begun to erode. Rent control and eviction protection for tenants does not exist in most jurisdictions, and where it does, it is usually inadequate and under attack. Landlords who, in violation of housing code requirements, fail to keep their property in habitable condition are tolerated, or at most given lenient penalties. Housing discrimination remains rampant against people of color, immigrants, disabled, single people, gays and lesbians, and families with children.
Homeless people are often hounded, threatened, and often can not obtain badly needed services. Though affordable housing could help alleviate the problem of homelessness, the homeless have needs that go beyond housing.
The long-term stagnation of workers' real wages is also a major contribution to the current crisis in housing availability and affordability. Certain laws have also contributed to the problems of housing supply and cost, and are in some cases consciously used to exclude households with lower incomes from higher income communities.
Many areas of local law are ripe for reform, including: ordinances that discourage co-housing; land use plans that provide excessive amounts of land for industrial and commercial use; and inflexible building codes that prevent alternative (often less expensive) construction approaches that still meet health and safety requirements.
Green Solutions
Renters/Tenants' Rights
1. Guarantee tenant's rights, including: freedom from harassment and evictions without just cause; well-enforced habitability standards; strong anti-discrimination enforcement, including family protection laws and domestic partnerships; continuation of established services and amenities; the right to reasonable guest visitation; maintenance of roommate privileges; and the right to communicate with other tenants about conditions or circumstances in their buildings.
2. Enact and enforce strong penalties for landlords violate these rights.
3. Fund public and non-profit tenant-related counseling and legal assistance for renters.
Rent Control
4. Defend and expand cities' right to enact local rent control laws, including vacancy control/recontrol, that fit the needs of their communities.
5. Provide for publicly elected Rent Control/Stabilization Boards for communities with local rent control laws.
Preserve and Increase Affordable Housing Supply
6. Defend and expand cities' ability to enact affordable housing inclusionary ordinances that fit the needs of their communities, so that the private sector will contribute its share of affordable housing construction.
7. Provide funding for publicly-built affordable housing, including funding for non-profit corporations that build affordable housing.
8. Establish and enforce laws to prevent illegal conversions of existing affordable housing into hotels, motels and short-term vacation rentals.
Home Ownership
9.
Fair Housing
10. Enforce and strengthen the federal Fair Housing Act and other federal and state fair-housing laws that prohibit discrimination based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, familial status, and national origin.
11. Increase funding for the Fair Housing Initiatives Program to assist people who believe they have been victims of housing discrimination and support and fund fair housing enforcement and education across the nation. Consider establishment of an independent Fair Housing Enforcement Agency outside of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in order to improve enforcement and restore public confidence in the implementation of federal fair housing policies.
12. Require that communities that receive federal housing funds provide evidence that their housing policies are affirmatively furthering fair housing.
13. Amend the federal Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program to increase access of eligible families to high opportunity communities, by including higher rents where necessary, improving administrative portability of vouchers across jurisdictional lines, re-establishing housing mobility programs to assist voucher-holders seeking to move to higher opportunity areas, creating strong incentives and performance goals for administering agencies, and providing incentives to recruit new landlords into the program.
14. Amend the The Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program to include fair housing requirements for site selection, affirmative marketing, and reporting of racial/ethnic data to ensure that this program works to further fair housing goals.
15. Ensure that fair housing principles are emphasized in programs addressing the mortgage and financial crisis
16. Revive the President’s Fair Housing Council to coordinate federal activities across agencies to support fair housing
'Measures to Help Homeless Persons
9. Expand community-based services for homeless persons and make them more readily available.
10. Repeal all laws that criminalize any facet of homelessness or helping homeless persons.
11. Abolish anti-sleeping laws, especially in areas which don’t have adequate open space, shelter and sleeping areas for homeless persons.
12. Strictly enforce all laws designed to provide for the homeless, such as the laws that require opening National Guard armories to homeless persons during inclement weather.
13. Allow homeless people to take part in decisions about long- and short-term solutions to their situation.
14. Strengthen and increase funding of mental health and drug rehabilitation systems.
'Reform Zoning and Building Codes
18. Implement low-impact, site-specific designs that encourage human-scale development and environmentally sensitive planning. Promote development that encourages urban density – with green spaces – and that discourages urban sprawl.
19. Remove restrictions on converting large, single family homes to multi-family use. Families of today are smaller and there are more single-parent households.
20. Allow industrial and commercial developers to provide housing instead of parking spaces in new developments, and permit housing development in existing industrial and commercial zones.
21. Reform zoning, occupancy, and building ordinances so that residential needs can exist in balance with commercial and industrial needs, and so that alternative approaches are encouraged rather than restricted.
ORIGINAL 2004 TEXT OF HOUSING HOMELESSNESS PLATFORM PLANK
Renter’s Rights
1. Grant cities the ability to enact local rent control lawsProtect tenants with rent control laws, including vacancy control.
2. Prevent evictions without just cause. Restrict owner move-in evictions of long-term tenants, the elderly, and disabled persons.
3. Crack down on landlords who refuse to maintain their properties in habitable condition, or who engage in illegal evictions, with hefty fines and, in extreme cases, jail terms.
Preserve and Increase Affordable Housing Supply
4. Enforce laws against illegal hotel conversions.
5. Use vacant housing – whether at closed military bases, housing kept off the market by speculators, or landlords delinquent in taxes – to shelter homeless persons.
6. Build human-scale, low income housing (as does Habitat for Humanity).
7. Pursue more efficient use of our existing housing supply, such as home-sharing and cooperative conversions of existing dwellings.
8. Subsidies, trade-offs with developers, and the creative use of city and county zoning ordinances should be used to increase affordable housing.
'Measures to Help Homeless Persons
9. Expand community-based services for homeless persons and make them more readily available.
10. Repeal all laws that criminalize any facet of homelessness or helping homeless persons.
11. Abolish anti-sleeping laws, especially in areas which don’t have adequate open space, shelter and sleeping areas for homeless persons.
12. Strictly enforce all laws designed to provide for the homeless, such as the laws that require opening National Guard armories to homeless persons during inclement weather.
13. Allow homeless people to take part in decisions about long- and short-term solutions to their situation.
14. Strengthen and increase funding of mental health and drug rehabilitation systems.
Strong Fair-Housing Laws
15. Strengthen and enforce fair-housing laws against discrimination based on race, sex, familial status (children), marital status, disability, or sexual orientation.
16. Fully fund the Fair Employment and Housing Commission and provide generous government funding to non-profit organizations engaged in fair housing monitoring and enforcement.
17. Insist that architectural review boards and planning commissions represent the concerns of citizens, rather than the concerns of economic segments of the community.
'Reform Zoning and Building Codes
18. Implement low-impact, site-specific designs that encourage human-scale development and environmentally sensitive planning. Promote development that encourages urban density – with green spaces – and that discourages urban sprawl.
19. Remove restrictions on converting large, single family homes to multi-family use. Families of today are smaller and there are more single-parent households.
20. Allow industrial and commercial developers to provide housing instead of parking spaces in new developments, and permit housing development in existing industrial and commercial zones.
21. Reform zoning, occupancy, and building ordinances so that residential needs can exist in balance with commercial and industrial needs, and so that alternative approaches are encouraged rather than restricted.
