National Infrastructure Bank Forum: Tackling the Affordable Housing Crisis
January 4, 2025
December 19, 2024 NIB Zoom Forum
Dr. Nomi Prins, Ph.D., former Managing Director Goldman Sachs, New York Assembly member Joanne Simon, and Alphecca Muttardy, former Senior Economist International Monetary Fund, were joined by housing experts in a National Zoom, on December 19, 2024, titled “National Infrastructure Bank Forum: Tackling the Affordable Housing Crisis.”
Solving the severe shortage of truly affordable housing is at the top of the list of problems gripping the nation. There is a shortage of millions of affordable dwellings nationwide. The results are mass homelessness and collapsing home sales and rentals. Skyrocketing housing costs are the leading cause of persistent inflation.
This forum focused on the conjunctural crisis of the long-developing problems and new solutions:
• Inadequate supply----Shortage of 4-7 million new units
• Cost---- Media price of a house is $420,400, 32% higher than in 2020. Median sales price is five times the median household income. Median rent is 20% higher than in 2020.
• Mortgage interest rates at 6.8%
• Home sales are at the lowest level since 1995
• Homeless population is over 650,000.
Current policies are broken! Working families and minimum-wage families cannot afford to rent, let alone buy a dwelling. People living in many public housing complexes are exposed to inhumane conditions, the result of years of federal, state and local neglect.
Aggressive new approaches are required, including “social housing,” as practiced in Vienna, Austria; land trusts; upgrade, expansion of existing housing programs, including NYCHA, Mitchell-Lama in New York.
“How to pay” hangs like the Damocles Sword over everything! One solution is the National Infrastructure Bank, as outlined in H.R.4052. This bill creates a $5 trillion public bank to invest in infrastructure. It allocates $720 billion to finance construction of 7 million new units of affordable housing. Support for the bill is expanding with 48 Congressional sponsors.
Speakers:
Dr. Nomi Prins , author, and former Managing Director Goldman Sachs, Los Angeles
Sarah Saadian , Senior Vice-President of Public Policy and Field Organizing, National Low Income Housing Coalition, Washington, DC
Assemblyman Alex Lee , California Assembly, sponsor AB 11, “The Social Housing Act,” Milpitas
Assemblywoman Joanne Simon , New York Assembly, Brooklyn
Senator David Koehler , Illinois Senate, Peoria
Alphecca Muttardy , former Senior Economist, International Monetary Fund, Fairfax, Va
Coalition for a National Infrastructure Bank
P.O. Box 1029
Leesburg, VA 20177
info@nibcoalition.com