Article from Reason by Christian Britschgi.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.) is the latest politician to release an ambitious, expensive proposal to fix America’s affordable housing problem. The congresswoman, a member of the so-called “Squad” of recently elected leftist legislators, wants to spend $1 trillion building new public housing.

“Our current free-market housing system is not meeting the needs of working families,” said Omar in a press release last week announcing her Homes for All Act. “Housing is a fundamental human right. It’s time we as a nation acted like it and end the housing crisis once and for all.”

To secure this fundamental human right, Omar’s legislation would spend $800 billion over the next 10 years developing 9.5 million new units of public housing. Another $200 billion would be spent through the existing federal Housing Trust Fund to subsidize the development of 2.5 million private affordable housing units.

Omar’s bill would also create a $200 billion grant program to help local governments fight gentrification. The legislation doesn’t explain how exactly these local governments would use the money to do that.

Read the entire article at Reason.

Image Credit: Leopaltik1242 [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]