Source: Triad City Beat
It’s no secret that the United States is facing an affordable housing crisis. According to the Urban Institute, home prices rose by 114 percent between September 2010 and September 2023. Twenty-five percent of NC residents are cost-burdened by housing — meaning that they are spending more than 30 percent or more of their income on housing costs. Another 12 percent are severely cost-burdened, spending 50 percent or more on housing.
As the housing crisis has grown, communities across North Carolina have developed a variety of programs to help potential homebuyers. Local governments, particularly those throughout the Triad, have excelled at setting up down payment assistance programs.
Forsyth County offers help to first-time homebuyers, and the City of Winston-Salem offers financial assistance for housing development and rehabilitation projects. Guilford County offers low-to-moderate income homebuyers a $10,000 loan at zero percent interest, forgiven after 5 years. Greensboro’s homebuyer assistance program also offers up to $15,000 toward a home to people who make 80 percent or less of the area median income.
Federal funding provided through the Biden-Harris Administration’s American Rescue Plan has helped fund many down payment assistance programs, and Vice President Kamala Harris has proposed a robust economic policy agenda to build on this progress.
Harris recently released an 82-page plan to lower costs and build economic opportunity for everyday Americans. Among her plans to address the affordable housing crisis, Harris proposes giving first-time homebuyers $25,000 in down payment assistance. This program would provide support to working families who have paid rent on time for the past two years and could benefit more than four million first-time homebuyers over four years.
Harris has also proposed supply-side, private-sector incentives to lower housing costs. Through a series of tax credits, Harris will work to incentivize the building of over 1.2 million affordable housing units– a policy that aims to reduce rental prices for all families. On the other hand, Trump has provided no concrete plans to address the crisis, outside of proposing mass deportations of immigrants.
While the affordable housing crisis is daunting, progressive leaders at the local and national levels are confronting this challenge head-on. The results of the November election will determine whether these programs continue to receive funding moving forward.
