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Cisneros and Kemp Call For Bipartisan Approach in Solving Homeownership Woes
by Cherie Duvall
 A new book on solving the nation’s homeownership challenges says one key factor in finding permanent solutions to long-term housing problems is a bipartisan and holistic approach that takes into account how shortages in one area can negatively impact other areas.
The writers of “Our Communities, Our Homes: Pathways to Housing and Homeownership in America’s Cities and States,” former Housing and Urban Development Secretaries Henry Cisneros and Jack Kemp, and Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies scholars Kent W. Colton and Nicolas P. Retsinas, discussed their forthcoming book last month during a panel discussion at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
The book is based on an examination of successful housing programs in U.S. cities. As a tool for leaders in local and state governments, it cites specific actions that can be used to achieve important goals such as reducing homelessness, preserving affordable rental homes and boosting sustainable homeownership.
“These issues are too important not to be talked about, discussed, debated to find the rightful place in the platform of both political parties,” Kemp stated. “… This book is going to go a long way to force both parties to the center to debate housing and homeownership in the 21st century.”
Among the writers’ findings, they discovered that the most effective housing programs look at the housing continuum — supportive housing, public housing, rental housing and for-sale homes — as parts of a whole rather than separate, unrelated programs.
While it’s necessary for cities to approach their housing problems differently based on local needs, the book says successful programs should all include five key factors: leadership commitment to clear goals and a deadline; a meaningful game plan based on hard data and guided input; the pledge of a reliable revenue stream; partners organized to act in concert; and a bias for action and an eye for opportunity.
For Cisneros, three cities that come to mind as models of all five prerequisites are Boston, Chicago and New York.
For example, Boston has a full-spectrum plan, called “Leading the Way,” a housing strategy for increasing the production and preservation of affordable housing, which has developed 7,500 new units of housing and preserved 10,000 units. Chicago’s “Build, Preserve, Lead” program aims to renovate 48,000 units of affordable housing and 25,000 units of public housing and end homelessness in 10 years built on a national model called, “Housing First!” And, according to Cisneros, the largest-ever municipal housing initiative is under way in New York.
Cisneros also noted an “overarching” point in the book.
“[An] interwoven theme is that housing in our country, in many respects, is a place we set a local set of policies,” he explained. “Yes, we have critical national policies, but, the truth of the matter is, at a time when the federal role in housing has declined in some ways, it falls to local leaders to make housing happen.”
Similarly, Colton referred to the book as a “call to action for mayors and local officials.”
Retsinas agreed.
“We came to the conclusion that, while it’s important for the federal government to be responsive, where it matters the most is at the state and local levels,” said Retsinas. “That’s where people live, that’s where people work, that’s where people play.”
The book was published by the Joint Center for Housing Studies and will be available through the center this month.
This is not the writers’ first collaborative work. In 2004, the authors of the soon-to-be-released book published “Opportunity and Progress: a Bipartisan Platform for National Housing Policy,” a book created to reassert housing as a national priority.
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