Housing & Zoning
Housing & Zoning
How can we lower housing costs in the 43rd?
There is not a single, easy answer to this problem. I wish there was. But there are concrete steps we can take to push for a community where our teachers, firefighters, cashiers, pizza makers, uber drivers -- can afford to live where they work.
Home prices have increased by 42% since 2020 - pushing ownership out of reach.
This is pushing up rent prices in our district too -- And as a renter myself, I can attest to the gutless feeling of paying someone else's mortgage every month while the hopes of owning my own home fade further and further out of reach.
Like me, 57% of residents in our district are renters. We cannot solve the rising cost of rent alone -- we need to implement solutions that cover renters, homeowners, and landlords.
How can we lower housing costs in the 43rd?
There is not a single, easy answer to this problem. I wish there was. But there are concrete steps we can take to push for a community where our teachers, firefighters, cashiers, pizza makers, uber drivers -- can afford to live where they work.
Home prices have increased by 42% since 2020 - pushing ownership out of reach.
This is pushing up rent prices in our district too -- And as a renter myself, I can attest to the gutless feeling of paying someone else's mortgage every month while the hopes of owning my own home fade further and further out of reach.
Like me, 57% of residents in our district are renters. We cannot solve the rising cost of rent alone -- we need to implement solutions that cover renters, homeowners, and landlords.
Here is my 4-Pronged approach to address the largest issue in our district today: Housing
First - Fix Zoning
If you go to a really old city -- anywhere in the world -- you will find mix-used residential and commercial zoning. This means, you can start your cafe, bakery, laundromat, etc on the ground floor, and live or have apparments on the upper stories. This allows small businesses to thrive, makes communities walkable, and most importantly, thousands of extra housing units to build built accross our in commercial areas.
Reforming zoning laws to allow the building of mixed use commerical/residential properties. Imagine shops/grocery stores on the ground floor, and 4-5 story apparment buildes above. This is the most common style of building seen around the world, and is essentially "banned" by zoning regulations in most of our district & US generally.
Second - Make it Easier to Build Housing
Permitting/environmental studies & many regulations are well intentioned, but are often used by people to stop housing construction "not in my backyard." Sometimes it can take years, even decades for new housing projects to get approved.
We need to streamline the permitting process for new housing by providing pre-approved building templates & guidlines to make it easier and cheaper for developers to build new properties.
Third - Get For-Profit Corporations out of Housing
Housing is a Human right. That does not mean it has to be free - but it should be free from corporate greed.
I will introduce legislation to:
Ban private equity companies from owning residential housing across the country.
Impose a cap of on the number of residential properties a single landlord can hold to prevent corporate landlords gobbling up all the housing and controlling rental costs. My proposed cap would be 350 homes. This would impact only the largest 140 real estate investors in the country.
In dense urban areas like the 43rd district, enact a vacancy tax on landlords holding more that 5 properties, after a period of 6 months.
Create an system under the Department of Housing and Urban Development where renters can report un-inhabitable living conditions via an online portal, and get assistance with fixing these issues.
Fourth - Build High-Density Housing Near Transit
We need to build high density housing near existing metro cooridors, making use of the last remaining open land near areas like the 105 freeway.
Sofi Statdium, the Forum, Intuit Dome complex need to be connected to Metro Pink Line by elevated rail or underground down Prarie Ave, parking consolidated into underground- and multi-story parking lots.This will reduce traffic on the surrounding neighborhoods during game days. In the available land, multiple high rise buildings can be constructed. A project of this scale could increase available housing in the district by 2-3%.
This is key, because it helps alleviate traffic congestion from adding a bunch of new housing, which is often the reason many people oppose having new housing developments built near them.