The Affordable Housing Crisis

The collapse of the subprime mortgage industry in 2008, and the foreclosure crisis that accompanied that collapse, made millions of homeowners into permanent renters overnight. To add insult to injury, many people who lost their homes to foreclosure saw those same homes ultimately fall under the ownership of the banks and Wall Street speculators that caused the crash in the first place. The result was one of the greatest transfers of wealth from the working class to “the One Percent” in U.S. history and the deepening of an already existing affordable housing crisis. This crisis has only worsened since 2008; and has since come to define life for many people in the United States and around the globe.

The economic meltdown left in the wake of the subprime mortgage debacle exposed the dangers of marrying housing policy to the highly financialized and high-risk world of Wall Street gambling. However, instead of learning from that catastrophe and correcting course to achieve greater housing stability and affordability, the worlds of both finance and real estate doubled down on the concept that housing is a hyper commodity to be financialized and speculated on in order to make huge profits for investors. In essence, the financial industry and real estate sector have partnered to act as a sort of Dr. Frankenstein and together have created an out-of-control monster that thrives on land speculation, sky rocking rents, mass displacement and political corruption.

We face a choice. We can continue to allow our housing policy to be dictated by corporate developers, wall street hedge fund managers and private equity; or we as citizens can demand better.

At CSHPI we fight for Social Housing an alternative development model to build self-sustaining and deeply affordable rental housing that can be accessed by everyone. We believe that investment in social housing is the path toward Housing as a Human Right.

We invite you to join the fight for social housing!