You're Not Gonna Believe This, But 'Build Back Better' Plan Even Covers HOUSING

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.wonkette.com/build-back-better-means-kids-will-have-roofs-over-their-heads

While there are a lot of terrific things planned for the $3.5 trillion (over 10 years) Build Back Better reconciliation bill — like paid family and medical leave, extending the expanded child tax credit, and making a serious start at moving the US off fossil fuels — the good folks at the American Prospect would like to call your attention to another part of the proposal that hasn't gotten quite as much attention. Namely, that's the bill's funding for housing programs, amounting to some $327 billion that will go to long-neglected public housing and some innovative ideas for giving people on the economic margins more control over the policies affecting the places they literally have to live with, and in.

Prospect columnist Alexander Sammon says the package of housing investments takes

an interesting all-of-the-above approach to one of the most vexing problems in the American economy, the soaring cost of housing. The bill features $327 billion in new spending on housing, with the bulk of that money going to public housing and housing vouchers, as well as some low-income development. All told, a best-case scenario could see the bill cutting homelessness in half within five years.

Mind you, that depends on the package surviving the process of debate and amendment as the reconciliation bill moves along; the wonky way bills get funded to meet the Senate's reconciliation process also means some of the funding expires after five years and would need to be made permanent by a future Congress.

Let's look around the new construction, shall we?

For starters, to encourage the construction of more affordable housing, the package includes $4.5 billion aimed at reforming zoning, in the form of "grants, basically a bribe, to municipalities that change their land-use laws to encourage and streamline the building of duplexes and triplexes on single-family lots." Sammon didn't say when Sen. Cory Booker would be moving into your neighborhood, though, so don't get your hopes up.

*snip*

[ms liberty]

1. K&R n/t

[crickets]

2. I gotta spend more time getting the news from Wonkette.

Dunno why, but something about the tone just makes me smile. K&R!

[Hortensis]

3. :) She's joking, of course. It's a giant DEMOCRATIC PARTY plan

and thanks to Wonkette for drawing attention to it.

Of course it contains major provisions to address housing issues -- in a variety of ways, carefully crafted to interactively address other problems at the same time, such as climate change, areas of long-term poverty, and new jobs.