(co-authored with Ben Preis and Michael Saadine)

Earlier this week, the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University and Accelerator for America launched the National Housing Crisis Task Force.

The Task Force, months in the making, held its first meeting in New York City, focusing intensely on the breadth and depth of the housing crisis and the urgent need for all layers of government and the private and civic sectors to rise to the occasion and fully treat the housing crisis like the crisis it is.

Task Force members homed in on the fact that the country needs to focus on net new housing supply, including the preservation of our existing affordable and market rate housing stock. They highlighted urgent issues, such as the need to address homelessness and create pathways through the housing ecosystem, and the expanding property insurance crisis affecting homes and apartments alike. At the same time, Task Force members also highlighted emerging successes, such as the sweeping land use reforms coming from California, the replicable efforts to put public assets to work in cities like Atlanta, ambitious plans to address homelessness in places like Houston, and new attempts to use federal resources from the Inflation Reduction Act to preserve and retrofit our existing housing stock. The Task Force was insistent on the need to address the housing issues of the whole country, including those in rural America, and communities that have been harmed by the housing policies of the past.

The Task Force truly represents a “coalition of the exceptional” that crosses partisan, jurisdictional and sectoral lines. The co-chairs of the Task Force – Utah Governor Spencer Cox, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb and Fifth Third Bank’s Susan Thomas — personify the main thesis of the effort, namely that the next generation of housing policy in the US is bubbling up from states, local governments, financial institutions and their allies rather than being designed in Washington think tanks or Congressional Committees.

The other 24 members of the Task Force are a remarkable group of reflective practitioners, representing a broad cross section of public authorities and agencies, investors, housing advocates, owners, developers and managers (across subsidized and market-rate units), philanthropies, and nonprofit intermediaries. These individuals live at the cutting edge of housing innovation and represent a fresh, bold and optimistic brand of thinking and action that defy conventional categories.

Task Force members include Henry Cisneros, who served as HUD Secretary under President Bill Clinton, and Pam Patenaude, who served as Deputy HUD Secretary under President Donald Trump. The Task Force also includes a Mayor’s Implementation Committee, chaired by Mayor Quinton Lucas of Kansas City and Kate Gallego of Phoenix. These individuals not only have the wisdom accorded by public service but the aptitude for problem solving at a scale that is necessary and warranted.

We are also grateful to our group of initial funders, which include Fifth Third Bank, the City of Atlanta, the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, the Rocket Community Fund, the Walton Family Foundation, the Gund Foundation and the Cleveland Foundation.

The most rewarding part of putting this Task Force together with our friends at Accelerator for America has been the ability to talk with each of the Chairs and Task Force members at length. What they have imparted to us has sharpened our view of both the challenge and the possible since the three of us floated the idea for a national effort back in March 2023.

First, the Task Force has a clear-eyed view of why the housing crisis has reached a tipping point. The housing crisis is caused by more than just land use restrictions and solutions will need to extend way beyond zoning reforms (although such reforms are fundamental). Rather, we are dealing with a crisis that has festered and metastasized due to an unusual combination of rising costs, financialized distortions, fossilized and rigid federal programs, household dynamics, migration patterns, and fragmented delivery systems. As we have recently written, we need multiple solutions to match the breadth, depth and complexity of the housing crisis we face.

Second, the Task Force respects the role that the federal government could play, if it so chose. A common refrain of our interviews was that it is time for the federal government to, repeat the phrase, “treat the housing crisis like the crisis it is,” as states, localities and countless private and nonprofit innovators are already doing. The multilayered federal playbook for crisis response, whether it’s around climate or COVID or national security is well honed and applicable to housing, as we will discuss in subsequent newsletters.

Finally, and most importantly, the Task Force is prepared to spark a national transformation in housing policy, from the ground up.  The Task Force embraces the following:

The nation has more power than we know. Some of this power is embedded in the enabling legislation of many public authorities, which were first granted back in the 1930s or 1950s. Some of this power can be found in the immense land holdings that states and localities have, which can now be imaginatively put to solving the housing crisis. And some of this power can be found in the fact that cities and their metropolitan areas have enormous market influence, which can be used, if aggregated and harnessed, to negotiating new terms of engagement with large market players, domestic and global.

The nation has more capital than we think. Some of this capital – trust funds, bond referenda, tax exemptions and abatements – has been locally raised and now can leverage other public, private and civic resources. Some of this capital – innovative transportation loans, energy related tax incentives, opportunity zones – emanate from the federal government and can be braided and blended to large effect. And some of this capital – private funds in particular – has been sitting on the sidelines, waiting for new market mechanisms to emerge and settle.

The nation has more solutions than we realize. States and localities, private investors and companies, and nonprofit actors and intermediaries are driving a plethora of solutions around land, construction, capital, regulation and delivery. The central issue is how to norm these solutions so they can be brought to full scale and impact.  The United States has done this before in the 20th century – when the 30-year mortgage was invented in the 1930s or FHA and VA financing sparked a homeowner revolution in the 1950s or when the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit was syndicated in the 1980s. In many respects, these were singular housing products that benefitted from market routinization (although the discriminatory effects of scaling are still with us today). Now we face a more mature economy and an exceedingly fragmented and federated system. Our task must reflect this. Norms will need to be created across multiple capital stacks and capital providers. New technologies and techniques will need to be applied. New institutions and intermediaries will need to be created. Yet all of this is actionable and doable.

In the end, the objectives of the National Housing Crisis Task Force are ambitious and far-reaching. We have a mission to catalyze and scale structural change rather than present a new diagnosis of the housing challenge or simply catalogue or inventory promising solutions. We have strong public support across the country — who want something done, yesterday. We welcome inspiring ideas, flexible funding and intentional partnerships. Many readers of this newsletter will know where to find us, but here is a link to the Task Force website, nonetheless.

In these volatile and even disturbing times, we are still motivated by Margaret Mead’s observation: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing ever has.”