This week the House will consider the Moving Forward Act, a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill that reflects many of Smart Growth America’s core priorities, including a new kind of transportation bill, billions to invest in new or rehabilitated affordable housing, and support for more inclusive and equitable development around transit to help give more Americans access to opportunity.
The pandemic is exacerbating a housing shortfall that was already in crisis mode before COVID-19, as middle-class Americans struggled to find affordable housing without “driving to qualify” out in the exurbs or in other locations where transportation costs are exorbitant, and lower-income Americans still struggled to find affordable housing. As lower-income families and individuals especially face the looming prospect of evictions on top of unemployment, we desperately need a national infrastructure policy to build more market-rate and affordable housing in places where residents will have good, affordable access to jobs and services by a range of transportation options.
When it comes to investing in the nation’s housing, the Moving Forward Act proposes to invest $100 billion in affordable housing, make the New Markets Tax Credit permanent, temporarily increase the Historic Tax Credit, and increase funding for the Low Income Housing Tax Credit—the most frequently used mechanism to help the public and private sector partner to build new affordable housing.
The housing crisis is especially acute in scores of large metro areas where housing supply is constrained by any number of factors, whether outdated zoning codes or neighbors regularly opposing all new development. The Moving Forward Act creates a new $10 billion fund (within the existing Community Development Block Grant program) to help applicants streamline the approval of, and remove local barriers to, affordable housing development, like outdated zoning requirements. This could be an interesting preview of a more robust federal strategy to address this local issue through incentives and federal funding.
Transportation: The INVEST Act
Back in January, SGA President and CEO Calvin Gladney wrote that “we can’t address our mounting affordable housing challenges if we don’t address how federal transportation policy prioritizes the needs of wealthy commuters over improving access to jobs and opportunity in areas that are affordable.” The transportation portion of the Moving Forward Act would finally start to do exactly this—prioritizing access for everyone, by any and every mode of travel, instead of trying (in vain) to speed up car commutes through costly road widening or expansion projects, which privileges drivers, often cuts neighborhoods in half, and leaves everyone else behind.
The biggest share of the Moving Forward Act’s cost is actually a separate bill: The INVEST Act, a $500 billion, five-year proposal to update the nation’s transportation policy which just passed the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure last week. The INVEST Act starts the work of updating our broken federal transportation program by prioritizing maintenance, safety, access, climate, and equity. Our Transportation for America program has been leading our analysis and coverage of the bill from nearly every angle, including how it radically outperforms the Senate’s status quo proposal on reauthorization that they released last year.
In addition to addressing T4America’s core principles of repair, safety, and access, there are also some other smart transit and land-use provisions worth noting. The INVEST Act starts to standardize the process of using any increase in property values that results from expanding transit service to fund new affordable housing. It also creates a new office for Transit Supportive Communities that will coordinate land use and transit plans, allows passenger rail loans to help finance transit-oriented development projects around stations (and increase ridership), and rewards transit capital projects that preserve or encourage higher density affordable housing around their stations.
With its inclusion in the Moving Forward Act, the INVEST Act will be considered as part of this larger bill, rather than with a separate vote like reauthorization proposals typically receive. But no matter what happens in the final outcome on the whole big package of HR 2, the INVEST Act represents the starting point for one-half of Congress on updating the country’s transportation policy. That’s why we’re calling on everyone who cares about overhauling the nation’s transportation policy to weigh in with your representative: Make sure your rep knows that the INVEST Act is Congress’ best chance to finally move the needle.
[button type=”primary” block=”true” size=”lg” link=”http://action.smartgrowthamerica.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=27078″]SUPPORT the INVEST ACT [/button]
What the House missed in the Moving Forward Act