I’ve been glad to see recent coverage of the extreme Project 2025, the blueprint members of the far right created to run the country if former President Trump is re-elected. I’ve seen little discussion of Project 2025’s plans for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), so I read the HUD chapter in this “Mandate for Leadership,” written by Trump’s HUD Secretary, Ben Carson (Chapter 15).
I believe the proposed “reforms” in Project 2025 will worsen the housing and homelessness crisis in Maine.
Among other things, Carson proposes to: 1) Divert funding from construction of new affordable rental housing to single-family homeownership; 2) Prioritize rental assistance for married heads of households; 3) Limit how long people can receive rental assistance; 3) Create work requirements for housing assistance; 4) Preference use of shorter term mortgages (less than 20 years) to speed up wealth-building (limiting buyers’ affordability); and 5) Prohibit undocumented people from receiving housing assistance (even when married to a U.S. citizen).
Everyone who works with HUD would agree it needs reform. But there’s also no doubt these Project 2025 policies would hurt those who need housing assistance the most. In one footnote (p. 515), Carson acknowledges that “Housing supply does remain a problem in the U.S., but constructing more units at the low end of the market will not solve the problem.”
His solution is to turn the private sector loose on the problem, conveniently ignoring that it’s the market’s utter failure to supply decent, livable housing at the low end of the market that led to Congress creating housing programs to address the issue. Carson’s “trickle down housing” will only reward the already affluent.
Carson believes that when it comes to affordable housing, “… American homeowners and citizens know best what is in the interest of their neighborhoods and communities.” I’m a strong advocate for community involvement, but the reality is that existing homeowners’ misperceptions that affordable housing will reduce their property values leads them to reject such projects. Their goal is to increase their home values, which they believe are enhanced by limiting development and restricting it to high-cost homes.
Carson wants to promote homeownership as a pathway to wealth building, and generations Americans have, in fact, benefited from this. But the windfall profits many of us will enjoy from the sale of our homes are the barrier to entry for the next generation of homebuyers. In Maine, the median sale price of a home recently topped $400,000. Promotion of housing as an investment through tax incentives such as the mortgage interest tax deduction (MID) disproportionately benefits the most affluent homeowners (who are predominantly white. The MID is one of the largest federal expenditures for housing assistance and it skews the single family-market in favor of those who need the assistance the least.
As young people struggle to afford their first homes or apartments, and homelessness is steadily increasing, the MID also subsidizes the purchase of vacation homes, including those purchased in other countries. Carson doesn’t address this.
Nowhere does Carson suggest that HUD should promote use of shared equity ownership models, such as low-income housing cooperatives or community land trusts. That’s a shame. Shared equity models benefit lower-income households by reducing the cost of entry, holding down their housing costs over the long term and giving them much greater control over their living situations than renting in the private market. Currently, public subsidies used to make home purchase more affordable end up in those fortunate homebuyers’ pockets when the short-term affordability requirements end. Because they are permanently attached to the housing, shared equity models are a far thriftier use of public subsidies.
We should reject Project 2025 by voting against Trump in the November election. Maine, and the country, can’t afford either Carson’s proposed housing policies or the threat the overall plan poses to our democracy.
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